BEES, STINGLESS. 



66 



BEES, STINGLESS. 



tral America casually noted them in the 

 Kith century; but no European seems to 

 liave been interested enough in them to make 

 a coininchensive study of their life-history 

 and liabils. That work was left for the 

 twentieth-century naturalists. Geoffrey St. 

 Ilillaire, a naturalist-explorer, did some- 

 thing to awaken interest by his now classi- 

 cal observations on honey-gathering wasps 

 of Paraguay, of which lie furnished a com- 



from their chief enemy, the lizard. The 

 logs are robbed at statetl intervals, the keep- 

 er being well satisfied if he can secure a 

 gallon of honey per hive at a robbing, de- 

 pending somewhat on the si)ecies used for 

 domestication. 



Apparently no effort has ever been made 

 to invent a hive suitable to their wants. It 

 is noticeable that the natives use only those 

 species whose homes are made in hollow 



STINGLESS AVORKER. 



ITALIAN WORKER. 



(Magnifled two times.) 



ITALIAN QUEEN. 



plete account in 1825 (Paris). Azara,a similar 

 explorer, also called attention to them in his 

 travel through Paxaguay. He describes a 

 species twice as large as Apis mellifica. 



Other explorers have mentioned them from 

 time to time, but nothing of real value was 

 elicited until lately. Tlieir study has now 

 been taken up in earnest. White men have 

 been inclined to dismiss them as worthless 

 for practical purposes; but the natives of 

 South America are certainly not of that 

 opinion. On the contrary, they regard them 

 as superior to the ''stinging fly" of the white 

 man. In Southern Mexico, Central Amer- 

 ica, and South America, they are quite fre- 

 quently kept in a domesticated state by the 

 native inhab- 

 itants — that 

 is to say, they 

 have them in 

 liollow logs 

 which have 

 been brought 

 from the for- 

 ests. Tliese 

 "hives" are 

 generally 

 hung up by 

 ropes around 

 their dwell- 

 ings to pro- 

 tect the bees 



ITALIAN QUEEN. (Mag. two times.) STINGLESS^QUEEN. 



trees, no effort being made to utilize the 

 many other species whose nests are made in 

 holes in the ground or on tree-branches. 



The quality of the honey and wax varies 

 very much, some of it being quite good and 

 some quite the opposite. The w^ax is apt to 

 be mixed with propolis to a great extent; 

 but at least one species inhabiting the up- 

 per tributaries of the Orinoco, in Columbia, 

 furnishes a desirable wax which has been 

 frequently sold in this country. 



While the stingless bees cannot sting they 

 hite and worry in away to surpass bees pos- 

 sessed of a sting. At the Pliiladelphia field- 

 day meeting at which a thousand bee-keep- 

 ers were present, in June, lijOb, two colonies 



of a large spe- 

 cies of sting- 

 less bees were 

 exhibited. A 

 hive of them 

 was torn 

 apart and 

 opened for in- 

 spection. Did 

 those sting- 

 less bees take 

 such intru- 

 sion without 

 making a n y 

 objections? 

 Not at all. 



