Social Ins(xts. 5 



practical kind to bees. How very little they knew, however, of 

 their true economy is shown by the prevalence of the belief that 

 bees came from the carcasses of animals. This superstition as 

 to the BiKjoaia, as exemplified in the biblical story of Samson 

 (Judges XIV, 8) continued for twenty centuries and grew out of 

 the resemblance to the Hive bee of Eristalw tenax, a Dipterous 

 fly which breeds in putrescent matter. This fact, first clearly 

 recognized by that excellent observer, Reaumur, has been fully 

 established in a recent most interesting paper by Osten Sacken 

 "On the so-called Bugnnia of the ancients, and its relations to 

 Eri.stdlis tciKtx" (Bullettino della Societa Entomologica Itali- 

 ana, Anno XXV, 1893). In fact the fabulous about bees pre- 

 vailed till the beginning of the last century, when Maraldi, by 

 the invention of glass hives, gave an impetus to correct observa- 

 tion, and led to the remarkable memoirs of Swammerdam, 

 Reaumur, Schirach and Francis Huber. 



The fact that the Hive Bee can be cultivated and controlled 

 with a view to profitable industry, has served to heighten the in- 

 terest in it, and since the invention in this country, in 1852, of 

 the movable frame hive, by a retired clergyman, the Rev. L. L. 

 Langstroth, progress in apiculture has been rapid and continu- 

 ous. Of the more important subsequent inventions, many of 

 them made in Europe but perfected in America, may be men- 

 tioned the honey-extractor, which, by centrifugal force, throws 

 the honey from the comb, leaving the latter intact and ready to 

 be used again; and the comb foundation, by which sheets of wax 

 are impressed with the bases of the cells and employed to ensure 

 straight and regular combs, to limit drone production and in- 

 crease the honey product. With the bee-smoker in its modern 

 form, bees are also much more easily controlled and manipulated 

 than formerly. Much has been done, also, in ameliorating the 

 races of bees, both by introducing races from other countries 

 and by the crossing of these. There are some three hundred 

 thousand of our citizens engaged in bee culture, and tlij&y add 

 over twenty million dollars annually to the wealth of the country 

 in honey and wax. This amount may be, and in the near 

 future doubtless will be, very largely increased. It is, in fact, 

 difficult to realize what an immense amount of honey is wasted 

 from lack of bees to garner it, and the poet Gray would seem to 



