48 
still by frightening the bees that one nowadays gets honey without 
danger. You blow smoke into the hive, and you shake it. The 
bees, with the instinct of their primitive forest life, get terribly 
frightened ; and fright leads them to cluster together and try to 
get upwards. So if you frighten them into an inverted hive, they 
cluster despairingly inside the top. And Mr. Lomax sent round 
the inverted hive with the frightened bees inside. 
Among the more interesting things Mr. Lomax had to say 
about bees was to point out that they have women’s suffrage and 
nothing for the men. The female bee does all the work and has 
all the power, and,—a point to be noted in these days of 
suffragettes,—the rule of the females is peculiarly ruthless. As 
soon as the queen bee begins to lose her power of laying the full 
number of eggs, as soon as the poor males are found to be eating 
more than they seem worth, out the females turn them to perish 
of exposure. Thus ruthlessly are the principles of social economics 
carried out under feminine rule. 
The superstitions that gather round bees were also told 
entertainingly by Mr. Lomax. The bee must be treated as one 
of the family. If a death occurs in the family the hive must be 
decorated with black; if a wedding, with white. Should the 
mother of the family be dead, someone must go after dark, knock 
at the hive, and tell them. Bees greatly object to being boug ht 
and sold, and the buyers and sellers must be careful never to let 
them see the money. The money, too, must be gold. If these 
and other rules are broken the bees will be insulted, and will fly 
away. Asa scientist, of course, Mr. Lomax had his explanation 
for these beliefs, and he showed how the natural habits of the 
bees would give rise to these fanciful ideas. Wherever the Celtic 
race is, one finds these ideas. They are strong in Brittany. 
In Sussex, if a swarm of bees comes to a hive, they have to 
be propitated with an offering of beer and sugar, with leaves of 
scarlet runners. It is undoubtedly an expression of thankfulness 
at the arrival of a piece of uncommon good fortune. 
As the fruits of a long and discerning experience, Mr. Lomax 
had many other things of interest to say about bees, and he kept 
his audience thoroughly entertained. 

