1890 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUKE. 



627 



AN INTERESTING LETTER FROM THE OLD 

 WORLD. 



TEMPKIt OF THE EGYPTIAN AND OTIIEK OHIEN- 

 TAI, BEES. 



Mr. Runt. — In (teeaninus for May lo. you say 

 you are surprised that I say nothing about the 

 vindiftiveuess of the Egyptian bee. I think 

 most bee-keepers will agree with me in what I 

 am going to say. In th(i tirst place, the bees I 

 saw in Egypt.'and some in very considerable 

 apiaries, were very quiet, not to say docile, 

 though we did not handle them: all we did was 

 to \\alk in front of the hives and look in at a 

 hive. They showed no more disposition to sting 

 than our Palestines. I fully agree that our Ori- 

 ental bees — Cyprians, Syrians. Palestines, and 

 Egyptians, are more difticult to handle, espe- 

 cially for the beginniM'. but they am be handled 

 after all: and wlivn we remember it is not 

 more than ten years since these races have 

 been imported largely (except the Egyptians) 

 there has hardly been time enough to weed 

 out the most vindictive, and strike just the 

 good qualities required — docile, prolific, large, 

 yellow - tailed. Mr. F. Benton and myself 

 laughed one day at a man desiring all such 

 qualities. It is rare to find all these combined. 

 I know some one will say, " Why did you not 

 do it?"' Because, in the first plac^, Benton was 

 the only man I know of who worked to any ex- 

 tent in the raising of Oriental queens; and al- 

 though he may have weeded out the worst, he 

 never stayed long enough in one place to find 

 out all the desired qualities: and then, again, a 

 nucleus may be handled without smoke and 

 veil: but as soon as this same nucleus has 

 grown to be a full-sized colony, things take 

 another tui'n, and the bees seem very angry and 

 almost impossible to handle, if all necessary 

 precautions are not taken. A full-sized colony 

 is never to be handled without smoke, though 

 you can a nucleus. A few puffs from the smo- 

 ker will i)erfectly subdue the same colony at 

 one season of the year: while in another, a 

 good Bingham is necessary to blow almost con- 

 tinually while manipulating. 



It is only four months since I saw the first 

 Bingham smoker, which I received from the 

 Home of the Honey-bees: and it is only half 

 the work to subdu*; our bees during the orange- 

 blossom honey-flow, when with us the bees are 

 wildest. We could not work them at all without 

 veils while extracting, and it was very difficult 

 to do so even then without gloves during the 

 orange-blossom season: but we do it, and ex- 

 tract orange honey and feel well protected all 

 the while. 



MOVIN(i UEES WITH CAMELS. 



Ill May and June we moved our apiaries to 

 the land of the Philistines, in the tribe of Dan. 

 Owing to the scarcity of thyme in one place, I 

 divided my apiary, consisting of 100 hives, into 

 three. They are about HJ miles apart, very 

 near the village of Eki'on. You know the cam- 

 els kneel down, and the hives are put on their 

 backs without a stir from the camel, and then 

 the clay hives, or those made of mud, as in 

 Egyi)t. are exceedingly strong, and would bear 

 any thing. The only danger is the bees getting 

 out. We also move all our b(^es on camelback, 

 and I su|)pose we iuive just as much or even 

 more trouble than you have with horses and 

 wagons. When it is time to move we put a spac- 

 ing rack in the l)ott<jm of th(> hive, and two in 

 the center, made so as to hold the frames below 

 as well as the frames of the su|)er. Thei-e are 13 

 frames in each hive and in each su|)er. Then 

 the super is put on and fixed on both sid(>s by 

 clasps, the clasp being screwed on the super. 

 and a hold for the clasp is screwed on the hive. 



A quilt is now put on, and the cover screwed on. 

 The hive has ventilating holes covered inside 

 by wire screen. In years gone by we moved to 

 the mountains, and it generally took us two or 

 sometimes three nights to arrive at our destina- 

 tion. Only two nights the camels had to go 

 faster, and we traveled an hour or so by day- 

 light, which plan we left altogether, on ac- 

 count of some terrible adventures we had to 

 undergo. 



One evening in the last decade of June, on 

 Thursday, we started from Jaffa with 13 camel 

 loads of" bees (104 hives). The hives were all 

 supposed to be well arranged: and with a good 

 supply of all necessary implements we followed 

 on horse and on donkey. We lost a good deal 

 of time loading. The night was far advanced; 

 and with the slow movements of the camels, 

 morning came before we had got far enough, 

 so we decided to continue by daylight. I shud- 

 der when I think (jf it. Somehow or other one 

 hive got loose, and every one had to flee for his 

 life. The camels got wild; some threw off their 

 loads: the hives were tumbling about: my 

 friend and myself were running about with 

 open knives, cutting ropes, and helping the 

 poor animals away. When all the animals 

 were galloping away in the distance, together 

 with their drivers, we had to look out to our- 

 selves and hives. We were stunned with stings, 

 being unprotected. Our veils, gloves, smokers, 

 etc., availed us very little, for not only had all 

 the hives to be lifted up from the ground, but a 

 good m^ny were cracked, and bees were furi- 

 ously streaming out; but we had also to open 

 the hives; for in the boiling sun, surely they 

 would have been suffocated by night. It was 

 not before four o'clock in the afternoon when 

 the bees had forgotten about the terrible events 

 of the morning, and we had rested, and again 

 near ed the hives with " fear and trembling." 

 We repaired all the damages, and started again 

 to loading camels, the stung camels being very 

 Hdgety. After a good deal of tying, screaming, 

 howling, and what noises imagination alone 

 can conceive, we again drove fast in the direc- 

 tion of Jerusalem. We arrived in this town at 

 daybreak: but we had to go beyond Bethlehem, 

 four miles distant. We decided to go. not hav- 

 ing had enough of our lesson the day before. 

 It was Whitsunday morning, and we had hoped 

 to arrive early enough to take our rest. We. 

 hurried on. The camels were walking behind 

 each other, when we had just passed the con- 

 vent of Elijah the Prophet, a place held in 

 great veneration by Christians and Moslems. 

 In the rock is the place where the great prophet 

 slept when he fled from Ahab, king of Israel; 

 for from the holiness of his body tradition made 

 him sink into the rock, as though it would have 

 been a bed of down. No Christian passes but 

 mak(>s the sign of the cross, and stoops down to 

 kiss the hallowinl place. The road is now 

 closed in by high stone walls, to prevent ani- 

 mals or people getting into the olive-yards be- 

 longing to the convent. The last of the canuds 

 got frightened and leaped toward its fore-cam- 

 el, and a hive got loose. The bees streamed out 

 furiously, and attacked the camel, thi'u the one 

 before it; but the other eh^ven could flee to- 

 gether with their burden.s. I sli])i)e(l on a veil, 

 handed the donkey to my brother, and witfh 

 open knife I ran for the camels" lives. The 

 ropes tying the iiives were cut; they fell off, 

 and only If) hives were now tiirown on the 

 ground. " My brother put the animals hardly 

 200 paces away, and came running to hel]j me. 

 The camel got countless stings and galloped off. 

 When we had set up the hives we just climbed 

 the walls, jumijed into the olive-yards; and, 

 folding all our clothes faster, we had to remove 

 tlu> bees from the main road. The Christian 



