426 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 



ARE LARGE APIARIES A NUISANCE * 



S PRESUME the above is what the papers 

 are trying to discuss, but some of the 

 items are a little amusing, if nothing 

 more. See : 



THE TOO BUSY BEE. 



Whether the crushed worm ever did turn or ever 

 will turn against its oppressor is a question which 

 must be discussed by naturalists, but, to judge from 

 recent accounts from Paris, the bees have organ- 

 ized a very practical system of retaliation on man 

 the despoiler, and have suggested quite a new read- 

 ing of the old saw, "Sic vos non vobis mellflcatis 

 apes." One of the inhabitants of the Nineteenth 

 Arrondissement keeps from 800 to 900 bee hives, 

 and a very large number of hives are to be found in 

 the Thirteenth Arrondissement, near the Ivr goods 

 station. The industrious denizens of these hives 

 are making war right and left on the sugar refiner- 

 ies. At the Say manufactory it is calculated that 

 damage to the amount of 25,000 francs is done every 

 year by the bees, who are so indefatigable in re- 

 venging themselves on the saccharine interests of 

 mankind that they will empty a large jar full of 

 sugar in less than two hours; and notwithstanding 

 the capture or destruction of two or three bushels 

 of bees a day, their ravages still continue. The 

 workmen in the sugar refineries usually labor with 

 only a single garment not an upper one— on their 

 bodies, and they are not only robbed but terribly 

 stung by their busy foes. What would happen if all 

 the bees in beedom became unanimous is fearful to 

 contemplate. It is hinted, indeed, in Kirby and 

 Spence that the world could not go on for four-and- 

 twenty hours in the presence of a general entomol- 

 ogical rising.— Pall Mall Gazette. 



THE DEADLY HONEY BEE. 



It is a disadvantage of civilization that it shows us 

 the dangers to which life is exposed. Every year 

 presents us with a new peril, and the latest is always 

 the least expected. Frenohmen of science are now 

 preaching a crusade against the industrious race of 

 bees. Not only are they destructive to property, 

 but they are actually dangerous to human life. 

 The Prefect of the Paris police has been appealed 

 to. M. Delpech has drawn up a formidable brief, 

 and is precise in his statements and clamorous in 

 his demands. It seems that bee-keeping is lucrative 

 in the neighborhood of Paris, and that so also is the 

 distillery of spirits and the refinery of sugar. More- 

 over, wherever there are sugar works the bees are 

 active and abundant. At Say, for instance, the loss 

 attributable to them is estimated at £1000 a 

 year. M. Delpech gives facts and figures. At an- 

 other refinery the number of bees killed daily 

 amounted to 22 gallons full. He himself saw a large 

 glass of sryup drank up in two hours. As to loss of 

 life he is equally circumstantial. He gives a full 

 list of people who died of bee sting-s in the course of 

 the year. Most of the cases occurred in America, 

 but many are furnished by France and some by Ger- 

 many. The death is very painful, and in some 

 cases extremely sudden. At Chemnitz, in Hungary, 

 a peasant, stung while cutting a branch of a tree, 

 died on the spot. At Chester, In Pennsylvania, a 

 farmer examining some hives, was stung, fell at 

 once into a state of syncope, and died within a quar- 

 ter of an hour. In another case 25 minutes elapsed 

 between the wound and its fatal consequence. M. 

 Delpech accordingly appeals to the Prelect for the 

 protection of the police, and what he asks is that the 

 keeping of bees may be placed in the category of 

 dangerous and unhealthy occupations. — London 

 Daily News. 



ONE GOOD TURN DESERVES ANOTHER. 

 For the Public Ledger. 



Mr. Editor:— Seeing an article in your paper of 

 June 29, 1880, taken from the London Daily News, 

 headed "The Deadly Honey Bee," I can not alto- 

 gether hold my peace and let all the world be duped 

 by the pen of a mercenary Frenchman without a 

 word of defense for the most harmless and most in- 

 dustrious of all the creatures made by the Divine 

 mind and for the good of man. All persons of in- 

 telligent and cultivated minds know that there are 

 conditions of the blood in man at times that a small 

 puncture of the skin with a nail, a pin, a splinter of 

 iron or even of wood, will occasion death— but surely 

 not cause it! I myself have a very thin skin, and 



take poison on almost every occasion, from the 

 wind blowing 1 over it onto me, and yet the sting of 

 ten thousand honey bees at once leaves no mark 

 whatever on me. Fifty-six years ago, when I was a 

 lad of eleven summers, my father bought the cher- 

 ries of a neighbor on a very large, old, sour, red- 

 cherry tree, and sent my brother Frank and me to 

 pick them; but Frank being- four years younger 

 than I was, could not climb the tree. I ascended to 

 the very top of the largest branch, being at an acute 

 angle with the trunk, and had my peck basket near- 

 ly full, and, while trying to fret all that were paid 

 for, and stretching out a little too far for the old 

 wood, snap goes my branch, like the stem of a clay 

 pipe, pitching me down, head foremost, a distance 

 of fifteen feet. Oh, dreadful ! what think you saved 

 my skull from being- split? and yet it was not even 

 cracked. A hive full of ''these deadly bees" saved 

 my life, and proved themselves to be free from this 

 Frenchman's charge against them. 



Under the tree, on a bench or stool, stood a large, 

 old-fashioned, straw hive full of bees and honey, 

 which the lower part of my branch tipped over on- 

 to the ground, bottom upwards, beside the bench; 

 into this hive my head was jammed to my shoulders. 

 Being- anxious to save my peck of cherries, by hold- 

 ing onto the basket with one hand, my feet over my 

 head entangled in the branches, I had only one hand 

 to work myself out with, and having no clothes on 

 but a thin muslin shirt and thin pants, the bees cov- 

 ered me so completely that when I got out the own- 

 er and my brother thought I looked like a brown 

 hairy animal, with a whole swarm of bees flying 

 around trying- to get a seat on me ; but there were 

 none to let ; all were taken, and all occupied, and ev- 

 ery bee left his sting fast in my skin, which took my 

 mother the best part of a day to extricate; and 

 painful, yes, dreadfully painful, as it was to me, 

 there remained no mark or trace of any kind after 

 the sling was out. and my brains were kept within 

 my skull by the elasticity <>f the honey comb. 



H. S., of C. 



FRIEND DUFF AND HIS STORY. 



MY queen arrived on the 17th, in good condition, 

 with only three of the bees dead. The rest 

 J were all nice and bright as gold dollars. Of 

 course, I must tell you a little about my first intro- 

 ducing. I brought my queen and bees home and fed 

 them a little honey, although they appeared to have 

 plenty in the cage. I went out to a colony of blacks, 

 found my black queen and caged her, and placed the 

 new queen on top of the frames. I left her about 36 

 hours, and went and raised the quilt. They were all 

 nice and quiet, and busily feeding the queen. I 

 opened the little slide, and out popped a bee. They 

 looked him over slightly, but passed him on. Out 

 came another, and so on. All were well received. 

 At last, the queen stepped out and walked right 

 down among the combs, just as though she was at 

 home. I closed the hive for a short time, and then 

 took a peep in, and saw that all was tight. The next 

 morning the little "Medina beys" were first at work. 

 I went away at noon, and coming home about four 

 o'clock, walked up to my hive and looked around. I 

 saw no dead queen. Thought I, "I'm a fit subject 

 for the Smilery." While I was standing there think- 

 ing of those nice three-banded bees, my wife says,— 



"Andy, you have got home just in time for the 

 burying." 



" What?" 



"Did you come to the burying?" 



" My dollar queen?" 



" Yes;" and she brought me a dead queen, which 

 she had found in front of the hive. 



" Blasted Hopes! there is my queen, dead enough. 

 But, how black she is! She has ' mortified,' I s'pose." 



Well, I had intended to send for five more queens 

 by the next mail, but it was going to bee expensive. 



"That queen is surely too black for my Italian," I 



