BEES AS A NUISANCE 289 



100 feet of plaintiff's dwelling — " by defendants greatly interfered with 

 the quiet and proper enjoyment and possession of plaintiff's premises, 

 driving him, his servants and guests from his garden and grounds, and 

 stinging them, interfered with the enjoyment of his home, and with his 

 family while engaged in the performance of their domestic duties, soiling 

 articles of clothing when exposed on his premises, and made his dwelling 

 and premises unfit for habitation." These facts were held to constitute a 

 ni-isance, against which the plaintiff was entitled to injunction and nominal 

 damages. These facts just recited, however, probably present an extreme 

 ease, the immediate proximity of so many colonies being, no doubt, per- 

 suasive evidence that the annoyance suffered by the plaintiff was due to 

 the defendant's use of his premises. Greater difficulty would be experienced 

 in reaching such a conclusion if there were no colonies stationed in the 

 immediate vicinity, a thing entirely possible under the common belief that 

 the insects go considerable distances for their stores. 



So it may be said of bees, as of other property, that no hard and fast 

 rule can be laid down by which to determine in advance whether the 

 presence of bees in any given numbers or at any given point will amount 

 to a nuisance. But, not being a nuisance of themselves, as a matter of law, 

 and absent also any general State enactment declaring tliem to be such, 

 bees will not, under any circumstances be presumed to be a nuisance, but 

 the matter will rest in the proof adduced, with the burden upon the party 

 alleging the affirmative. But they may, upon proof of particular fact's 

 showing all the elements necessary to the existence of a nuisance, he 

 condemned as such, either of a private or public character, as the nature 

 of the injury might decide. 



Predicated upon the theory advanced in the beginning that courts 

 would now, if the matter were called in question, decide that bees are 

 domestic animals, and it having already become a matter of legislative 

 recognition that they are subject to communicable diseases, a question arises 

 as to the liability of the keeper of diseased bees. At common law it was 

 an indictable offense, which has been reenacted by statute in mos.b of the 

 States, to take a domestic animal suffering from a communicable disease 

 into a public place or to turn it into the highway so that the disease might 

 be communicated to the animals of other persons. It could hardly be 

 said to be less culpable to knowingly keep diseased bees, which, by their 

 nature may not be restrained or confined, to spread disease to the apiaries 

 of other owners. If to turn a horse with glanders or a sheep with footrot 

 into the highway is a public nuisance, on the same reasoning to turn bees 

 at large to carry communicable diseases peculiar to them to other bees 

 ought to be an offense of the same grade. 



The power of a municipal corporation, as a town or village, to restrain 

 or prohibit within its limits the keeping of bees, or to denounce them 

 as a nuisance, is commonly reported as a fruitful source of vexation to 

 keepers of bees, but one case only is reported as involving a judicial de- 

 termination of that particular point. And here, too, a few preliminary 

 observations will be necessary to proper understanding of this phase of 

 the nuisance laws. Cities, towns, and villages, as municipal corporations 

 or public bodies, receive their powers by express grant from the legislative 

 authority of the State, and with the exception of some unenumerated 

 powers without which the corporate body could not exercise its essential 

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