198 Bees and Bee- Keeping. 



thrown on the ground, but the bees did not do the 

 wasp the honour of burial. 



But the bees have sometimes more gigantic intruders, 

 with whom we should suppose it would be much more 

 difficult for them to deal ; yet they surmount the diffi- 

 culty in the most ingenious and safest manner, as the 

 following passage from a good authority will show : 



" There are some actions of bees which we hesitate, 

 for want of confidence, whether to ascribe to an innate 

 instinct or to a more reasonable faculty of their minds. 

 If, as will often happen, a snail steals into the hive, he 

 is at once attacked and stung to death. But the bees 

 are not sufficiently strong to remove such a leviathan ; 

 and yet, if he remains, his putrefying carcase will be 

 enough to breed a pestilence in the city. When the 

 Lilliputians wished to kill Gulliver, they were deterred 

 by the selfsame fear. But the bees contrive to rid 

 themselves of their Gulliver in a very ingenious manner. 

 They cannot remove him, it is true ; but they can, and 

 do, embalm him. They cover him all over with that 

 glutinous substance called ' propolis,' and this keeps 

 out the air, and prevents the body from decomposition. 

 If, however, the snail be one that wears a shell on his 

 back, the bees merely cover over the door of the shell, 

 and leave the captive to the fate which is inevitable. 

 These processes, though seeming to go beyond what 

 one conceives to be the beaten track of instinct, are, 

 however, so universally adopted, that one is almost 

 driven to the conclusion that instinct is, after all, the 

 motive force under which they are performed. There 

 is, however, a class of cases which it is evident that the 

 bees are accustomed to encounter, and which would, 

 we may suppose, be differently treated in different 

 hives." 



