THE AMERICA* BEE-KEEPER. 



25 



THE SWARM THAT DESERTED ITS HIVE. 



That beautiful swarm, 

 It has all goue, — 

 What a pity ! 



Drones, bees, and queen, 

 Nothing to be seen, — 

 What a pity ! 



No cheerful hum to greet 

 When you are on your beat,— 

 What a pity! 



The hive out there to rot, 

 Perhaps to be forgot, — 

 What a pity 3 



Perhaps one summer clay 

 In May, before the hay, 

 Another song we'll sing, 

 Without this doleful ring, 

 And not a pity. 



— B. B. J. 



HOW TO DESTROY MICE IN A BEE 

 HOUSE . 



We do not believe in advocating 

 cruelty to animals, but we are forced 

 from last years experience to advocate 

 most strongly the use of any and every 

 means to rid the hives from mice. It 

 is very important indeed that this 

 should be closely looked after — equal 

 quantities of arsenic, white granulated 

 sugar and flour mixed dry, put on lit- 

 tle pieces of paper about the hives or 

 apiary, where it can remain for some 

 time without being exposed to damp- 

 ness, is a very sure way of ridding the 

 place of mice, yet in some instances 

 where they can feed on bees in hives 

 they seem to care little for the poison. 

 Another plan we have adopted, which 



frequently gave us good satisfaction: 

 Take a tin pail half full of water, scat- 

 ter a little wheat chaff on the top to 

 make it look like a chaff bin. A board 

 from two to four feet long, with one 

 end on the floor and the other on the 

 side of the pail, in fact better one on 

 each side of the pail, then scatter a 

 little bran, meal or flour, dust it light- 

 ly on the board. The mice will run 

 up and look down upon the chaff 

 where you have the meal scattered, 

 they will jump down off the board on 

 the chaff in the pail to get the meal, 

 the chaff will sink around them, and 

 the mice drown. We have caught 

 five or six in a pail in one night this 

 way. We recollect once, that in one 

 of our out apiaries having several 

 deer-mice and a chipmonk, which had 

 gone into the bee-house from a neigh- 

 boring wood about twenty rods away. 

 They were so anxious to investigate 

 the pail business that they got into it. 

 Perhaps rats might be caught in the 

 same way. — W. F., in C. B. J. 



THE LANGUAGE OF THE BEES. 



The honey-bees are found among 

 the most intelligent of the insect tribe, 

 and could not, I think, do all the 

 things they do among themselves un- 

 less they had some mode of communi- 

 cation to keep up their government. 



I have often observed the queen-bee, 

 perched upon the center of a section 

 of comb, surrounded by her subjects 

 at a respectable distance, every bee 

 with its head turned toward her, as if 

 in convention assembled, to listen to 

 her. When, finally, the queen would 

 move forward, her subjects would 

 make room for her to pass through 

 them by backing out of her way. I 

 was never able to distinguish any 



