76 



THE AMERICAN BEE KEEPER. 



March 



(From Gleanings). 



FOREIGN BEES. 



Literature Relating to Bees in Brazil, East 



Indies, and Africa ; Government 



Aid to Bee Keepers. 



BY W. K. MORRISON. 



It seems that many of your readers 

 want to know more about the foreign 

 bees mentioned by me previously, sol 

 shall add a little to what has already 

 been said, to reinforce some of my 

 former statements and show what has 

 so far been discovered. We will start 

 first with South America. 



Capt. Hall, in the account of his 

 travels in the southern continent, gives 

 a most minute account of the keeping 

 of stingless bees by the natives, but as 

 this book is easily accessible I will pass 

 it by now. The same may be said of 

 Capt. Beechey. The works of Azara 

 and Geoffrey St. Hilaire are not com- 

 mon, and I have not seen them for 

 some time , but Azara had a good deal 

 to say about the bees of southern South 

 America and first mentioned the now 

 celebrated honey gathering wasp. The 

 Europeans said that Azara was either 

 fooling or had been imposed upon, but 

 Azara held his ground, saying he was 

 not mistaken. Geoffrey St. Hilaire 

 was able, however, to corroborate all 

 that Azara had said and there the mat- 

 ter rests. Spix and Martins the great 

 explorers of Brazil,[seem[to have come 

 across honey bees of different sorts. 

 Their book costs so much ($170) that 

 I have been unable to get to see it. 

 Bates, the author of that fine book, 'A 

 Naturalist on the Amazon," mentions 

 the fact that he saw a native take two 

 quarts of honey from a^uest of Meli- 

 pona fasciculata. He says that the 

 hive consisted of an immense number 



of individuals. He further says that 

 they work pretty much as ours do, 

 only they seem to use mud instead of 

 propolis. They have no sting, but 

 their bite is nearly as effective in keep- J 

 iog oft' intruders, The largest size he 

 saw was a little less than our bee. I 

 have tried to get these bees from Brit- . I 

 ish Guiana but without success. 



Mr. Paul Marcoy, who has written 

 one of the finest books of travel ever 

 penned, mentions bees. He is an artist, 

 a naturalist, traveler, and ethnologist 

 all in one, and as might be expected, 

 his book is a model (Blackie & Sons, 

 Edinburg). Here is what he says : 



" Two kinds of wax are collected by 

 these Sensis — a white and a yellow. 

 They have a third kind, black, but as 

 they obtain it by mixing lampblack 

 with the natural varieties, we may 

 pass it by. The white wax is produc- 

 ed by a bee called the mitzqui, the yel- 

 low by the yacu. The first of these 

 hymenoptera is not larger than a small 

 fly ; the second is about the size of a 

 common bee. 'J'he habits of the two 

 insects are similar. They establish 

 themselves in the hollow interior of 

 cecropias (a tree), which are almost al- 

 ways pierced where the branches 

 spring from the trunk, selecting by 

 preference such of these trees as grow 

 around the lakes of the Ucayali (be- 

 tween Sierra Blanca and Nauta), rather 

 than those on the banks of the great 

 river. This preference is accounted 

 for by the tranquility which they en- 

 joy in the interior of the country, 

 where the waters are rarely furrowed 

 by the canoes of the natives. To pos- 

 sess themselves of the wax and honey 

 of these bees the Sensis set a light to a 

 pile of green wood around the cecropia 

 to which they have tracked them, and 



