1894 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



135 



UNJUST TAXATION OF BEES. 



UNHOIA' rUACTlCES IN THK HOLY LAND; AN 



INTERESTING ARTICLE; CONCLUDED 



FROM OTJK LAST ISSUE. 



By Ph. J. Bdldensperger. 



In my previous article I spol<e of theontrage- 

 ous tax laid upon our hives, amounting to some 

 *G00 on 180 hives, or$3.3;V;i per hive. Our only 

 resort now was to refuse to pay. and await 

 events. As stated, we had apiaries in Judea 

 and Philistia. Two of my brothers, Emile and 

 Jean, were living near Bethlehem with their 

 apiaries; my oldest brother, Henry, had taken 

 his apiary toward Hebron, myself in Philistia. 

 The apiary near Bethlehem was sequestered. 

 Four negro guards were sent out to keep the 

 bees, and prevent them from being moved. My 

 brothers were allowed to work, take the honey, 

 etc. Our bees — that is to say, a lot of them, 

 were sold at auction in the town of Jerusalem; 

 but as the people in general know very little 

 about bees, they brought a very low price. It 

 was ridiculous — I think something less than a 

 dollar a hive. The silver money of the size of a 

 dollar in Turkey is called a majkli— from the 

 Sultan, Abd-el-Majeed, who first made them. 

 As it is a rule in Turkey that the proprietor 

 have the last word when a thing is sold at pub- 

 lic auction, he has the ciioice of buying it him- 

 self; but when I came to the court 1 declared 

 we were not inclined to buy our own bees at 

 such a low price, so it was announced that they 

 would come out to take the bees on a certain 

 day. A young man who had gained some ideas 

 of apiculture of us was hired to haul the bees 

 on camelback, and take them to his home, 

 where he would work them. My brothers put 

 the bees all into supers — no bottom-boards — and 

 the quilts were placed in a loose way. The en- 

 trances were not regulated, and we retreated to 

 await the moment of departure. Triumphant- 

 ly a gang of officials, guards, cameliers with 13 

 camels, and said youthful bee-keeper, came 

 there and awaited the evening, with satirical 

 remarks. The villagers, who had received 

 bribes, were rolling for joy to see us deprived 

 of bees. 



When the sun was down they moved to the 

 apiary, enjoying the deed they were about to 

 perform. When the first hive was lifted, the 

 bees rushed out, stinging. A second hive was 

 tried with the same result, and with great con- 

 sternation. They withdrew, and in Jerusalem 

 accused us of having put out hives without bot- 

 toms, and that it was not lawful. Of course, 

 there exists no law saying how bees are to be 

 kept, and we said we chose to keep them as they 

 were. 



They then made up their mind to take hold of 

 my brother Henry's apiary, near Hebron, and 

 said they would do so. Accordingly, Henry and 

 myself immediately began hauling; but a Mo- 

 hammedan feast of atonement coming in, three 



days' leisure was left us, so we took Christian 

 cameliers, and, while the roads on which they 

 expected us to pass were guarded near Jerusa- 

 lem, we passed a rough mountain way across 

 the mountains of Judea. It seemed to us some- 

 thing like Hannibal crossing the Alps with his 

 elephants, and a terrible time we had of it. Ii 

 took us three nights to reach the plains of Phi- 

 listia, out of reach of the Jerusalem Pashalik. 

 Camels stumbled over rocks, and threw down 

 their loads; ropes got loose, and hives fell off; 

 the road was strewn with debris, like the way 

 of an army in retreat; so my brother Henry re- 

 mained behind to gather up, and had iak(!n the 

 food with him. A village of Mohammedans 

 would not sell us even any bread. They said 

 they had no bakers. A boy went around beg- 

 ging a few loaves, and I had to live on the beg- 

 gar's share. We had carried our bees out of 

 immediate danger of being seized. I waited 

 again for new orders. We knew it would take 

 considerable time for orders to be transmitted 

 from Jerusalem to Gaza, for the district in 

 which we settled was dependent on Gaza. 

 The Jerusalem officials, as soon as the feast- 

 days were over, set out to seize the bees in the 

 Hebron district; but 



Wlien they came there the field was bare, 



And so the poor Turks had none. 

 They found the Arab guardian, an old culprit 

 and highway robber, who had turned from his 

 wicked ways and tried to be honest, if God 

 would be merciful to him and give him a good 

 living, as he put it; a few empty hives remain- 

 ed as odd numbers. The camels take just eight 

 hives each. On questioning him about the bees' 

 whereabouts, he said he thought they must 

 have swarmed, as he heard the bee-keeper 

 say they do swarm sometimes. They explained 

 the way of swarming as nearly as they could, 

 hut he insisted on the possibility of swarming 

 hives and all. 



Low-spirited they again returned to Jerusa- 

 lem, and finally asked us if we would not pre- 

 fer to treat with them, for in some way or other 

 they expected us to prepare new tricks. They 

 were not wrong, either, and we agreed to pay 

 half the sum, payable in the course of the fol- 

 lowing year. This was one of the causes that 

 led two of my brothers to turn their backs on 

 such lawless countries, carrying a considerable 

 number of hives with them. In the following 

 year nobody would have any thing to do with 

 bees, as the costs of this nearly two-years' pro- 

 cess was about as much as the sum we paid, 

 and we have, since then, been invited to settle 

 affairs as best we thought, without any further 

 annoyance. This has been done; and the vil- 

 lagers too, who had always benefited by our 

 presence in their village, lost our patronage, 

 and, what was worse, lost almost all their bees. 

 It is well here to say that some of the false wit- 

 nesses owned bees, and generally they believe 

 that bees die off if a false witness is given con- 



