GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Jan. 15. 



FOEEION 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, so I 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 flrst 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 1 

 will pass it by now. The same may be said of 

 Capt. Beechey. The works of Azara and 

 Geoffrey St. Hilaire are not common, and I 

 have not seen them for some time; but Azara 

 had a good deal to say about the bees of south- 

 ern South America, and first mentioned the 

 now celebrated honey-gathering wasp. The 

 Europeans said that Azara was either fooling 

 or had been imposed on; 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 matter 

 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 nest of 

 Melipona 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 keeping off intruders. 

 The largest size he saw was a little lei^s than 

 our bee. I have tried to get these bees from 

 British 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 ex- 

 pected, his book is a model (Blackie & Sons, 

 Edinburgh). 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 produced 

 by a bee called the mitzqui, the yellow by the 

 yacu. The first of these hymenoptera is not 

 larger than a small fly; the second is about the 

 size of the common bee. The habits of the two 

 insects are similar. They establish themselves 

 in the hollow interior of cecropias (a tree), 

 which are almost always pierced where the 



branches spring from the trunk, selecting by 

 preference such of these trees as grow around 

 the lakes of the Ucayali (between Sierra Blanca 

 and Nauta), rather than those on the banks of 

 the great river. This preference is accounted 

 for by the tranquility which they enjoy in the 

 interior of the country, where the waters are 

 rarely furrowed by the canoes of the natives. 

 To possess 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, after having dispersed, 

 suffocated, or burned the laborers, they fell the 

 tree and appropriate the fruits of their in- 

 dustry." 



My own opinion is that the Melipona would 

 succeed where moths and ants are troublesome, 

 and it is generally considered that the differ- 

 ence between them and Apis, structurally 

 speaking, is very slight. They would seem by 

 all accounts to be good wax makers. I have 

 seen several species, but never a nest of the 

 large kinds. The honey of the small kinds is 

 very good, and most of the bee- hunters of Ven- 

 ezuela prefer it to our own kind. 



In regard to the East Indies, we are well off for 

 information. Many travelers have touched the 

 theme. Dr. Alfred R. Wallace, the friend and 

 colaborer of Darwin, has given us a most 

 graphic account of Apis dorsata, that leaves 

 little to be desired. You will find It in his 

 well-known book on the Malay Archipelago. 



Here is what Forbes says in his " Naturalist's 

 Wanderings " about Apis dorsata: 



•' During the brief twilight, after the sun had 

 disappeared, the air for some twenty minutes 

 was suddenly filled with the hum of bees (Apis 

 dorsata) as if a swarm had alighted among the 

 flowers of the gum-trees. Just before daybreak, 

 while it is still dusk, the morning air is in a 

 similar manner inundated with their noisy 

 hum. This singular habit of these bees in feed- 

 ing in the sunless hour of the morning and 

 evening I was totally unaware of till I came to 

 live at Fatunaba, where, close to our door, a 

 grove of these trees grew. Id the evening the 

 melaleuca (a fine honey tree) certainly becomes 

 more fragrant than it is at mid-day; but I 

 could not ascertain what would bo very inter- 

 esting to i<now, if its flowers exude their nectar 

 or shed their pollen more freely late in the eve- 

 ning and early in the morning." 



This query is easy enough to answer. The 

 rays of the tropical sun bear down so directly 

 as to dry the nectar out of the flowers by 10 

 o'clock A. M. Moreover, there is hardly such a 

 thing as twilight in the tropics, and bees soon 

 get to know that, when the sun goes down, 

 there are only a few minutes left lo get their 

 fill and fly home, otherwise they will have to 

 stay out all night, so they troop home just as 

 they do when a shower is coming. Again, 

 during the night the flowers collect more nee- 



