GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



47 



tar; and as the sun rises all at once, the bees 

 simply "swarna" to their work and "make 

 honey while the sun is obscured by morning 

 mists." That keen observer, Mr. F. W. Bur- 

 bidge, in his "Gardens of the 8un," gives us a 

 short but excellent account of the apiaries he 

 saw in the East Indies. He says: 



" Here at Kian, as at all the Dusan villages 

 along our way, we noticed large quantities of 

 tame or domesticated bees. These are kept in 

 cylindrical hives formed of a hollow tree-trunk, 

 and are placed on a shelf fixed under the over- 

 hanging eaves of the houses. In several in- 

 stances the hives were on shelves inside the 

 houses, a hole being made through the "ataps," 

 corresponding with the hole in the hive, so as 

 to allow egress and ingress— a plan similar to 

 that adopted by the bee keepers of Kashmir." 

 Who says the house-apiary is something new ? 

 It is certain the bees seen by Mr. Burbidge 

 were not Apis dorsata. What were they ? 

 And yet there is no more wide awake man in 

 the world than the gentleman just mentioned. 



Next on our list is Africa, and one quotation 

 will do for this continent. In "Through the 

 Kalahari Desert," by Farini, he has this little 

 narrative: 



" ' Are you sure, Klas,' said I, 'that it is a 

 bees' nest and not a wasps' ? ' 



" 'Yes, Sieur, it is a bees' nest, and there is 

 plenty of honey. I'll show Sieur where it is, 

 and then he can see for himself. We find them 

 in aard-vark holes and clefts of rock in the 

 mountains, the comb quite open, and the bees 

 clustering outside.' " 



"This was something so entireJy new to me 

 that I made Klas take me next morning to the 

 spot, while the Bushmen organized a bee-hunt. 

 Taking a little water in a broken ostrich-egg- 

 shell they placed it near a bunch of flowers, 

 and watched for ihe bees coming to drink. 

 The thirsty insects are always on the outlook 

 for water; and as soon as one finds it he 

 quenches his thirst and goes off to call his 

 friends and neighbors to the spot. 



" It was not long before first singly and then 

 in twos and threes, and lastly in dozens, the 

 bees came and settled on the top of the eggshell, 

 which one of the Bushmen then took up and 

 held aloft as he slowly followed the direction in 

 which the insects took their flights, the thick- 

 est of which the water-bearer followed, while 

 others were told off to track out the others. 

 This was dow no very difficult task, for the 

 bees were so thick that their flight could be 

 traced by the sound of their humming. 



" At last we came to a wait-a-bit bush, round 

 which clustered myriads of bees, just as if they 

 were 'swarming' there; but the Bushmen said 

 there was a comb inside. They did not take 

 any notice of us; so, after watching them for a 

 bit, I took a bunch of grass and set fire to it, 

 causing a dense smoke to arise under them. 



This had the desired effect. Those outside be- 

 came stupefied and fell down, while the others, 

 filling themselves with honey, offered no resist- 

 ance as I reached carefully into the bush so as 

 to avoid disturbing them, and at the same time 

 to prevent the terrible thorns from tearing my 

 hands. The combs, seven in number, hung 

 crosswise from the branches— the middle ones 

 the longest, and the others growing shorter the 

 nearer they came to the outside. Both comb 

 and honey were as white as snow. It must 

 have been a young swarm, as there were no 

 young bees, and the comb was new, never hav- 

 ing had brood in it to discolor it. I gathered 

 up some of the bees and put them in a reed, 

 but. unfortunately, was not able to secure the 

 queen." 



Schweinfurth noted that the bees in Central 

 Africa were closely related to the Egyptian 

 race. Slatin Pasha, who has recently escaped 

 from Khartom after ten years' imprisonment, 

 says in his new book, " Fire and Sword in the 

 Soudan,'- that one of his carriers was killed by 

 bees he Eittempted to rob. He says the poor 

 fellow died in great agony. I suspect that 

 Africa is the original home of our bees; and, in 

 fact, it is extremely likely, since the modern 

 anthropologists are pretty well agreed that 

 Africa was the home of our race, though we 

 used to be told once that we were Asiatics. 

 Has the bee followed us in all our wanderings? 



Now as to government aid to bee-keepers. I 

 for one am not opposed to it; but we must be 

 careful. The hunt for new species alone would 

 furnish a great chance for a number of junket- 

 ings and also a lot of nonsense. We shall have 

 to get a very much better administration of the 

 Agricultural Department than we have had 

 heretofore; in fact, I distrust their ability alto- 

 gether. Why is the apicultural division put in 

 with the entomological department? Scientific 

 men generally class bee-keeping as belonging 

 to botany; that is, the fertilization of flowers. 

 The botanist can tell us more news than the 

 entomologist. Hermann Miiller and Darwin 

 have placed this beyond the shadow of a doubt. 

 Pasturage is the great problem of the future. 

 But this is another story. 



I think if the government were to give the 

 Smithsonian Institute a grant of money for this 

 object for a term of years, -it would satisfy 

 everybody, the money to be granted for the 

 express purpose of making experiments on the 

 different species of bees, and their influence on 

 flowers. The Smithsonian could attack this 

 job better than any one else, and, moreover, 

 get the assistance of the whole scientific world. 

 They would be able to see the job from all sides. 

 Still, there would be plenty left for the Agri- 

 cultural Department to do, such as gathering 

 statistics, getting uniformity among hives, 

 promoting the sale of honey, and so on. 



As to getting new bees, the Smithsonian can 



