1188 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Nov. 15 



time of escaping swarms were fools. The 

 funny papers, etc., have had full unchal- 

 lenged sway long enough. 



An extended article in a recent number of 

 The Outlook practically proclaims that bees 

 are fools, and not a word of protest from 

 those who know all about bees, and have 

 admired and loved them for decades! I have 

 been watching anxiously for some of our 

 veteran bee-keepers to reply to that article. 

 For several years I have been a subscriber 

 and reader of various periodicals in bee cul- 

 ture, and I must allege that very little do I 

 find on the bees. Most of it is on ways and 

 means of making money by bees. 



Are you really a bee lover? Seriously let 

 me ask you that question— not you who have 

 just become infatuated with the subject, but 

 you who have kept bees for years. 



"Absurd," you say; "of course I love 

 bees— nothing I enjoy better." 



Well, glad you do— shake, brother; but be- 

 fore we part let me give you one little test. 

 You needn't answer me. Answer it in your 

 own mind. 



' ' How many colonies of bees would you 

 keep if they produced no honey, no wax, 

 nothing salable or eatable? " 



And yet I have known many people who 

 have kept earthworms for many a year, 

 and have studied and talked enthusiastically 

 of their wonderful habits. Seldom, if ever, 

 would they tell how to keep them, or, at 

 least, they didn't talk extendedly and eter- 

 nally of that. I know one man who studied 

 bumble-bees for many years, and he wasn't 

 in search of honey either. The same state- 

 ments might be made of enthusiastic lovers 

 of dragonflies, butterflies, grasshoppers, po- 

 tato-bugs, birds, plants, etc. But where are 

 those who study and love honey-bees for them- 

 selves? I do not doubt that there are plenty 

 of them. What I put in a plea for is that 

 they show up more in Gleanings and in other 

 similar periodicals that come to my desk. 



Regarding the noise after clustering, I had 

 known it as a last resort when the bees had 

 refused to go in or stay in the hive provid- 

 ed. Bees usually first cluster not far from 

 the mother-hive, anyway,*before taking to 

 the longer flight to the woods. My expe- 

 rience, mostly in boyhood days, was that the 

 noise was made when the bees were bidding 

 "good by " to the keeper's apiary, not when 

 they were coming out of the hive, clustering 

 all right near it. 



Yours in the love and study of honey-bees, 

 as well as of all other objects in nature; for 

 ' ' every thing is fish that comes to the net 

 of a naturalist." 



Stamford, Conn. 



[I had intended to reply to that article in 

 the Outlook, and, indeed, did prepare such a 

 one, but finally withheld it for the reason 

 that this was one of the harmless lies, al- 

 though disgusting to the practical bee-keep- 

 er, who knows better. 



Regarding the history of the tanging sub- 

 ject, the following article will throw much 

 light on the matter. — Ed.] 



NOISE AND SWAR MING BEES. 



Quotations Showing that the Beating of Tin 



Pans, etc., at the Issue of a Swarm is an 



Extremely Old Custom. 



BY COL. H. J. O. WALKER. 



With reference to Professor Bigelow's ar- 

 ticle, p. 957, there is no doubt that attempt- 

 ing to arrest the flight of swarms by making 

 various noises was a settled practice with 

 the old Greek and Roman bee-keepers. It 

 may well be that to the far-reaching inva- 

 sions of Roman armies and the military col- 

 onies subsequently established should be at- 

 tributed its universal adoption by the Euro- 

 pean nations afl'ected, such as Germany, 

 Spain, and France, as also its introduction 

 into Great Britain, and so onward into North 

 America. Another, and perhaps a more 

 powerful reason for inferring a survival of 

 the system and ideas of the ancient Romans 

 on bees and bee-keeping is the fact that, 

 nearly up to the end of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, the works of their classic agricultural 

 writers were the sole existing anthorities on 

 the subject. For more than a hundred years 

 after the first printing-press was set up by 

 Caxton at Westminster no original work on 

 bee-keeping was published in England. This 

 would not, however, affect the country folk, M 

 whose guide, until comparatively recent % 

 times, must have been mainly tradition. 



The quotations that follow, while helping 

 to support my theory, will show that the ef- 

 fect of "tanging" on the nerves of the 

 hive-bee, and its advantage, if any, to bee- 

 keepers, have always been held doubtful. 

 Virgil and Ovid held it to be an attraction, 

 and from the latter poet we gather that the 

 mythological origin of the domestication of 

 bees was the capture of a swarm by Bac- 

 chus and his followers when traveling among 

 the hills of Rhodope, Attracted by the 

 clanging cymbals it was hived successfully 

 in a hollow tree. Again, in the collection of 

 agricultural lore entitled Geoponica, which 

 may be taken as representing the earliest 

 and best methods of Grecian bee-keeping, 

 it is stated that "proper harmony is grate- 

 ful to this animal." On the other hand, the 

 great authorities Varro and Paladius consid- 

 der the effect of the bee-keeper's noise in- 

 tiniidating. Aristotle, greatest of all, pro- 

 claims himself uncertain on this point, and 

 indeed doubts whether bees have any real 

 sense of hearing. 



Nickel Jacob, the best German bee-master 

 of his time, wrote in 1563, though I quote 

 from a later edition: "Bee-keepers make a 

 noise with bells and basins, throw earth, 

 and sprinkle water. I do nothing." In the 

 anonymous " Traite des Mouches a Miel," 

 Paris, 1690, we find: "Everybody knows 

 that the sound of kettles, basins, pans, and 

 drums arrests the flight of bees .... giv- 

 ing the idea of a tempest. " Don Diego de 

 Torres, in his "Arte nuevo de aumentar 

 colmenas," Madrid, 1747, mentions the com- 

 mon use for this purpose of "frying-pans, 

 timbrels, flutes, or any other kind of noise 

 or pastoral music. ' ' 



