INSTINCT INDUSTRY PARTIALITIES. 



the purposes of defence, or revenge, and not formed 

 like honey, the ingredients of which are collected 

 from without. 



It has been observed, that bees are endowed with the 

 faculty of knowing the persons familiar to them, which, 

 indeed, seems sufficiently obvious from their power 

 of distinguishing, individually, their own kind, and 

 their friends from their enemies. Nature has placed 

 the bees not only under one of the most regular of 

 commonwealths, with a queen at their head, but in- 

 structed them so thoroughly in the division of labour, 

 and each of them in every separate branch of it, that 

 each one indiscriminately engages in that part which 

 may, at the moment, require his industry. Bees are 

 weather-wise, and generally remain close at home, on 

 their sense of the approach of unfavourable weather. 

 Like all armed insects, they are passionate, revengeful, 

 and active, but will scarcely ever attack keepers who 

 have been acknowledged by them, and who take care 

 constantly to approach them quietly, and without 

 roughness or cause of agitation. It appears, however, 

 to be an ascertained fact, that there are persons who, 

 probably from the peculiar scent of their perspiration, 

 are either pleasing and attractive, or disgusting to the 

 olfactory nerves of bees. Thence it has occasionally 

 happened, that a swarm of bees shall have alighted 

 upon the human head and face, and the patient being 

 of the favoured class, not the slightest injury has been 

 sustained ; on the contrary, it has often occurred, that 

 persons have been stung dangerously, and as it would 

 seem revengefully, by these insects. It is perhaps 

 the same with respect to strangers visiting an apiary. 



