ABOUT BEES. 



FKEn. A. WATT. 



THIS subject is an ancient and 

 honorable one. The most an- 

 cient historical records make 

 frequent reference to the honey- 

 bee. A poem written 741 B. C, by 

 Eremetus was devoted to bees. In 

 Scripture we read of them and learn 

 that Palestine was "a land flowing- with 

 milk and honey" and we know that wild 

 bees are very numerous there even to 

 the present time. In the year 50 B. C, 

 Varro recommended that hives be made 

 out of basket-work, wool, bark, hol- 

 low-trees, pottery, reeds, or transparent 

 stone to enable persons to observe the 

 ^ bees at work. The name "Deborah" is 



from the Hebrew and means bee; "Me- 

 lissa," from the Greek, has the same 

 meaning. 



Honey-bees were introduced into the 

 United States from Europe, in the sev- 

 enteenth century, and our wild honey- 

 bees are offspring of escaped swarms. 

 Like all enterprising Yankees they first 

 settled in the eastern states and rap- 

 idly spread over the West, where they 

 were regarded with wonder by the In- 

 dians and called the "white man's fly." 

 They traveled, or spread, with such reg- 

 ularity that some observers claimed to 

 mark the exact number of miles which 

 they traveled westward during each 

 year. 



A great many species are almost, or 

 . entirely, worthless for domestic pur- 

 f> poses, while those that are especially 

 '^ valuable are very few. The favorite at 

 1 this time seems to be the Italian spe- 

 lls cies, which was introduced into the 

 1^^ United States in i860. 

 ^B|l At the opening of the season each 

 ^^^:olony of honey-bees contains one lay- 

 ^^Wng queen, several drones, and from 

 3,000 to 40,000 workers. The workers 

 begin by cleaning up the hive, and the 

 queen starts in to rear other bees at once; 

 new comb is started, honey is brought 

 . KdH. in from the earlier varieties of flowers 



and the busy bee is launched into an- 

 other season of sweetness and good 

 works. 



The United States Department of 

 Agriculture, in one of its "Farmer's Bul- 

 letins," under the heading, "How to 

 Avoid Stings," says, "First, by having 

 gentle bees." At the time I first read 

 this I thought they should have com- 

 pleted the advice by adding "and ex- 

 tract their stings;" but I find on inves- 

 tigation that the subject of gentle 

 bees, is no light matter to the bee- 

 keeper, and that my idea that "a bee is 

 a bee and hence entitled to all the 

 room he requires" does not hold good; 

 that a bee-keeper when purchasing a 

 colony of bees of any species not well 

 known to him will ask if they are gentle 

 in the same tone he would use if he 

 were inquiring about a horse. 



Bees seem to do well wherever there 

 are flowers enough to furnish them with 

 food, and are kept for pleasure and 

 profit in all parts of our country. A 

 small plot of ground is devoted to bees 

 by the farmer, a village lot is often 

 filled with hives, and even in our larger 

 cities, especially in New York, Chicago, 

 and Cincinnati, if not in the gardens or 

 on the lawns, they may be found well- 

 established on the house-tops, as many 

 as thirty or forty colonies being found 

 on a single roof. They can usually find 

 enough food in and around a city to 

 keep themselves busy without making 

 long excursions; in fact, it sometimes 

 happens that they find more abundant 

 pasturage in a city than they would in 

 the open country, especially where 

 there are large parks and gardens or 

 where the linden (basswood) trees 

 have been set out in any considerable 

 quantities. Sweet clover also some- 

 times overruns a neglected garden or 

 vacant lot and furnishes a rich field for 

 the city-bred honey-bee. 



In Egypt bees are transported on 



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