A WEEKLY ILLUSTRATED JOURNAL OF SCIENCE 



" To the solid ground 

 Of Nature trusts the mind which builds for ay^ 



Wordsworth 



THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1884 



TWO BEE BOOKS 



A Collection of Papers on Bee-keeping in India. Pub- 

 lished under the Orders of the Government of India, in 

 the Revenue and Agricultural Department, 1883. (Cal- 

 cutta : Office of the Superintendent of Government 

 Printing, India, 1SS3.) 



The Honey- Bee : its Nature, Homes, and Products. By 

 W. H. Harris, B.A., B.Sc. With Eighty-two Illustra- 

 tions. (London : The Religious Tract Society, 1884.) 



T^HE thin folio issued by the Indian Government is 

 > very redolent of red-tape, since it contains not only 

 a large number of reports from forest and district 

 officers, and other persons in various parts of India, but 

 also the whole of the official correspondence, memoranda, 

 and indorsements connected with the same. Moreover, 

 it is almost a misnomer to call it a collection of papers on 

 " Bee-keeping," since at least nine-tenths of the reports 

 state that domesticated bees are quite unknown in their 

 districts ; and the bulk of the matter (nearly a hundred 

 pages of close print) is occupied with accounts of native 

 methods of taking the combs of wild bees and preparing 

 the wax, and with very imperfect descriptions of the 

 various kinds of honey-producing bees in each district. 

 The general result of the inquiry, as stated in a " Resolu- 

 tion " of the Revenue and Agricultural Department, is the 

 following : — 



" The industry is unlikely ever to be one of great im- 

 portance in India. It can only be followed in the hills, 

 where flowers abound throughout the greater part of the 

 year, or in forests, where food is equally plentiful. In the 

 populous country of the plains, bee-keeping as a general 

 industry seems impracticable. Under these circumstances 

 there is little or no call for action on the part of the 

 Government." 



Notwithstanding this somewhat depressing outcome of 

 a laborious inquiry, some interesting details may be found 

 in the storehouse of facts here brought together. At the 

 commencement of the Report attention is drawn to 

 Moorcroft's account of bee-keeping in Cashmere : — 

 Vol. xxxi. — No. 784 



" Their domestication there is so general that in some 

 parts of the country a provision is made for hiving them 

 in every house as it is being built. Spaces are left empty 

 in the walls about 14 inches in diameter, and 2 feet, 

 the average thickness of the walls, in length, which are 

 carefully lined with a mixture of mortar, clay, and chopped 

 straw, and closed at the inner end with a flat tile. There 

 are ten or a dozen of these hives built into the walls of 

 every house. The bees are hived exactly as in Europe, 

 but the comb is gathered differently and in a way well 

 worth following at home. It is done by the father of the 

 house removing the flat tile, and at the same time blowing 

 the smoke of a smouldering wisp of straw he holds in the 

 other hand vigorously through the hive, on which the 

 bees at once leave the hive, and he gathers in their store 

 of honey. He then replaces the flat tile at the inner end 

 of the hive, and the bees, after recovering their stupefac- 

 tion, gradually return to it. The same colony of bees 

 thus produce honey year after year in the same hive, and 

 generation after generation, and have probably done so 

 from the original Aryan settlement of the Cashmere 

 Valley. In consequence of their being thus literally 

 domiciliated with the human race, the bees of Cashmere 

 are milder in their manners than those of any other 

 country, although they have a most villainous sting when 

 unduly provoked to use it. Their honey is as pure, and 

 clear, and sweet, Moorcroft says, as the finest honey of 

 Narbonne." 



In a statement on bee-culture in Cashmere by a 

 zemindar, it. is said that hives are now very numerous, as 

 they have been on the increase for several years, and the 

 method of keeping them is very similar to that described 

 by Moorcroft. But Mr. R. Morgan, Deputy Conservator 

 of Forests, Madras, protests against the recommenda- 

 tion of smoking out the bees, as barbarous. It is, how- 

 ever, no doubt well suited to native wants, as hives are 

 not required to be indefinitely increased, and there is no 

 sale for swarms. 



A very simple mode of bee-keeping is described as 

 practised by the people of Mysore: — 



" In March or April they besmear the concave part of 

 an old earthen pot with honey-wax, make holes in the 

 pot, take it to the jungles, and place it upside-down on a 

 piece of wood or a slab of stone. The bees are attracted 

 to the pot by the smell of the wax, and, when the person 

 intending to domesticate them finds, after a trial of four 

 or six days, that tfcey have^Hken to remain in the pot, he 

 goes to the jungle on a d^Bpight, removes the pot after 



: tbev have^Bken to rem; 



