688 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 
Photo from “A B Cand X Y Z of Bee Culture,” by A. I. and EF. R. Root 
A FINE, SYMMETRICAL SWARM WITHIN EASY REACH 
was present. This bird, about the size 
of a sparrow, striped, and called the 
Cape May warbler (Dendroica tigrina), 
has a long, sharp, needle-like beak. It 
will alight on a bunch, and, about as fast 
as one can count the grapes, will punc- 
ture berry after berry. 
After his birdship has done his mis- 
chief he leaves, and then come the inno- 
cent bees, during the later hours of the 
day, and finish up the work of destruc- 
tion by sucking the juices and the pulp 
of the berry until it becomes a withered 
skin over a few seeds. . While the birds 
during the early hours of the day are 
never seen, the bees, coming on later, 
receive all the credit for the mischief. 
The Cape May warbler is not the only 
bird guilty of puncturing grapes. There 
are many other species of small birds 
that learn this habit, and among them we 
may name the ever-present sparrow and 
the beautiful Baltimore oriole, the sweet 
singer that is sometimes called the 
swinging bird, from its habit of building 
its nest on some overhanging limb. 
BEES AND ANTS 
Although we have given the matter 
considerable attention, we cannot find 
that ants are guilty of anything that 
should warrant, here in the North, the 
aplarist in waging any great warfare 
against them. Some years ago a visitor 
frightened us by saying that the ants 
about our apiary would steal every drop 
of honey as fast as the bees could gather 
it. Accordingly we prepared ourselves 
with a tea-kettle of boiling water, and 
not only killed the ants, but some grape- 
vines growing near. 
Afterward. there came a spring when 
the bees, all but about 11 colonies, dwin- 
dled away and died, and the hives filled 
with honey, scattered about the apiary 
unprotected, seemed to be as fair a 
chance for the ants—that had not “dwin- 
dled” a particle—as they could well ask 
for. We watched to see how fast they 
would carry away the honey; but, to our 
astonishment, they seemed: to care more 
for the hives that contained bees than 
