THE BEE NATION. 269 



on the death of their leader. Bees from other hives also 

 join the invaders, and the end is thorough robbery and 

 plunder, which is all the more complete as the owners of the 

 plundered hive when they find that all is lost and that no 

 further resistance is possible, generally themselves join the 

 thieves, tear down the cells, plunder them, and then go off 

 to the robber-hive.* When the assailed hive is emptied 

 the next ones are attacked, and if no effective resistance is 

 made are robbed in similar fashion, so that in this way a 

 whole bee-stand may be gradually destroyed. Sometimes 

 the resistance of healthy hives fails owing to the robbers, 

 from visiting the same flowers or the same fields, having 

 the same smell as the bees of the attacked hive, and there- 

 fore not being recognised at once as thieves. 



They sometimes then become so bold that they post them- 

 selves in front of the hive, often stop the bees returning 

 from collecting, which, as a rule, or very often, re*t for a 

 brief siesta on the stand ere entering the hive, and partly by 

 threats, partly by force, deprive them of their load of sweets. 

 E. Weygandt, who personally observed this interesting kind 

 of robbery, and described it in the journal The Bee (1877, 

 No. 1.), called it "milking," and states that this milking 

 has been observed by many other bee-masters. The milk- 

 ing bee, according to him, gains the further advantage that 

 with the honey of the milked one it has also contracted its 

 smell, and partly owing to this, and partly to the fact that it 

 arrives loaded, it is admitted without difficulty into the hive, 

 and can prosecute its thefts. The robber bees in this 

 resemble swindlers who dress themselves like policemen, and 

 carry out their schemes under this mask. Sometimes the 

 bee-masters defend themselves against robbery by putting 

 musk in a plundered hive. The robbers then contract the 

 musk-odor, and when they go back to their hive they are 

 regarded by their own comrades as strangers, in consequence 



* Siebold saw the same kind of thing with the French wasp (Polistes 

 gallica), of which mention -will be made further on. Stranger wasps 

 attacked one of its nests, tore the larvae out of their cells and carried 

 them home as booty. When the real owners of the nest saw that 

 resistance was vain, they followed the example of the robbers and 

 murdered their own children. (In Graber, loc. cit. ii., p. 134.) 

 " Which is this," the reporter adds to the story, " ' instinct ' or ' un- 

 conscious intelligence ' ? " 



