BEES AS A NUISANCE 287 
It therefore follows that courts still deal with nuisances largely from 
the principles of the common law and it is a matter of serious doubt 
whether, in any instance, specific legislative action can be proven to have 
any substantial value as an addition to the law of the subject. A nuisance 
at common law is that class of wrongs that arise from unreasonable, un- 
warrantable, or unlawful use by « person of his own property, real or 
personal, or from his own improper, indecent or unlawful personal conduct 
working an obstruction of or injury to a right of another, or of the public, 
and producing such material annoyance, inconvenience, discomfort, or hurt 
that the law will presume a consequent damage. 
Text writers and legislative enactments state many variations of the 
foregoing comprehensive definition from Mr. Wood’s treatise on nuisances, 
but there is no substantial disagreement as to what constitutes a nuisance. 
Another definition stated broadly as a general proposition, is that every 
enjoyment by one of his own property which violates in an essential degree 
the rights of another is a nuisance; and this substantial violation of a 
right is the true test of a nuisance, for it is not every use of his property 
by one which works injury to the property of another that constitutes 
a nuisance. Injury and damage are essential elements of a nuisance, but 
they may both exist as a result of an act or thing which is not a nuisance, 
because no right is violated. On the other hand, the pecuniary injury may 
be insignificant and the act or thing causing them be such an invasion 
of the rights of another, or of the public, as to constitute a nuisance for 
which an action for damages or for abatement will lie. 
Nuisances are classified by the law as public and private, and there is 
authority for a third class called “mixed” nuisances. A nuisance is 
public where it affects the rights of individuals as a part of the public, 
or the common rights of all the community alike; a private nuisance is 
one affecting a single individual, or individuals of a particular class, group, 
or locality in a private right; the third class, referred to as mixed nui- 
sances, are public in their nature, but at the same time specially injurious 
or detrimental to one or more individuals in particular who suffer a different 
or greater hurt than the community in general. 
Nuisances are further divided into nuisances per se, or such as are 
declared so by the common law or by some statute, without regard to 
locality, surroundings, or circumstances, and nuisances per accidens, cr 
those owing their hurtful consequences to some particular attendant cir- 
cumstances, surrounding, location, or condition, without which they would 
not be unlawful. There are other less important and rather technical 
distinctions not necessary to be noticed here. The foregoing preliminary 
and very elementary observations of the general law of nuisances are neces- 
sary to a consideration of any subject with reference to its existence as 
a nuisance or otherwise. 
It is also a frequent statement of the law, and may be accepted as 
authoritative, that no lawful occupation or business is a nuisance per se, 
except it be declared so by some special enactment prohibiting certain 
things as objectionable to particular localities. So also the reasonable- 
ness of the use of one’s property may depend upon its situation, for what 
might be lawful in one locality would prove intolerable in another. The 
use of » building in the midst of a city densely populated for a storage 
house for hardware would not be objectionable in the slightest degree, while 
