BEES AS A NUISANCE 289 
100 feet of plaintiff’s dwelling—‘ by defendants greatly interfered with 
the quiet and proper enjoyment and possession of plaintiff’s premises, 
driving him, his servants and guests from his garden and grounds, and 
stinging them, interfered with the enjoyment of his home, and with his 
family while engaged in the performance of their domestic duties, soiling 
articles of clothing when exposed on his premises, and made his dwelling 
and premises unfit for habitation.” These facts were held to constitute a 
ncisance, against which the plaintiff was entitled to injunction and nominal 
damages. These facts just recited, however, probably present an extreme 
case, the immediate proximity of so many colonies being, no doubt, per- 
suasive evidence that the annoyance suffered ly the plaintiff was due to 
the defendant’s use of his premises. Greater difficulty would be experienced 
in reaching such a conclusion if there were no colonies stationed in the 
immediate vicinity, a thing entirely possible under the common belief that 
the insects go considerable distances for their stores. 
So it may be said of bees, as of other property, that no hard and fast 
rule can be laid down by which to determine in advance whether the 
presence of bees in any given numbers or at any given point will amount 
to a nuisance. But, not being a nuisance of themselves, as a matter of law, 
and absent also any general State enactment declaring them to be such, 
bees will not, under any circumstances be presumed to be a nuisance, but 
the matter will rest in the proof adduced, with the burden upon the party 
alleging the affirmative. But they may, upon proof of particular facts 
showing all the elements necessary to the existence of a nuisance, he 
condemned as such, either of a private or public character, as the nature 
of the injury might decide. 
Predicated upon the theory advanced in the heginning that courts 
would now, if the matter were called in question, decide that bees are 
domestic animals, and it having already become a matter of legislative 
recognition that they are subject to communicable diseases, a question arises 
as to the liability of the keeper of diseased bees. At common law it was 
an indictable offense, which has been reénacted by statute in mo ; of the 
States, to take a domestic animal suffering from a communicable disease 
into a public place or to turn it into the highway so that the disease might 
be communicated to the animals of other persons. It could hardly be 
said to be less culpable to knowingly keep diseased bees, which, by their 
nature may not be restrained or confined, to spread disease to the apiaries 
of other owners. If to turn a horse with glanders or a sheep with footrot 
into the highway is a public nuisance, on the same reasoning to turn bees 
at large to carry communicable diseases peculiar to them to other bees 
ought to be an offense of the same grade. 
The power of a municipal corporation, as a town or village, to restrain 
or prohibit within its limits the keeping of bees, or to denounce them 
as a nuisance, is commonly reported as a fruitful source of vexation to 
keepers of bees, but one case only is reported as involving a judicial de- 
termination of that particular point. And here, too, a few preliminary 
observations will be necessary to proper understanding of this phase of 
the nuisance laws. Cities, towns, and villages, as municipal corporations 
or public bodies, receive their powers hy express grant from the legislative 
authority of the State, and with the exception of some unenumerated 
powers without which the corporate body could not exercise its essential 
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