268 THE BEE keeper's MANUAL. 



day, for they are cunning and secrete themselves. " They 

 love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are 

 evil." They are a paltry looking, insignificant little grey- 

 haired pestilent race of wax-and-honey-eating and bee- 

 destroying rascals, that have baffled all contrivances that in- 

 genuity has devised to conquer or destroy them." 



" Your committee would be very glad indeed to be able to 

 suggest any effectual means, by which to assist the honey- 

 bee and its friends, against the inroads of this, its bitterest 

 and most successful foe, whose desolating ravages are more 

 lamented and more despondingly referred to, than those of 

 any other enemy. Various contrivances have been an- 

 nounced, but none have proved efficacious to any full extent, 

 and we are compelled to say that there really is no security, 

 except in a very full, healthy and vigorous stock of bees, 

 and in a very close and well made hive, the door of which 

 is of such dimensions of length and height, that the nightly 

 guards can effectually protect it. Not too long a door, nor 

 loo high. If too long, the bees cannot easily guard it, and if 

 too high, the moth will get in over the heads of the guards- 

 If the guards catch one of them, her life is not worth insur- 

 ing. But if the moths, in any numbers, effect a lodgment 

 in the hive, then the hiv.e is not worth insuring. They im- 

 mediately commence laying their eggs, from which comes, 

 in a few days, a brownish white caterpillar, which encloses 

 itself, all but its head, in a silken cocoon. This head, cov- 

 ered with an impenetrable coat of scaly mail, which bids 

 defiance to the bees, is thrust forward, just oijtside of the 

 silken enclosure, and the gluttonous pest eats all before it, 

 wax, pollen, and exuviae, until ruin to the stock is inevitable. 

 As says the Prophet Joel, speaking of the ravages of the 

 locust, " the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and 

 behind them a desolate wilderness." Look out, brethren, 



