204 FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 



when a ease such as I have mentioned occurs. But it does not 

 often occur. 



" ONCE A THIEF " NOT " ALWAYS A THIEF." 



For many years I believed "what perhaps is generally 

 believed, that the saying, " Once a thief, always a thief," was 

 true of any bee ever guilty of robbing. There is, no doubt, 

 some ground for such belief, for a bee that has spent to-day 

 robbing from a certain hive will ve<:y likely start in on the same 

 business to-morrow, if any more plunder is to be had in the 

 same place ; but it is not true that a bee that has been engaged 

 in one robbing scrape will never after return to honest labor. 



Indeed, so far as the bee is concerned, getting honey out of 

 another hive probably seems just as honest work as to gather 

 nectar from the flowers. And the more active a bee is when 

 engaged in the field, the more active might we expect to find it 

 in trying to rob when there is nothing more to be had in the 

 field. • 



Many a hive is robbed out in the spring, and many a bee 

 is engaged in the robbing; yet the first day in which an abun- 

 dance of stores can be had in the field, every bee of sufficient 

 age gleefully joins in the quest abroad, and the fact that honey 

 may be exposed with little danger 3hows that the bees that were 

 formerly so intent upon robbing are now afield with the others. 



LEAVING SOJIETHING FOR ROBBERS. 



A practice that is just as far from right as the theory 

 about which we have been talking is the practice of taking 

 away whatever the robbers are working upon, without leaving 

 any thing in its place. If by carelessness I have left a section 

 of honey on a hive, and find the robbers at work upon it, I can 

 hardly do a worse thing than to take it away. 



If I leave it, the bees will stick to it, and clean it out, and 

 for some time a number of robbers will stick to it after the 

 honey is all gone, but they stick 1o that one spot, and if the 

 empty comb is left there, they keep hunting it all over and over, 

 and by and by conclude the honey is all used out of it and go 

 about their business. If the section is taken away and nothing 



