198 A MANUAL OF BEE-KEEPING. 



may give them the 'satisfaction of knowing that they 

 will soon get inured, and mind stinging not at all. 

 Many persons imagine on seeing a man handling Bees 

 with impunity that he is never stung. This is an error ; 

 the Bees do sting him, although not so often as they 

 would a timid stranger; but his blood is inoculated, 

 and the poison has become innoxious. My son, 

 when a lad of sixteen, had not meddled with Bees ; 

 then, becoming often my assistant, he soon had to pay 

 the usual penalty, which was at first very severe. Great 

 swelling and inflammation, accompanied with pain, and 

 often an irritating rash would appear all over his body. 

 The effect of every successive sting became less and 

 less, until before the autumn closed, beyond a few 

 minutes' irritation, there was no effect. Mr. G. Walker, 

 of Wimbledon, has recorded an experiment he made 

 on himself to try how long, and how many stings, it 

 would require to get inoculated. He gives the follow- 

 ing as the modus operandi and result, viz. : — 



" I went to one of my hives, caught a Bee, pl&ced it 

 on my wrist, and allowed it to sting me, taking care that 

 I received the largest amount of poison by preventing it 

 from going away at once ; then I let the poison-bag 

 work, which it does for some time after being separated 

 from the Bee. The first day I only stung myself twice. 

 A Bee-sting has always had a very bad and injurious 

 effect on me, inasmuch as it has always caused a great 

 amount of swelling and of pain ; in fact, once when 

 stung on my ear, the part became so painful and swollen 

 that I hardly got any sleep the following night, and it 

 was three days before I recovered. The first few stings 

 I got during this experiment had the usual effect ; the 

 whole of my fore-arm was affected with a cutaneous 

 erysipelas, and there was disorder of the muscular nerves, 



