138 BEE-FARMING. 



it directs the negroes by a peculiar cry or whistle to the 

 tree where the bees have taken up their residence, ad- 

 vancing before them by longer or shorter flights, according 

 to the greater or lesser distance of the object of pursuit. 

 If its followers lag behind, it returns with manifest im- 

 patience, and by its redoubled cries appears to chide their 

 delay. As it approaches the tree, its flights become more 

 limited, its whistle is repeated at shorter intervals, and at 

 last, having brought its associates to the desired spot, it 

 hovers over it for a moment, as if to mark it out distinctly, 

 and then quietly takes up a station at a little distance, 

 waiting the result, and expecting its share of the booty, 

 which it never fails to obtain. 



In the island of Madagascar and the Mauritius is to be 

 found the single coloured bee [Apis unicolor) of a bright 

 shining black, without spots or coloured bands. Its honey, 

 as appears by a specimen brought home by a French 

 vessel, is highly aromatic, and is, while in the cells, or 

 when recently abstracted, of a green colour, but becomes 

 afterwards of a reddish-yellow. In these islands the bee 

 is domesticated, and a French naturalist, M. de Lanux, 

 has published a memoir on the form of the Madagascar 

 hives, a circumstance which naturally leads to the sup- 

 position that the inhabitants pay coiisiderable attention to 

 the cultivation of this insect. 



Knox, in his History of Ceylon, enumerates three kinds 

 of bees found in that island ; the first of which bears a 

 close resemblance to the European insect, though it would 

 seem by no means so irritable, and, like those near the 

 Cape of Good Hope, builds in hollow trees, and also in 

 holes in the ground which have been made by some bur- 

 rowing animals. The natives, to obtain the honey, have 

 merely to blow into these holes, upon which the bees 

 instantly decamp without resistance, and the plunderers, 

 without making use of any defensive covering, pull out the 



