THE ENEMIES OF OUR HONET-BEE. i6i 



encourage all mischievous birds to abide with me, feeding 

 the several tom-tits, to each of whom our gardens are so 

 largely indebted, throughout the winter, with walnuts, 

 and even providing them with sleeping places. — Yours, 

 C. S. S." 



The woodpecker is another enemy to our hive inha- 

 bitants, a serious one too ; he does not come into the 

 garden, but follows the bee unceasingly when busy in the 

 fields, and more especially when gathering honey-dew in 

 the early mornings, before the sun has acquired much 

 power. Many of these birds when shot have been found 

 with their stomachs nearly filled with bees. These birds 

 are now becoming so rare that it is scarcely necessary tu 

 refer to them. 



Let us not overlook this important fact in considering 

 birds as bee-enemies, they principally destroy drones, not 

 the worker bees. This assertion may be hard to prove, 

 yet I think I can make it clear. How do they know the 

 difference between the worker bee and the drones ? They 

 may not actually be able at sight to detect the difference, 

 but they are seldom (that is the majority of birds) known 

 to destroy them except in the afternoon, and it is only in 

 the afternoon when drones take wing ; again, drones do 

 not fly nearly so fast as the worker bee, and are with more 

 ease caught when on the wing. I do not give this thought 

 to my readers as solely my own, for the same thought is 

 thrown out by two of our best authors of recent times on 

 apiculture. 



It must be acknowledged our domestic fowls are ex 

 ceedingly partial to bees, and I have been inclined to mer- 

 cilessly condemn them, but I do not now think so hardly 

 about these useful birds, after watching hens, especially at 

 the mouth of the hive, where they have been standing far 

 more unconcerned than even the bee-eating toad, snap • 

 ping up bee after bee, but they have, I firmly believe, in 



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