SUPERSTITIONS RESPECTING BEES. 173 



pass ; the kind master of the house was shortly afterwards 

 carried to his long home. This appeared to coniirm the 

 prediction, and the whispering neighbours and village gos- 

 sips now point to this as an instance of the truth of the 

 old saying. 



I was lately looking over the stocks in what was once 

 a fine and flourishing apiary, but it appeared to have 

 suffered severe losses. I was perplexed to account for the 

 death of- so many stocks, except by starvation, which is 

 the case in by far the majority of instances, but I was not 

 left long in doubt, if the word of one of the domestic 

 servants was to be credited. "Why, master," she ex- 

 claimed, before I left the premises, " you need not be 

 astonished, for I have heard it said scores of times that 

 bees will never thrive if folks fight about them." "Well, 

 but you don't mean to say that any one fights about your 

 bees," I replied. " If they don't fight with their fists," 

 she answered rather pettishly, " they fight with words, and 

 that is every bit as bad. And I say again, and go where 

 you will you'll find my words true, bees will never do any 

 good for anybody if they fight about them, for they are 

 peaceable things, and knowing things too, those bees are, 

 and they know well enough when anybody is vexed with 

 them." 



A great horror exists in the minds of not a few intel- 

 ligent rustic bee-keepers against what they are pleased to 

 term the new-fangled notion of driving the stocks into 

 empty skeps in the autumn when taking the honey, and 

 afterwards mingling them with other stocks well provided 

 with food, instead of cruelly destroying them over the 

 brimstone pit. I believe they have an idea that something 

 unlucky will befal themselves or their families should the 

 stocks be driven and preserved. 



