212 forty years among the bees. 



"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 a belief, for a bee that has 

 spent to-day robbing from a certain hive will very 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 he had in the field. 



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

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

 abundance 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 

 shows that the bees that were formerly so intent upon 

 robbing are now afield with the others. 



leaving something 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 anything 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 



