216 FORTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES. 



was a strong one, and when in its right mind, capable 

 of taking care of itself. 



DO ROBBED-BEES JOIN THE ROBBERS? 



One of the venerable traditions that is perhaps 

 generally accepted without question is that when a 

 colony is being robbed it is a quite common thing for the 

 bees that are robbed to join the robbers and help carry 

 off the stores. I am very skeptical as to there being any 

 truth in the tradition. I do not say such a thing never 

 happened, but I never saw such a case, and I have seen 

 from first to last quite a number of cases of robbing. I 

 have known a number of cases in which, all the stores 

 were emptied out of the combs by robbers, and the bees 

 of the colony seemed to be all left, and generally by tak- 

 ing the right kind of pains I have succeeded in re-estab- 

 lishing such a colony. In such cases there was certainly 

 no joining the robbers 



I have found other cases in which the bees were en- 

 tirely gone, and I could only guess what had become of 

 them. My guess was that after being robbed of all their 

 stores, and having used up all the honey in their honey- 

 sacs, perhaps some time after the robbers had ceased to 

 pay any attention to them, they had swarmed out as any 

 hunger-swarm will do, and had united, or tried to unite, 

 with some other colony. Would they not be likely to 

 join some colony other than the one that had treated 

 them so unkindly? 



PILES SOMETIMES A TARGET FOR ROBBERS. 



Piles of four or five stories with abundant ventila- 

 tion at each story are in no danger from robbers under 

 ordinary circumstances ; but if you ever have such piles, 

 and are so unfortunate as to get the robbers once started 



