FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 213 



sizes when a case such as I have mentioned occurs. But it 

 does not often occur. 



'■ONCE A THIEF" NOT "ALWAYS A THIEF." 



For many years I believed what perhaps is generally be- 

 lieved, that the saying, "Once a thief, always a thief," is 

 true of any bee ever guilty of robbing. There is, no doubt; 

 some ground for such belief, for a bee that has spent today 

 robbing from a certain hive will very likely start in on the 

 same business tomorrow, if any more pliinder is to be had in 

 the same place; but it is not true that a bee that has been en- 

 gaged 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 'be 

 found in the field. 



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

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

 dance 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 

 any thing 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 after the 

 honey is all gone, but they stick to that one spot, and if the 

 empty comb is left there, they keep hunting it all over and over, 

 and by and by conclude the honey is all used out of it and go 

 about their business. If the section is taken away and nothing 



