324 FEEDING BEES. 
incautious owner tempts them with liquid food, at times 
when they can obtain nothing from the blossoms, they 
become so infatuated with such easy gatherings as to lose 
all discretion, and will perish by thousands if the vessels 
which contain the food are not furnished with floats, on 
which they can safely stand to help themselves. 
As the fly was not intended to banquet on blossoms, but 
on substances in which it might easily be drowned, it cau- 
tiously alights on the edge of any vessel containing liquid 
food, and warily helps itself; while the poor bee, plunging 
in headlong, speedily perishes. The sad fate of their un- 
fortunate companions does not in the least deter others who 
approach the tempting lure, from madly alighting on the 
bodies of the dying and the dead, to share the same miser- 
able end! No one can understand the extent of their 
infatuation, until he has seen a confectioner’s shop assailed 
by myriads of hungry bees. We have seen thousands 
strained out from the syrups in which they had perished; 
thousands more alighting even upon the boiling sweets; the 
floors covered and windows darkened with bees, some 
crawling, others flying, and others still, so completely 
besmeared as to be able neither to crawl nor fly—not one 
in ten able to carry home its ill-gotten spoils, and yet the 
air filled with new hosts of thoughtless comers. 
We once furnished a candy-shop, in the vicinity of our 
Apiary, with wire-gauze windows and doors, after the bees 
had commenced their depredations. On finding themselves 
excluded, they alighted on the wire by thousands, fairly 
squealing with vexation as they vainly tried to force a 
passage through the meshes.* Baffled in every effort, they 
attempted to descend the chimney, reeking with sweet 
odors, even although most who entered it fell with scorched 
* Manufacturers of candies and syrups will find it to their interest to fit such 
guards to their premises; for, if only one bee in a hundred escapes with ita 
load, considerable loss will be incurred in the course of the season. 
