ENEMIES OF BEES. 271 



bee, and endeavoring to effect an entrance into the door way 

 for it is within the hive that their instinct teaches them they 

 must deposit their eggs. You can hardly find them by day, 

 for they are cunning and secrete themselves. ' They love 

 darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.' 

 They are a paltry looking, insignificant little grey-haired 

 pestilent race of wax-and-honey-eating and bee-destroying 

 rascals, that have baffled all contrivances that ingenuity has 

 devised to conquer or destroy them." 



" Your committee would be very glad indeed to be able to 

 suggest any effectual means, by which to assist the honey- 

 bee and its friends, against the inroads of this, its bitterest 

 and most successful foe, whose desolating ravages are more 

 lamented and more despondingly referred to, than those of 

 any other enemy. Various contrivances have been an- 

 nounced, but none have proved efficacious to any full extent, 

 and we are compelled to say that there really is no security, 

 except in a very full, healthy and vigorous stock of bees, 

 and in a very close and well made hive, the door of which 

 is of such dimensions of length and height, that the nightly 

 guards can effectually protect it. Not too long a door, nor 

 too high. If too long, the bees cannot easily guard it, and if 

 too high, the moth will get in over the heads of the guards. 

 If the guards catch one of them, her life is not worth insur- 

 ing. But if the moths, in any numbers, effect a lodgment 

 in the hive, then the hive is not worth insuring. They im- 

 mediately commence laying their eggs, from which comes, 

 in a few days, a brownish white caterpillar, which encloses 

 itself, all but the head, in a silken cocoon. This head, cov- 

 ered with an impenetratable coat of scaly mail, which bids 

 defiance to the bees, is thrust forward, just outside of the 

 silken enclosure, and the gluttonous pest eats all before it, 

 wax, pollen, and exuviae, until ruin to the stock is inevitable. 



