BEE MANUAL. 297 
CEPR) xX. 
APICULTURE IN RELATION TO AGRICULTURE.* 
THE benefits derived by both agriculturists and horticulturists 
from the labours of the bee are now very generally understood 
and acknowledged ; but still cases do sometimes occur, though 
rarely, of farmers objecting to the vicinity of an apiary, and 
complaining of bees as “trespassers,” instead of welcoming 
them as benefactors. 
ARE BEES TRESPASSERS ? 
It is not, perhaps, surprising that at first aman should ima- 
gine he was being injured in consequence of bees gathering 
honey on his lund, to be stored up elsewhere, and for the use 
of other parties ; he might argue that the honey belonged by 
right to him, and even jump at the conclusion that there was 
so much of the substance of the soil taken away every year, and 
that his land must therefore become impoverished. It is true 
that if he possessed such an amount of knowledge as might be 
expected to belong to an intelligent agriculturist, working upon 
* A paper, from which the matter of this chapter is abridged, appeared in 
the three numbers of the New Zealand and Australian Bee Journal for the 
months of August, September, and October, 1884, and has since been partially 
reprinted in more than one of the American hee papers. Since it was first 
written, the subject of which it treats has been brought prominently forward 
in consequence of the action taken by a farmer in one of the United States to 
claim damages from a neighbouring bee-keeper for supposed injury done to 
his grazing sheep by trespassing (?) bees. Just now, whilst these sheets are 
passing through the press, the American Bee Journals are full of communi- 
cations from bee-keepers, pointing out the absurdity of such claims, and 
calling for united action in opposing all such attempts that may be made _ to 
check the progress of bee culture. However unfounded and unreasonable 
such claims really are and must appear to those who understand the nature 
and habits of both bees and grazing animals, the mere fact of their being 
seriously advanced is sufficient to show the necessity of bee-keepers adducing 
such facts and arguments as are calculated to prove satisfactorily the ground- 
lessness of all assertions to the effect that bees occasion any injury to the 
farmer, either as regards the fertility of his soil, the condition of his crops, or 
the safety and comfort of his grazing stock. [Since the above was in type the 
lawsuit—Sheep v. Bees—has been dismissed by the Judges.] 
