WITH UNCLE SAM'S NATUBALISTS. 



Friday, April 2U, 1931. 



( NOT FOR PUBLICATION ) 



Spealcin^ Time; 10 Minutes. 



ANNOUNCEMENT; This is the day for another of our little adventures into the 

 wild. Our WMsman has "been on another of his visits with Uncle Sam's naturalist 

 of the U. S. Department of Agriculture and again "bring us word of some of the 

 recent findings about oiir wild life. Well, Mr. Wildsman? 



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Listen.* I want you to hear a story of wild life, as told to the 

 accompaniment of the "aurmuring of innumerable bees." 



Maybe you don't think of honey bees as wild — that is, unless you have 

 recently had that fact thrust upon you by a bee itself. 



Bees have been associated with man for thousands of years. Tliey were 

 probably among the first things to add sweetness to the hard life of our 

 prehistoric ancestorp. Certainly, they have been handled and used, and, in a 

 meas\ire, controlled t)y man since the dawn of history. 



We generally think of them as among our domesticated livestoct Their 

 remarkable social life and industry'' have been extolled in song and story for 

 ages. Yet, in spite of all that ajid in spite of the handling, and all the 

 association with m&n down the ages, Mr. J. I. Hambleton, in charge of the bee 

 culture laboratory of the United States Department of Agriculture, says that 

 honey bees are still untamed. They are just as wild as they ever were. 



And when the time comes to swarm, no matter how many model homes the 

 beekeeper may provide for them, they will head off to the woods. On the other 

 hand, you can go into the woods, discover a bee tree, capture the bees and put 

 them in e hive of your own choosing, and in a few days they will be happily 

 and contentedly at work. 



Go into the woods in most any part of this country'', and you will find 

 bees living in the wild. Yet when the white man first came to this co^jntry, 

 Mr. Hambleton says, there was not a honey bee anywhere in all America. The 

 ancestors of all our wild honey bees were brought over from the Old V7orld. The 

 Indians called them "the white man's flies." 



Mr, Hambleton and his assistants have studied the habits of this wild 

 livestock of o^ars for years. And from what he says it seems that the individual 

 honeybee unde** two weeks old, that is, the nurse bee, is not such a model of 



