SCIENCE 
IS 
KNOWLEDGE. 
KNOWLEDGE 
IS 
POWER. 
A PRACTICAL JOURNAL OF 
HOME ARTS. 
Vol. V. 
NEW YOEK, JTJKE, 1882. 
No. 6. 
Caution to Bee-Poisoners. 
ROM notices in several 
of our exchanges we 
learn that some 
thoughtless and ignor- 
ant persons, urged by 
so-called scientific men 
who certainly ought to 
kn*ow better, are at- 
tempting to destroy by 
poison such bees as 
annoy them. Aside 
from the fact that such 
a practice is contrary to law, to good 
morals, and to right feeling, those who 
think of adopting this vile practice should 
remember that it is not at all impossible 
that they may take the life of something 
much more important than a few bees. 
Some human being may fall a victim and 
then the poisoner may find himself in the 
clutches not only of a guilty conscience, 
but of the law. Nor is it necessary that 
^nan, woman or child should find access 
to the vessels set out for the destruction 
of the bees ; unless under extraordinary 
conditions the bees will carry to their 
hives, before they die, an amount of 
poisoned food sufficient to render the 
honey in their combs virulently poison- 
ous. 
This is not a mere surmise or theory, 
but a fact which some years ago we 
demonstrated clearly and fully to our 
own satisfaction. The records of the ex- 
periments were unfortunately destroyed 
in the great fire which consumed the 
World Building " last January, but the 
results were so clear and unequivocal that 
we can give them from memory without 
any material inaccuracy. 
In these experiments we established 
small colonies of bees in locations where 
they could not interfere with other stocks, 
and selecting times at which food was 
scarce, we fed them upon syrup to which 
poison had been added. In every case we 
succeeded in destroying the bees, but it 
was only in a very few cases that we failed 
to get poison from the honey in the hive, 
and in these cases the bees took the poison 
only when no other source of food supply 
was open to them. In many cases the 
bees that carried the poison to the hive 
did not seem to suffer till long after the 
