54 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[June i, 1881. 
of wood glued together with some resinous gum. 
Through this tube the bees entered, and it evidently 
served as a protection against some of their enemies. 
A nest of ants was located farther down in the same 
tree, but I noticed that these insects, so ravenous 
in tropical countries, avoided this tube. Another 
colony, which I found lodged in one of the hollow 
iron pillars in front of the village-inn in Kalutara, had 
built no such tube, the entrance hole being just large 
enough to admit one bee at a time. 
But are these ' big bee-stories ' ?" some one asks. 
Well, "from one extreme to the other," for now I 
will tell you what I know about the 
(£ANT bees ! 
It was, unfortunately, only just before I was to re- 
embark (with the Cyprian and Holy Land bees I 
had brought with me), to continue my journey to 
Java, that I gained any satisfactory information about 
these bees. I had sought them in the forests and 
made inquiries among the natives everywhere I had 
gone, but had not found a single specimen. Then I 
visited the Colombo Museum, and though none were 
to be seen there, one of the gentlemen connected with 
it, Mr. R. Van Cuylenburg, very kindly introduced 
me to Mr. W. H. Wright, a retired planter, and a 
lover of flowers, birds and insects, who had often 
seen bambera, the largest bee of Ceylon, which I fully 
believe is Apis dorsata, found also in India, Malacca, 
and many of the Dutch East Indian possessions. He 
told me they were not often found near the coast, 
but generally built their combs upon rocks or attached 
them to the branches of forest-trees. He had, how- 
ever, been called upon t^> remove from the upper part 
of a hotel-window in Colombo, the principal seaport 
of Ceylon, a large nest of these bees. I remember to 
have read that a swarm once took up quarters in a 
coal-shed in Point-de-Galle, another seaport town. 
Thus, they do live in an inclosed space sometimes. 
"Why," said my informant, who is a highly esteemed 
citizen of Ceylon, "I have seen combs of bambera 
hanging down fully five feet from the branches of 
the trees. The natives climb into the trees and cut 
off the combs and let them down with ropes, smoking 
away the bees ; and I have seen them load thirty men 
with the honey and wax taken from one bambera tree. " 
Again he remarked, "When they swarm the air is 
black with them, and I have seen a stream of them 
as long as from here to the Museum." The distance 
indicated was nearly half a mile ! 
In Sir James E. Tennent's work entitled "Ceylon" 
is the following note: "A gentleman connected with 
the department of the Surveyor-General writes to me 
that he measured a honey-comb which he found fas- 
tened to the overhanging branch of a small tree in 
the forest near Adam's Peak and found it nine links 
of his chain, or about six feet in length, and a foot 
in breadth where it was attached to the branch, but 
tapering towards the other extremity. It was a 
single comb with a layer of cells on either side, 
but so weighty that the branch broke by the 
strain.' " I called on Mr. Wm. Ferguson, the gentle- 
man here referred to, and found him a person of no 
slight scientific attainments, being a fellow of the 
Linna:au Society, and the author of several works 
on the botany of Ceylon. He confirmed the statements 
made in this note and added also that the swarm 
was close to the ground. Tennent also says : 
" I have never heard of an instance of persons 
being attacked by the bees of Ceylon and hence 
the native assert, that those most productive of 
honey are destitute of stings." I did not hear 
any such statement as is made above, but found 
that the natives had little dread of the ordi- 
nary bees, which do not often sting severely, and that 
tlx: hnmhira was not feared as the various kinds of 
wasps. Tenuent remarks : " Wasps are greatly \ 
dreaded by the natives." This ia as I found it, and 
there is good reason for the dread, for some of these 
insects as well as the carpenter-bees, are immense fel- 
lows. The natives say that " seven deboreh stings will 
kill a man ; " but I got eight, therefore ! * 
Then there is cooroomineah, " three stings from which 
are sure death." One more quotation, and then I will 
show you the point of these wasp yarns. Ten- 
nent says in a note : "At the Jan. (1839) meeting 
of the Entomological Society, Mr. Whitehouse exhi- 
bited portions of a wasp's next from Ceylon, between 
seven and eight feet long and two feet in diameter, 
and showed that the construction of the cells was per- 
fectly analogous to those of the hive bee." Now, the 
native words, bambera (the large bee) and deboreh 
(one of the large wasps) are used interchangeably bj 
many who do not know the proper application of 
each ; besides, many do not know the difference be- 
tween these two insects, a fact not to be wondereo 
at, especially as one species of the wasp so resembles 
the large bee as to deceive many who have often seen 
the latter. I was often shown nests of wasps when 
my interpreter, himself a native, had asked for bam- 
bera (the large bee). Of course although some wasps 
suspend their nests to the branches of trees and make 
hexagonal cells, " analagous to those of bees," theii 
combs are built in a horizontal position, made of 
paper, and have cells only upon one side — the under 
surface, and it is needless to add that these insects 
are so fierce as to be untamable. Thus without fur- 
ther remarks the reader can see how natural it was 
that, through some travellers who did not take pains 
to ferret out the real facts of the matter, an error 
should creep into print and then into our bee pub- 
lications. Such is, I believe, the origin of the story 
that the combs of Apis dorsata were built in a hori- 
zontal manner, and that the fierceness of these bees 
made them unmanageable, The description Mr. Wright 
gave me of the manner in which the natives secure 
the honey of these bees shows that no great fear of 
the insects under discussion can exist ; moreover, there 
is in Mr. A. E. Wallace's valuable scientific works 
" The Malay Archipelago," a very similar account of 
the method employed by the bee-hunters in Timor. 
He says the nest of Apis dorsata was " on a horizontal 
branch seventy or eighty feet from the ground," to 
which the bee-hunter ascended " with his face, arms 
and legs completely bare," and after holding smoke 
under the combs " coolly brushed away the bees that 
settled on his arms and legs." "Several bees," says 
Mr. Wallace, "followed me at least half a mile and 
stung me severely." This is not at all strange, for 
Mr. Wallace says he remained under the tree until 
stung once, whereupon he " ran away beating off the 
pursuing bees with an insect-net and capturing them 
for specimens." He further states that he "is inclined 
to think that the best way is to make no attempt at 
escape, but only slow and deliberate motions ;'" and 
be " thinks a bee settling on a passive native makes 
no effort to sting." The italics are my own, and help 
to bring out the idea, which every bee-master will 
perceive at once, that Mr. Wallace surely knew nothing 
of practical work with living specimens of the genus Apis, 
however well able he might be to crack hard scientific 
names over dead ones. I not only believe Apis dorsata 
can be domesticated, but I also believe that, intelli- 
gently managed, that is in some manner which accords 
with its peculiar traits, it will be found to be little 
or no more dangerous than the other species of the 
* Mudaliyar Samuel Jayatilleke, when he saw Mr. 
Benton, bare-handed and bare-headed, manipulating 
a colony of bambaras which had been placed in a 
frame bee-hive, and not receiving a single sting, eaio 
that ' he could scarce believe him an ordinary mortal ' 
— El). 
