BEES.* 
By C. V. Riley. 
Living in such well-organized communities, exhibiting so much intel- 
ligence, and yielding one of the most delicious sweets known, the Honey. 
or Hive Bee has attracted attention from the earliest times, and ever 
since Aristotle. Virgil, and Columella told what was then known of this 
industrious insect, it has been the subject of investigation. Honey and 
wax were far more important to man in olden time than they are to us 
who have so many substitutes for them, and the ancients gave much 
attention of the practical kind to bees. How very little they knew, 
however, of their true economy is shown by the prevalence of the belief 
that bees came from the carcasses of animals. This superstition as to 
the Bugorda. as exemplified in the biblical story of Samson (Judges 
XIV. S . continued for twenty centuries, and grew out of the resem- 
blance to the Hive Bee of Eristalis tenax. a Dipterous fly which breeds 
in putrescent matter. This fact, first clearly recognized by that excel- 
lent observer, Beaumur, has been fully established in a recent most 
interesting paper by Osten Sacken "On the so-called Bugonia of the 
ancients, and its relations to Erisialw tenax." (Bullettino della Societa 
Entomologica Italiana, Anno XXV. 1893.) In fact the fabulous about 
bees prevailed till the beginning of the last century, when Maraldi. by 
the invention of glass hives, gave an impetus to correct observation, and 
led to the remarkable memoirs of Swammerdam. Beaumur. Schirach. 
and Francis Huber. 
The fact that the Hive Bee can be cultivated and controlled with a 
view to profitable industry has served to heighten the interest in it, 
and since the invention in this country, in 1852. of the movable frame 
hive, by a retired clergyman, the Rev. L. L. Laiigstroth. progress in 
apiculture has been rapid and continuous. Of the more important sub- 
sequent inventions, many of them, made" in Europe but perfected in 
America, may be mentioned the honey -extractor, which, by centrifugal 
force, throws the honey from the comb, leaving the latter intact and 
ready to be used again: and the comb foundation, by which sheets of 
wax are impressed with the bases of the cells and employed to insure 
straight and regular combs, to limit drone production and increase the 
honey product. With the bee-smoker in its modern form, bees are also 
much more easily controlled and manipulated than formerly, ]\Iuch 
* From an address on Social Insects, as President of the Biological Society of Wash- 
ington, delivered in the hall of Columhian University, January 29, 1894. 
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