METHODS OF REPRESSION. 89 
of trying literally to kick out the invaders. A worker bee will run 
in among the ants and, whirling about, will give repeated vigorous 
kicks with her hind legs, throwing the ants in every direction, even 
to a distance of 10 or 12 inches. The ants are not, however, killed 
by this rough treatment, and they shortly return to the attack. 
In a few hours after the attack has commenced the bees become 
thoroughly disorganized and give up further defense, sometimes 
swarming out as a last resort. At such times the normal hum of 
the hive gives place to an entirely different note, which the expe- 
rienced bee keeper at once recognizes as that of distress. 
The difficulties of extracting and handling honey in the presence 
of these pests can be readily imagined. In order to extract we 
first scrubbed the floor of the building, using copious amounts of 
carbolic acid in the water. The foundations of the building and 
a space about a foot wide all around the building were then sprayed 
with crude oil. The extractor, as well as the uncapping can, was 
placed in a large iron tray containing several inches of water. When 
all these preparations were complete, the supers were taken from 
the hives, and as fast as brought in were stacked on tables the legs 
of which were wound with the corrosive sublimate ant tape. Extract- 
ing was done as expeditiously as possible, but with all our pains 
the ants were all over everything before we could extract and bottle 
three or four hundred pounds of honey. Even our clothing was 
teeming with the workers and all human effort was helpless to keep 
them out of the honey. 
The number of apiaries destroyed by the ant in southern Louisiana 
has been considerable, and one of our first lines of experimental 
work was to devise some means of protecting the beehives from the 
foraging ants. Among the various schemes that were tried the 
following were found most efficient: 
Placing the hive upon a stand having four legs and placing each 
of these legs in a tin cup containing crude petroleum served to deter 
the ants for a time, but rain water soon displaced the oil in the cups, 
and then with the first accumulation of dust on the water the ants 
found their way across it. This device also had the disadvantage 
of killing all bees which attempted to crawl up the legs of the stand. 
Another device, somewhat more successful than the open cups, 
consisted of a stand the legs of which had at their tops inverted 
troughs of galvanized iron so arranged that rain water could not 
enter them, and so fixed that the ants would have to cross the troughs 
containing oil in order to reach the hive. Stands protected with 
this appliance successfully repelled all ants for about two months 
but, like the open cups of oil, resulted in the death of some bees. 
As our previous experiments, had shown the repellent power of 
ant tape, already described, it occurred to us that this might be 
