40 
THE HONEY HUNTERS. 
[Nature and Art, July 1, 1866. 
eater, serves him for a nest ; and in this the cells 
are as neatly built, and the honey as carefully 
stored, by the diminutive labourer of the wilder- 
ness, as by the more bulky insect that gathers 
tribute from the flowers of our own gardens. 
In intertropical or equatorial Africa the bee is 
so far known and valued among the natives that 
they provide a rude hive or nest, made of a cylinder 
of bark, five feet long, and a foot and a half in 
diameter. This they strip from the tree, as the 
Australian does when he wants it for the rude 
covering of his Gunyah, or the Canadian Indian 
when he requires it for that inimitable triumph of 
native art — his bark canoe. 
Tiie bark is divided by two cuts round the tree, 
at the proper distance from each other ; another is 
then made longitudinally, and the bark, being 
beaten to loosen it as the work proceeds, is gradually 
detached by the agency of pointed sticks or wedges. 
It then resumes its cylindrical form. The central 
cut is closed with pegs, or sewn together ; grass 
is twisted into a coarse rope, and laid in flat coils, 
large enough to close the ends, and in the centre 
of one of them a hole is left for a gang-way. 
In the dense forests, on his way to Loando, Dr. 
Livingstone saw many such hives placed horizontally 
amongst the highest branches ; while a piece of 
medicine (generally a mere strip of bark, such as is 1 
common on mangoes or other fruit trees belonging 
to the half castes or natives, in the Portuguese 
possessions), was tied round the tree stem below. 
The natives well understand that most of these 
are only sham “medicines/’ but they believe that 
some possess the power of inflicting disease or 
death, and think it safest not to risk the experi- 
ment on any. However, some bold fellow will 
plunder a garden-hive or garden ; and it then 
becomes necessary for the owner to protect his 
property by charms, which lie believes eflicient. : 
All the wax exported from Loando and Benguela, 
is collected in this manner ; and Dr. Livingstone 
found the bee-swarms so universally appropriated 
by the natives, that he never attended, while in those 
countries, to the call of the honey-guide, being sure 
that it would only lead him to a bespoken hive. 
My late lamented friend Mr. Richard Thornton, 
the young geologist of the Zambesi expedition, and 
the companion of the late Baron Yon der Decken to 
the Ivilima Ndjaro, or Snowy Mountain of Eastern 
Africa, saw also, among the natives there, hives 
made of hollow logs, four or five feet long, sixteen 
inches diameter at each end, and rather more in the 
centre, suspended in like manner in the forests. 
Even this partial attempt at domestication I have 
never seen south of the Zambesi. The Hottentots, 
or Bushmen, claim such nests as they discover, 
or even such as may be within the range of 
country they frequent ; but as Burchell, who 
travelled in 1810 and the succeeding years, ob- 
served, “ None of the natives have the least idea 
of bringing bees under domestic management. 
They take the honey wherever it is found, and this 
being done oftentimes at improper seasons, they 
uselessly destroy the larvae, or young bees still in 
the comb.” He remarked once that his mattress, 
having been laid out during the day, had been taken 
possession of by a swarm, and he very good- 
naturedly left it to shelter them for the night, after 
which they departed in quest of some convenient 
cleft in the rock for their hive. The same or other 
species of the genus apis, he says, abounds in every 
part of the continent, and in its mode of swarming 
differs in nothing from the English honey-bee. He 
mentions, too, that in digging out a nest in a hollow 
made by some burrowing animal, his Hottentots 
kindled a tire, and supplied it with damp fuel, so 
as to drive off the bees by the dense smoke — a 
precaution generally neglected by those so engaged. 
The comb and honey are eaten together, and the 
bee-bread and larvm, or young bees, are accounted a 
delicacy ; and, indeed, I have myself found when 
eating wild honey, that some qualification of this 
kind was necessary to correct its luscious sweetness. 
Much of the honey taken by the Hottentots is 
used to make a kind of mead ; and I have been 
told by experienced colonists that those who have 
preserved the old traditions of their race, are ac- 
quainted with roots and herbs, which, added while 
the “honey- beer” is in a state of fermentation, 
impart to it not only an intoxicating, but a stupefy - 
ing property, which reduces the habitual drinker 
to an idiotic condition, most helpless and pitiable. 
Many are the enemies of our industrious little 
African. Abroad he meets with “ bee-eaters ” of 
eveiy variety, from the common black one to the 
gaily plumaged swallows, which nestle in perfora- 
tions of the clay banks of the Zambesi or other 
rivers, or flit overhead like thousands of many 
coloured gems glancing brilliantly in the sunlight. 
While at home he is exposed to attacks from tire 
powerful allies led to his stronghold by the honey- 
guide ( Cuculus indicator), the habits of which have 
been well described in one of the minor pieces of our 
poet of South Africa, Thomas Pringle, who has 
very accurately introduced in the alternate lines 
the call of the “ guide,” and the sounds peculiar to 
the other birds or insects described : — 
“ The lioney-bird sat on the yellow wood tree — 
Cher a cher cher a cher cher a cucula — 
Watching- the work of the blythe honey bee — 
Bim a Bom Bim a Bom Bim a Bom boola.” 
But the watcher of the poet felt his own inability 
to force the stronghold ; 
“ So he flew to the woodpecker : cousin, said he, — 
Cher a cher cher a cher cher a cucula — 
Come help me to harry the sly honey bee — 
Tic a tac tic a tac tic a tac toola.” 
It is many years since I read the lines, and I quote 
them from memory ; but there is a moral to them. 
The woodpecker doubts the justice of robbing the 
bees, because they have wings, and therefore are in 
some sort fellow-creatures ; but “ Cuculus” points 
out many differences, and cunningly concludes with 
the tempting argument — 
“ The hive is half full of juicy young bees.” 
on which all scruples of conscience vanish, and the 
woodpecker becomes a willing partner in the scheme. 
