*HE HONEY-BEE. 
149 
remove them into a dwelling-house in order to shelter 
them from the winter’s cold, or when a long track of 
inclement weather confines them within doors, they 
are obliged to retain their faeces so long that the con- 
sequence is an attack of dysentery. Its existence is 
easily detected ; the floor-hoard and the combs are 
covered with stains produced hy the excrement, of a 
dark hrown colour, and which diffuse through the hive 
a most offensive smell, and this last circumstance, no 
doubt, contributes to augment the evil, for the hees 
and brood, inhaling only an unwholesome air, must 
be fatally affected. 
Enemies of Bees . — The enemies of bees are nume- 
rous, though many of them are by no means formi- 
dable. Swallows, spiders, ants, frogs, wood-lice, poul- 
try, small birds of almost every kind, are all reckoned 
amongst their foes, but their ravages are trifling, and 
6eem to have for their object rather the dead bodies 
than the living insects. During the time of the mas- 
sacre of the drones, we have often seen blackbirds 
stealing from among the bushes near the apiary, in the 
autumnal evenings, and carrying off, one by one, the 
whole of the carcases of the males that had been 
destroyed during the day ; wo have never observed 
them attacking the living insect. There is a kind of 
beetlealso, (Clerus Apiarius, PI. VIII. fig. 1,) which, 
according to Aristotle, inhabits bee-hives, and which, 
while yet in the larva state, feeds on the larvae of the 
bees ; we have never heard of any’ instance of such 
being met with, or injurious to bees in this country. 
More to be dreaded are field-mice, which sometimes 
