DISEASES AND ENEMIES. 
579 
rate, since they hunt most when drones do not exist. 
To these birds we must add the fly-catcher and the 
chaffinch, and, amongst other less offenders, the sparrow, 
which I have seen to take bees when on the wing. 
Some of these birds remove the stings, an interesting 
collection of which was found by my late friend, 
Mr. John Hunter, on a rail, after a blue tit had been 
dining at his expense. 
The toad I have known to fatten amazingly while 
skulking beneath a hive, its lightning tongue causing 
hundreds of over-fatigued labourers to disappear, as 
they have dropped into a tangle of weeds, affording 
too good a covert for the enemy. Keep down the 
weeds, as recommended at page 364. 
Mice and snails little trouble wooden hives, but the 
uncleanly, ubiquitous earwigs are a nuisance. They 
are nocturnal vegetable feeders, and make, if they 
can, the dry, snug crannies about our hives their day 
quarters, which they sully with their droppings. They 
may be thinned considerably by providing hospitality. 
Put two pieces of unplaned board over the chaff-tray, 
or carpet, shutting between the two, plum skins, apple 
peeling, crushed cherry, &c., and keep the boards 
slightly separate by a stud of some sort. Open the 
trap, in the daytime, in a chicken run. They are 
destructive in the garden, seeming to prefer nibbling 
the petals of the most beautiful flowers, so it is a 
double service to trap them. 
Wasps, of which we have several species, divided 
into the social and the solitary, are useful creatures 
in thinning off insect pests; but the social wasps 
annoy bees considerably, though they accomplish little 
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