ROBBING. 
263 
liis spoils from their deep recesses ; they, therefore, bite 
and tease him, after their most approved fashion, all the 
time singing in his ears, “ Your honey or your life,” until 
he empties his capacious receptacle, when they release 
him and lick up his sweets. 
Bees sometimes carry on their depredations upon a 
more imposing scale. Having ascertained the weakness 
of some neighboring colony, they sally out by thousands, 
eager to engage in a pitched battle. A furious onset is 
made, and the ground in front of the assaulted hive is 
soon covered with the bodies of innumerable victims. 
Sometimes the baffled invaders are compelled to sound a 
retreat ; too often, however, as in human contests — right 
proving but a feeble barrier against superior might — the 
citadel is stormed, and the work of rapine forthwith 
begins. And yet, after all, matters are not so bad as 
at first they seemed to be, for often the conquered bees, 
giving up the unequal struggle, assist the victors in plunder- 
ing their own hive, and are rewarded by being incorpo- 
rated into the triumphant nation. The poor mother, 
however, remains in her pillaged hive, some few of her 
children — faithful to the last — staying with her to perish 
by her side amid the ruins of their once happy home* 
If the bee-keeper would not have his bees so demoral- 
ized that their value will be seriously diminished, he will 
be exceedingly careful (p. 199) to prevent them from 
robbing each other. If the bees of a strong stock once 
get a taste of forbidden sweets, they will seldom stop 
♦ “ Bees, like men, have their different dispositions, so that even their loyalty 
will sometimes fall them. An instance not long ago came to our knowledge, which 
probably few bee-keepers will credit* It is that oi a hivo which, having early 
exhausted its store, was found, on being examined ono morning, to bo utterly 
deserted. Tho comb was empty, and the only symptom of life was the poor queen 
Vrself^ ‘unfriended, melancholy, slow, 1 crawling over the honeyless cells, a sad 
spectacle of tho fall of bee-greatness. Marius among the ruins of Carthage— Napo- 
leon at Fontaluoblcau — was nothing to this. 1 ’— London Quarterly Review* 
