48 
ANGER OF BEES 
over combs or honey left exposed when 
they have nothing to do. When the supply 
is exhausted their frenzy reaches its height. 
From a little carelessness in this respect, 
and nothing’ else, whole apiaries have been 
so demoralized that people were stung when 
passing along the street several rods dis¬ 
tant. During the middle of the day, when 
bees were busily engaged on the flowers 
during a good yield, we have frequently left 
filled combs standing on the top of a hive 
from noon until evening without a bee 
touching them; but to do this after a hard 
rain, or at a time when little or no honey 
is to be gathered in the fields, might result 
in the ruin of several colonies, and the bees 
being voted a nuisance by the whole neigh¬ 
borhood. 
Almost every season the author gets 
more or less letters complaining that bees 
have suddenly become so cross as to be 
almost unmanageable, and those letters 
come along in July, after the clover and 
linden have begun to slacken. As already 
pointed out, at the beginning of this article, 
it is the slackening or stoppage of the 
flow that makes the bees irritable. 
Bees are not so very unlike mankind 
after all, and all one has to do is to avoid 
opening a hive for a few days, until the 
bees get used to the sudden disappoint¬ 
ments of having avenues thru which thevs 
were getting wealth so rapidly, cut off. 
After a week or 10 days they will be almost 
as gentle as in times when they gathered 
half a gallon of honey daily, if care is 
taken not to let hives be open too long nor 
to leave any bits of honey or comb about. 
It is not easy to explain why bees sting 
so remorselessly and vindictively after hav¬ 
ing had a taste of stolen sweets, yet nearly 
all the instances where there is trouble with 
stinging have been from this very cause. 
Bees from colonies that have a habit of 
robbing will buzz about one’s ears and eyes 
for hours, seeming to delight in making one 
nervous and fidgety if they suceed in so 
doing, and they not only threaten, but often¬ 
times inflict, the most painful stings, and 
then buzz about in an infuriated way, as 
if frantic because unable to sting one a 
dozen times more after their stings are 
lost. The colonies that furnish this class of 
bees are generally hybrid, or perhaps black 
bees having just a trace of Italian blood. 
These bees seem to have a perfect passion 
for following one about and buzzing be¬ 
fore the nose from one side to the other 
(until one gets cross-eyed in trying to fol¬ 
low their erratic oscillations), in a way 
that is most decidedly provoking. One such 
colony annoyed us so much while extract¬ 
ing that we killed the queen, altho she Avas 
very prolific, and substituted a pure Ital¬ 
ian. It is seldom an Italian follows one 
about in the manner mentioned, yet an 
occasional colony may contain bees that 
do it; at least we have found such, where 
the workers were all three-banded. That 
it is possible to have an apiary without any 
such disagreeable bees, we have several 
times demonstrated; but oftentimes it will 
be necessary to discard some of the very 
best honey-gatherers, to be entirely rid of 
them. On occasions like this it is advisable 
to use robber-traps. See Robbers. 
With a little practice the apiarist will tell 
as soon as he comes very near the apiary 
whether any angry bees are about, by the 
high keynote they utter when on the wing. 
It is well known that with the feeding of 
meal (see Pollp:n) there may be perfect 
tranquillity, altho bees from every hive in 
the apiary are working on a square yard of 
meal. Now, should honey be substituted 
for the meal, there Avould be a perfect up¬ 
roar, for a taste of honey found in the 
open air during a dearth of pasturage, or 
at a time when the bees have learned to 
get it by stealing instead of honest indus¬ 
try, seems to have the effect of setting 
every bee crazy. In some experiments to 
determine how and why this result came 
about, we had considerable experience with 
angry bees. After they had been robbing 
and had become tranquil, Ave tried them 
with dry sugar; the quarrelsome bees 
fought about it for a short time, but soon 
resumed their regular business of hanging 
about the well-filled hives, trying to creep 
into every crack and crevice, and making 
themselves generally disagreeable all 
around. If a hive Avas to be opened, they 
were into it almost before the cover was 
raised, and then resulted a pitched battle 
between them and the inmates; the oper¬ 
ator Avas sure to be stung by one or both 
parties, and, pretty soon, some of the good 
people indoors Avould be asking what in 
the world made the bees so awfully cross, 
