ABOUT BEES. 
FRED. A. WATT. 
THIS subject is an ancient and 
honorable one. The most an- 
cient historical records make 
frequent reference to the honey- 
bee. A poem written 741 B. C, by 
Eremetus was devoted to bees. In 
Scripture we read of them and learn 
that Palestine was "a land flowing with 
milk and honey" and we know that wild 
bees are very numerous there even to 
the present time. In the year 50 B. C, 
Varro recommended that hives be made 
out of basket-work, wool, bark, hol- 
low-trees, pottery, reeds, or transparent 
stone to enable persons to observe the 
bees at work. The name "Deborah" is 
from the Hebrew and means bee; "Me- 
lissa," from the Greek, has the same 
meaning. 
Honey-bees were introduced into the 
United States from Europe, in the sev- 
enteenth century, and our wild honey- 
bees are offspring of escaped swarms. 
Like all enterprising Yankees they first 
settled in the eastern states and rap- 
idly spread over the West, where they 
were regarded with wonder by the In- 
dians and called the "white man's fly." 
They traveled, or spread, with such reg- 
ularity that some observers claimed to 
mark the exact number of miles which 
they traveled westward during each 
year. 
A great many species are almost, or 
entirely, worthless for domestic pur- 
poses, while those that are especially 
valuable are very few. The favorite at 
this time seems to be the Italian spe- 
cies, which was introduced into the 
United States in i860. 
At the opening of the season each 
colony of honey-bees contains one lay- 
ing queen, several drones, and from 
3,000 to 40,000 workers. The workers 
begin by cleaning up the hive, and the 
queen starts in to rear other bees at once; 
new comb is started, honey is brought 
in from the earlier varieties of flowers 
and the busy bee is launched into an- 
other season of sweetness and good 
works. 
The United States Department of 
Agriculture, in one of its "Farmer's Bul- 
letins," under the heading, "How to 
Avoid Stings," says, "First, by having 
gentle bees." At the time I first read 
this I thought they should have com- 
pleted the advice by adding "and ex- 
tract their stings;" but I find on inves- 
tigation that the subject of gentle 
bees, is no light matter to the bee- 
keeper, and that my idea that "a bee is 
a bee and hence entitled to all the 
room he requires" does not hold good; 
that a bee-keeper when purchasing a 
colony of bees of any species not well 
known to him will ask if they are gentle 
in the same tone he would use if he 
were inquiring about a horse. 
Bees seem to do well wherever there 
are flowers enough to furnish them with 
food, and are kept for pleasure and 
profit in all parts of our country. A 
small plot of ground is devoted to bees 
by the farmer, a village lot is often 
filled with hives, and even in our larger 
cities, especially in New York, Chicago, 
and Cincinnati, if not in the gardens or 
on the lawns, they may be found well- 
established on the house-tops, as many 
as thirty or forty colonies being found 
on a single roof. They can usually find 
enough food in and around a city to 
keep themselves busy without making 
long excursions; in fact, it sometimes 
happens that they find more abundant 
pasturage in a city than they would in 
the open country, especially where 
there are large parks and gardens or 
where the linden (basswood) trees 
have been set out in any considerable 
quantities. Sweet clover also some- 
times overruns a neglected garden or 
vacant lot and furnishes a rich field for 
the city-bred honey-bee. 
In Egypt bees are transported on 
IT 
