Chapter IV: Part 4

I have been asked--Who and what is the queen, and who are those lazy
abbots I referred to as drones? The queen is nearly twice the length
of the common bee, of elegant proportions and shape. On seeing her,
you would at once pronounce her a duchess or a queen. But it is a
singular fact, and well worthy the consideration of sanitary students,
that she rises originally from the ranks, and that treatment makes
all the difference. The egg deposited seems the same as that of
the ordinary bee, but we find it always laid in a cell three times
the size of common cells. As soon as the young queen comes from
the egg, numbers of nurse bees wait on her; she receives finer and
more delicate food, more air, a warmer, larger, and nicer house,
and apparently she is the creation of circumstances. She is the
only female bee. The working-bees are neuters, really imperfectly
developed females; the queen's husband is a drone. With queenly
prerogative and dignity she selects her consort, and off they fly on a
wedding-trip, and spend the honeymoon amid sunshine and flowers. But
it is asked--Why are there so many drones in a hive, if there is only
one wife? This is a very hard problem. But one part of it seems to me
very clear. When the Queen's countless eggs come to be hatched, the
temperature of the hive must be raised to 85° or 90° Fahrenheit. The
bees must go out of doors to work. The fat, round, and lazy drones are
really the fuel. They accordingly give out heat when most wanted. Mr.
Cotton holds this view also. This year I had two stock-hives during
breeding that stood, from 10 to 4 o'clock, at 95° Fahrenheit. We thus
learn that fat old gentlemen are of use, and that Mr. Banting's system
is not always wise or expedient. There are in a good hive three or
four royal cells; consequently, three or four queens will turn up.
What follows? If the heat be great and additional room withheld, the
old queen will abdicate and head a secession--in apiarian language,
a swarm--and the next senior queen will ascend the throne. If there
be still no increase of room allowed, she, too, will secede and head
a second secession--in apiarian phrase, a caste--usually feeble,
requiring when hived to be fed, and rarely a desirable issue. But
when increased space is given, and a drawing-room is added to the
dining-room, and boudoirs to the nursery, I am asked what follows. Do
the princesses live together in harmony? My answer, from very careful
observation, reveals a sad fact--a fact I cannot suppose to have been
instituted in Paradise. If two queens turn up in a hive with plenty
of space, but related space, they fight it out till one alone lives.
So settled is this law, that the bees hound on the more timid and
cowardly of the two queens, and insist on victory with supremacy or
death. This is to me a very melancholy trait in a favourite study; but
I suppose some higher law requires it.

It has been urged as a commercial question that honey is not now of
the same importance as it was before the sugar-cane was discovered,
and that gas has superseded wax candles. I am satisfied from many
considerations, that if people would eat honey at breakfast instead
of rancid London butter and nasty greasy bacon, not only would
their health be better, but their temper would be sweeter. I find
invariably that people who like honey are persons of genial and
affectionate temper. If Mr. Cobden and Mr. Roebuck had only taken
honey at breakfast, or a very choice fragment of virgin honey at
dessert, they would never have given utterance to those vinegar and
acetic-acid speeches which did them no credit. I wish somebody would
send Mr. Spurgeon a super of good honey. Three months' diet on this
celestial food would induce him to give up those shockingly bitter and
unchristian tirades he has been lately making against the clergy of
the Church of England. The producers of honey never draw their stings
unless in defence of their homesteads, and the eaters and admirers of
honey rarely indulge in acrimonious language. I believe a great deal
of bad feeling is not moral or mental, but physical, in its origin.
If you have in a congregation, or in a school, or in a convocation,
some one who sets everybody by the ears, treat him to a little honey
at breakfast for six months, and the "thorn will blossom as the rose."
People that can't eat honey--"_hunc tu caveto_"--they can't ever fit
"a land overflowing with milk and honey."

I have not answered half the letters I have received; but because you
have been so good as to take an interest in this very interesting
subject, I intend to send you, as an expression of my thanks, a
small glass super of honey filled from heath during July. If you
do not eat honey, which I hope and, indeed, am sure is not the
fact, you can give a portion to any inmates of your great hive in
Printing-house-square who may be prone to use their stings too freely.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

A Bee-master.

Tunbridge Wells, August 2.

* * * * *

The origin of the following letter was a very foolish letter which a correspondent sent to _The Times_. His cannot be the deliberate conviction of anyone acquainted with bees. Perhaps he was offended that no notice was taken of a very unsatisfactory hive patented by him. But as I could not praise, I thought it unnecessary to blame.

A Hornet Among the Bees.

_To the Editor of The Times._

Sir,--It is well that bees have not learnt to read _The Times_. Did
they see all that your correspondent says about them, they would send
a battalion to his residence, and ere they returned to Tunbridge
Wells they would make their calumniator exhaust all his remedies
for bee-stings. Had this good gentleman eaten more honey and drank
less vinegar he would have written a more affectionate letter; and
had he watched the habits of bees as I have done, or studied the
results of the investigations of Huber, he would not surely have
written with ignorance so crass. I am not irritated with him, but I
am immensely jealous for the honour and good name of my bees. It is
said of some crotchety people, "they have each a bee in his bonnet,"
but I venture to think of your correspondent, "he has a wasp in his
bonnet." The only philosophical way by which I can account for the
absurdities of this letter is that it was written, as he observes,
"for our continental and transatlantic brethren," neither of whom have
any precedent or encouragement for recent Austro-Prussian misdeeds,
or American democracy and its recent excesses, in the habits and
instincts of bees.

"First," says your correspondent, "with regard to remaining at peace
with each other, as soon as honey-gathering is over, should any stocks
betray weakness, the war of Germany against Denmark is enacted, and
the invaders take all. Whatever virtues bees possess, honesty or even
the slightest respect for _meum et tuum_ is not among them."

A grosser libel on the apiarian race was never perpetrated. Their
respect for _meum_ is so intense that they will defend their queen and
home to the death. Their respect for _tuum_ is so entire that they
never touch the property of their neighbours, unless in circumstances
which would justify men as well as bees in seizing the property of
another.

Your correspondent perhaps robs one of his stocks of its stores, or
takes away for the market or his table too much of their accumulated
wealth. Winter threatens its arrival. Can this irritable old apiarian
expect that 6,000 or 10,000 bees will lie down and die martyr deaths
in order to confute his libellous theory of _meum et tuum?_ Or he
has neglected to feed a caste of 4,000 bees; or, instead of giving
them barley-sugar, he offers them the miserly mess he recommends, and
the unhappy, famished bees, like a Highland clan, set out "to lift"
the means of existence. He starves his bees, and when they forage he
denounces them as thieves. If a bee-master does his duty by protecting
his hives, feeding the unfortunate and weak, no such freebooters will
be found among his bees.

2. Your correspondent, for once, is gracious. He acquits bees of
habits of intoxication. He forgets that I stated they never get drunk
unless the bee-master supplies the intoxicating element. But if he
will place a feeding-pan full of good Scotch ale before the hives, I
will eat pan and beer and bees if they do not sip every drop, and give
very unmistakable proofs that they have done so.

3. Your correspondent says: "Mr. Harbeson, a sturdy citizen of
the American Republic, considers the queen a simple machine for
laying eggs, absolutely under the workers' control. I do not go
these lengths, but Mr. Harbeson is far nearer the truth than your
correspondent."

There can be no doubt that this "is written for our transatlantic
brethren." It is a fine illustration for Abraham Lincoln. I hope your
correspondent will not be offended if I suspect in him a machine for
speaking nonsense. He has only to extend this free philosophy, to
see in rose-bushes machines for growing roses, and in birds machines
for building nests; in Tennyson a machine for spinning poetry, and
in Lord Palmerston a machine for turning out speeches. This wretched
materialistic philosophy may please the "sturdy American citizens
and transatlantic brethren;" but how a sane Englishman can dare to
ventilate such arrant rubbish, I know not.

His exaggerated talk about bees being regicides would electrify Red
Republicans, but it is not true. That the queen, who has precedence
of birth, destroys the princess next to her that might be her rival,
I admitted and deplored in my letters as sad. But that bees are
regicides is not fact. They never kill their queen; they love and are
loyal to her, and obey her commands. I said they hate republicanism,
and so they do, and so do I. No doubt your correspondent's
discoveries will charm his transatlantic brethren. But if ever a
people were in want of a queen, they are. Your correspondent may like
Abraham Lincoln; I infinitely prefer Queen Victoria. He says cottagers
cannot make Ayrshire hives. They do cleverer things. At all events,
they can try. The Ayrshire hive is octagonal, I admit; but all I said
was, that my success as a bee-master led me to suspect they prefer
a box similar to their combs, and therefore I intend this winter to
have several hexagonal bee-hives. A suspicion of preference was all I
ventured to state.

Your correspondent says: "Common sugar (lump-sugar is best) does not
require to be exposed to a heat of 300° to be available to bees." No
wonder his weak stocks plunder his strong ones, for bees cannot eat
and do not eat lump-sugar or brown sugar. Their lambent organisation
renders it impossible. I spoke of feeding with pure sugar, and stated
that it is available alone in the shape of barley-sugar only. That it
can be presented boiled up in beer or water, I taught when I alluded
to its being dissolved in ale. But whether in water or ale, it smears
their wings, clogs their feet, and is vastly inferior in all respects
to barley-sugar.

Your correspondent objects to rubbing the wound of a bee's sting
with tobacco-juice. I speak from experience. I have tried every
prescription, and most assuredly I will not try his. He says:--

"If anyone has a swarm consisting of only 5,000 or 6,000 bees, let him
not take the trouble of hiving it. A good swarm will weigh 4 lbs., and
I have known one weigh 8 lbs. Now, 5,000 bees are computed to go to
a pound, and this is not too many, for a friend of mine counted and
weighed 5,020 freshly-killed bees this spring, and they only weighed
12-1/2 ounces. Let any one, therefore, do a simple sum in mental
arithmetic, and say if 15,000 to 30,000 are not within the mark, even
allowing for the weight of honey earned off by the swarm."

I mentioned 5,000 or 6,000 bees as a swarm. It is the lowest, I
freely allow. But I will add to your correspondent's knowledge. I
had a caste thrown off last year, at the end of June. I despaired
of its weathering the winter, but I resolved to feed it richly with
barley-sugar till March. The maximum number of bees was 5,000. It had
filled the lower box with at least 40 lbs. of honey by the middle
of June this year. The bees had increased immensely. I opened the
communication with a large super. This super has in it now not less
than 26 lbs. of the whitest cells and honey I ever saw. I have shown
it to many whose mouths watered for a slice of it. I never join
stocks. We feed cattle on oil-cake: why not feed weakly stocks with
barley-sugar? What your correspondent proposes as his explanation of
2,000 drones in a hive where there is only one queen, with, perhaps, a
couple of princesses, is, like his whole philosophy, very absurd, and
unworthy of a serious answer.

Your correspondent says:--

"Bees are never nursed by other bees. They are strict utilitarians,
and totally devoid of sympathy. 'Those who cannot work shall not eat,'
is a law applied with stern impartiality alike to the disabled worker
and the useless drone. He, therefore, who would teach or learn a
lesson in charity must look elsewhere."

My reply to this is, I have seen the disabled bee tended with
exquisite and unwearied attention, rolled in the sunshine on the
bee-board, and carried or helped into their homes. His testimony is
negative, mine is positive.

He concludes his letter by informing us--

"As it is, I am very desirous of making it known to our continental
and American friends that these letters [in _The Times_] do not convey
an adequate idea of the amount of knowledge of the subject possessed
by British bee-masters."

His letter, he reiterates, was written for the American market. I
only hope they will not suppose that his crotchets are the measure of
the amount of knowledge possessed or of the affection felt by English
bee-masters.

If in his next he will mix a little honey with his ink, and eat a
little at breakfast, he will do greater justice to himself.

I am, &c.,

A Bee-master.

Tunbridge Wells.

* * * * *

Bees, Bee-hives, and Bee-masters.

_To the Editor of "The Times."_

Sir,--I have been so annoyed at your correspondent's attack on the
good name of my bees, that I cannot resist the temptation of saying a
word or two of additional defence.

That the queen is not a mere egg-laying machine obedient to mere
mechanical impulses, nor her subjects mere mechanical creations
obeying similar impulses with no instructive appreciation, will be
evident from the following facts:--

Reaumur, the eminent naturalist, observes that after the queen-regnant
has become a mother--

"The bees are constantly on the watch to make themselves useful to
her and to render her every kind office. They are for ever offering
her honey. They lick her with the proboscis, and wherever she goes
they form a court to attend her. Even the body of a dead queen is
the object of tender affection to the bees. I took a queen out of
the water seemingly dead. She was also mutilated, having lost a
leg. Bringing her home, I placed her amid a number of working-bees
recovered from drowning also by means of warmth. No sooner did the
revived workers perceive the queen in her miserable plight, than they
appeared to compassionate her, and continued to lick her with their
tongues until she showed signs of returning vitality, when they set up
a general hum as of joy at the event."

Huber writes:--

"I have seen the workers lavish the most tender care on such a queen,
and, after her decease, surround her inanimate body with the same
respect and homage as they had paid to her while living, and in the
presence of these beloved remains refuse all attention to young and
fertile queens who were offered to them."

These are two facts noticed and recorded by the two most eminent and
careful apiarian naturalists. They are, in the judgment of everyone
able to appreciate weight of evidence, conclusive disproofs of the
material and mechanical theory, and no less decisive confirmations of
all I ventured to state in your columns.

The senses of the bee are no less clear protests against the
mechanical theory so acceptable to "our transatlantic brethren."

The bee leaves her house, traverses fields a mile or two distant, and
returns to her home--one amid twenty contiguous ones--with unerring
certainty.

The sense of touch through its antennæ is so exquisite, that in total
darkness it carries on its architecture as perfectly as by day.

Its smell is possessed of unrivalled sensibility. Odours from afar
are directly scented. Huber thinks it is the scent, not the colour of
flowers, that attracts them.

Their power of memory is illustrated by Huber. He placed a supply of
honey on the sill of an open window in autumn. The bees feasted on it
for weeks. He removed the honey and closed the window during winter.
Next spring the bees came to the same window, looking for supplies.
Here was memory of place and circumstances lasting during half a bee's
lifetime.

Huber mentions a species of moth that attacks and plunders bee-hives;
it is called the death's-head moth. Finding out its daring
depredations, he lessened the apertures of some of his hives, leaving
sufficient room for the exit and entrance of the bees, but not for the
entrance of the moth. This succeeded perfectly. But several hives he
left undefended. In each of these undefended hives the bees raised a
Avail of wax and propolis right behind their doors of entrance, making
embrasures for exit and entrances through the solid wall. As soon as
spring arrived and all danger was at an end, these Royal Engineers
threw down their fortifications.

I need not refer to the perfect and well-known geometrical
construction of the cells of a hive as evidences of design and
high instinct; they combine the maximum of strength with the least
expenditure of substance and the largest capacity in a given space.
The equilateral triangle, the square, and the hexagon, were the only
three forms of tubular cells that would leave no interstices: in the
first there would be lost space in each angle; a similar disadvantage
would be found in the second. The bees, by an instinct surely Divine,
or in the exercise of engineering powers demonstrative of mind, have
adopted the last.

Having thus disposed of your correspondent, will you allow me to
select one or two of the most important practical inquiries which
I have received in upwards of twenty additional letters addressed
to "_The Times_ Bee-master?" Your universal circulation is the
cause of my extraordinary visitation of correspondence, and this
unexpectedly-wide practical interest in bees will justify you to your
readers. One asks, "How am I to begin an apiary?" Let me tell him.
Buy a stock this month or next for 20_s._, taking care that it is not
old, and weighs (inclusive of straw hive) not less than 30 lbs. Erect
a shed with sloping roof projecting sufficiently to carry the rain
beyond the alighting-board of the bees. The length may be 12 feet, the
height about 6 feet, and width 2-1/2 feet. Divide it into six equal
sections or chambers. Make an exit in each, three inches long by two
inches high. Place each hive in the centre of one of them, with its
opening directly opposite the opening in the chamber. Fix below each
opening in the shed a bees' landing-board sloping at an angle of 25°.
If you can afford it, buy six stock-hives. Next May cut out the top
of each, as I directed in a previous letter. Place on it a board with
circular hole, and a bell-glass rather narrower at the lower part than
at the centre; cover each with its plaid nightcap, and you will have
plenty of delicious honey in 1865.

If, however, you do not mind loss of time, build your shed this
autumn, make it smooth inside to discourage spiders, and next April
send round the country to cottagers keeping bees, and engage six good
swarms, which ought not to cost more than 10_s._ each. In carrying
them home, pin over the entrance-hole a piece of gauze, tie a towel or
napkin underneath, fastening the four corners at the top, and do not
jolt the young family unnecessarily. If the swarms can be had in May,
and if it prove a fine summer, you may place a glass on each about the
end of June. Do not forget the old adage--

"A swarm in May
Is worth a load of hay;
A swarm in June
Is worth a silver spoon;
A swarm in July
Is worth a fly."

If your swarm is an early June one, you may save it by pushing three
or four sticks of barley-sugar into the hive by the exit aperture once
a fortnight till next March. Any little expense in feeding introduces
you to your bees and helps them wonderfully, and is never a loss.

If you want to tempt the bees to feed in your own garden, sow
mignonette, salvia, and sanfoin; plant plenty of raspberry,
gooseberry, and currant bushes. They like lime poplars,
apple-blossoms, thyme, and, above all, borage. Bees never touch
double flowers. Should the early summer prove very dry, place near
your bee-shed two or three soup-plates half-full of water, taking
care to put in as many pebbles as each will hold. The bees require
stepping-stones for their tiny feet, and otherwise they are necessary
to save them from drowning.

I am giving directions to those who desire to work economically.
But if you can lay out a little as an investment, and you desire
to combine interest and pleasure with profit, you cannot do better
than call on Neighbour, either in Regent-street or Holborn, where
I have seen many varieties of hives of different prices and all of
good workmanship. In answer to numerous inquiries about the Ayrshire
hives, I am sorry to be obliged to answer that I have to send to
Scotland for them. They may be had of Air. Bruce Taylor, Post-office,
Mauchlin, Ayrshire; or of Messrs. Craig, Stewarton, Ayrshire. The
three boxes in the lower or stock hive, with two supers exactly
corresponding, cost me 20_s._ But they last for ever. Their chief
value is their productiveness. Neighbours' and Pettitt's are far more
interesting for experimental uses. The collateral system is the most
elegant, but least productive; its bee-boxes are also expensive.
Your correspondent's hive (which I ought previously to have referred
to) is no improvement, and its architect has so bad an opinion of
the moral character of bees, that were they to know it was his, they
would desert it. There are people to whom bees never take, and there
are hives they invariably sicken in. I do not like the nadir system
recommended in _The Times_ by "A Rector." Bees naturally ascend or
traverse the same plane, but mostly preferring ascent. "Excelsior"
is their favourite aspiration. In answer to another inquiry, do I
approve using stupifying fumes, as of puff-ball, &c., in order to
expel the bees from supers full of honey?--I say, certainly not. It
may not injure the bees if judiciously administered. Some highly
recommend it. But it is not necessary. The bees will leave the super
on its being detached from the hive and carried to a little distance,
and will return in an hour or two to their home and their queen. The
only case in which I have recourse to fumigation is when any portion
of the comb, through accidental admission of wet, has become mouldy.
A few whiffs of puff-ball may be injected, by means of an instrument
sold for this purpose, during five minutes. As soon as the humming
noise ceases, lift the hive and cut out the mouldy portion of the
comb, replace it, and in twenty minutes the bees will again be at
work. This is the only case in which I like to employ either this or
tobacco-smoke, which answers as well if not too long continued.

Your apiary or bee-shed should be placed as near your dwelling as
possible, sheltered from the north and northeast winds, and at the
greatest possible distance from poultry. Frequently, but quietly
and unobtrusively, visit your bees, watch them at work in your
bee-glasses, or by windows in your bee-boxes. Let your children
play beside them. They are fond of children, and unless violently
irritated they will not injure them. I can state this from very ample
experience. At the same time, it is proper to state, that some few
persons are so offensive to bees that they must not approach them.
Plenty of soap and water and fastidious cleanliness are essential to a
bee-master's continued popularity with his apiarian family.

I am, &c.,

A Bee-master.

Tunbridge Wells.

* * * * *

About Wasps.

_To the Editor of "The Times."_

Sir,--There is no sweet without a bitter. Every bee-master feels
the plague of wasps this autumn of 1864; for fifteen years, the
range of my experience as a bee-master, I have not seen so fierce
and multitudinous bands of wasps descending on my bees on predatory
incursions. I do not mean to insinuate that the wasp has no mission,
I believe he has his use. He is the scavenger of our gardens, and
clears off decay, putrescence, and filth of every sort. For this I
give him credit, but I cannot extend to him either the affection
or respect I feel for my bees. Wasps often remind me of a class of
critics not found in Printing-house-square, but by no means rare in
other quarters. Like wasps, they ignore or pass by ripe, fragrant,
and beautiful fruit, and select and gloat over incidental decay.
The wasp-critic does not touch a beautiful thought in Tennyson or
Longfellow; he can neither appreciate nor digest it. But if he can
only discover a word misspelt or a word misprinted, or the word
"octagon" accidentally used for "hexagon," he buzzes about it for
hours, and feeds on it with waspish delight. Should the editor of a
respectable paper or periodical refuse his contribution, he flies
to a congenial refuge, and there pours out what wasps have nearly a
monopoly of--the venom identified with and peculiar to that insect.

There is also the wasp ecclesiastical. He contributes no sweet
honey to the Church, and takes little interest in its good. But in
Synods, Presbyteries, Convocations, he flies about, driving his
sting sometimes into a bishop and sometimes into a presbyter. A sin
in another he scents from afar. A virtue in a brother he cannot
appreciate. He lives on decay. He sings while he feeds on it. It is
his nutriment and his joy.

There is also the political wasp. He has no fixed principles, but,
instead, he has a furious temper. He makes great noise, and attacks
everybody right and left that comes within scent, eyesight, or
earshot. His delight is proportionate to the degree in which he can
sting. He cares nothing about party, or side, or leader. He spurns all
organisation. He revels in wrath and fierce words and keen invective,
unsweetened by a grain of genial feeling, or an expression softened
by the humanities and amenities of debate, and unillumined by wit or
humour.

There is the wasp social. He is impersonated in the burglar. Were
you to see the wasps this autumn rushing into my hives, sometimes
by a sudden dash, at other times by stealth, you would instantly
acknowledge in them the type of the thief and the burglar. But my bees
are better prepared for the wasp's reception than London house-holders
for thieves. He runs the gauntlet every time he enters. Through my
glass observatory windows I watch the conflict. One bee, half his
size, seizes him by the throat, another gives him a taste of his
sting, and two or three watchers seize him by the legs and drag him
out. I have hit on an admirable plan of keeping him off, well worth
disclosing to every bee-master. I place at the entrance of the hive
a stick of barley-sugar a couple of inches long. This brings to
the entrance a dozen of bees, who thankfully feed on it. There is
thus secured an additional guard at the gates. The moment the wasp
alights, the whole _posse_ fly at him and drive him away. Another plan
is to fill half-full a wine-bottle with beer and sugar. Incidentally
a bee may look in, but the wasps, whose scent is perfect, rush in
and are drowned. It is a sacred duty devolving on every bee-master
to exterminate these Arabs, Bedouins, and corsairs. They lay up no
stores for themselves--they do nothing for the support or enjoyment
of man. They use their stings, not like bees, in self-defence, but in
sheer wickedness. They are professional thieves. Like the bees of a
correspondent of yours, they have no respect for _tuum_, and having no
_meum_, they care nothing. Living at the expense of others, without
consulting the convenience or goodwill of anybody, they richly deserve
what their extermination will pay for--sulphur, gunpowder, and boiling
water. Let every bee-master give sixpence to every boy who destroys a
wasps'-nest.

The wasp builds its nest generally underground. Their cells are
hexagonal. The house is built of paper, fabricated by this insect long
before its manufacture was discovered by man. With their powerful
jaws they tear off decayed wood, which they moisten with a sort of
gum or glue secreted from themselves. They form this into a kind of
pulp and spread it out into thin sheets, with which they roof in and
surround their cells. So far they are good paper manufacturers; but
I have not heard of their paper being used in the service of man.
They seem also to understand the laws of heat. Everybody knows that
double windows are warmer than single ones, the atmospheric air being
a good non-conductor. The wasps surround themselves with several walls
of paper, leaving spaces between, and thus not only keep out the
cold, but render the entrance of damp all but impossible. The combs
of the wasp are built in horizontal tiers, supported by pillars. In
this respect they are builders as well as papermakers. They are also
admirable sappers and miners. They tunnel a covered way from their
nest to the open air, and very often, instead of using a deserted
mole or mouse hole, they excavate a round chamber of really fine
proportions. It is truly matter of regret that so much capable talent
should be prostituted to so much dishonesty. Unhappily, thieves and
pick-pockets are generally very clever. Yet reformatories do operate
real transformations of thieves; but no plan that philanthropy has
yet devised has turned a wasp into a kind, honest, and respectable
member of society. He is incapable of transmutation. He is worthy
of the special study of Darwin. The death penalty, I unhesitatingly
affirm, is due to every wasp that enters a bee-garden. The razing
of his house, the desolation of its furniture, and the dislodgment
and destruction of the whole clan, have become a sacred duty. Even
the Quaker, who objects to the sentence of death on murderers, would
consent to the doom of the wasp. I cannot believe there were wasps in
Paradise of old. Though no prophet, nor prophet's son, I confidently
predict there will be no wasps in Paradise that is to be, nor will
there be waspish tempers, or passions, or propensities. Of all ugly
things on earth, next to the serpent, a hornet is the ugliest, the
most thievish, and the most dishonest You can neither tame nor
turn the wicked imp. He is a thief from his birth--a bee-cide by
habit; feeding on corruption, and full of wickedness. If, instead of
killing sparrows and blackbirds and thrushes, because they take a few
currants, while they destroy slugs and vermin, and many of them regale
springtide with song, the farmers would set about destroying wasps,
they would find as much amusement, and do vastly more good. I have a
lurking suspicion that some of those apiarians who speak against bees,
and call them thieves and regicides, must have wasps, not bees, in
their hives. Let me beg of these irritable gentlemen, who never cease
buzzing, to examine their hives. Let me remind them that wasps are
bigger and longer than bees; are surrounded with concentric yellow
circles, emit a subterranean sort of hum, neither treble, tenor,
nor bass, and, after a little study on their part, may be easily
distinguished from bees. Above all, let me intreat them to give up
feeding on wasps' food, and, if they have no honey of their own, let
me offer them half a bar, in order to elevate their taste or improve
their temper.

Let me also beg all that value their lives to examine well every
apple, pear, and peach they eat; for these venomous insects may be
seen this year ensconced under the skin, and if admitted within the
mouth they will sting the throat, and, as in several recent cases,
the sufferers will die. Do not conclude I am uncharitable; I am not
so. It is no charity to connive at theft and murder. I am satisfied
that killing wasps is no murder. Had Peter the Hermit or Walter the
Penniless lived in my garden, and witnessed these wicked vagabonds
trying every hive, worrying my bees and stealing my honey, they
would have preached a crusade against wasps. In one respect they are
unfortunate; they have no queen, no subordination or reverence for law
and order. They are genuine Red Republicans--Marats and Robespierres,
and richly deserve the worst they get.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

A Bee-Master.

Tunbridge Wells.

The Bee-master's Sermon.

_To the Editor of "The Times."_

Sir,--The object of my letters has been to open up to the cottager
a means of revenue very agreeable, but very much neglected or
mismanaged. I have directed your attention to bee-keeping, not as a
fancy pursuit, or as an interesting entomological investigation, but
as a practical and real work. Hence I have not discussed a variety of
toys used as bee-hives, very pretty and very tasteful to the eye of
a sentimental aparian, but so bothering to the bees that they wish
such houses were at the bottom of the sea. Simplicity of structure,
directness of use, and availableness for deprivation of honey, and yet
preservation of the honey-makers, ought to be the guiding law. Bees
don't like to be paid too many, too obsequious, or too patronising
attentions. I want, however, in this closing letter to turn my largest
hive into a pulpit, and to preach a short apiarian homily to English
cottagers, which I know they will read, and hope they will "mark,
learn, and inwardly digest."

1. They may carry from the hive to the cottage-hearth a lesson of
industry. During work the bees are so intensely absorbed in their
duty, that they ignore every distracting and diverging object and
interest. They have learnt well a text their masters would do well to
copy: "Not slothful in business." There is no getting on in this world
of ours without hard work. It is not work and plenty of it that kills
people, but worry.

2. Bees teach a lesson of loyalty. They are monarchical by conviction
and in practice. They love a queen, whose sovereignty is motherhood,
and whose service is perfect freedom. They detest your republics, and
democracies, and radicalism in all its phases.

3. Bees are immensely attached to their homes. They are "keepers at
home." No mother of a family gets on by gadding about and gossiping
from house to house.

4. Bees are models of cleanliness. The care with which they remove
filth of all kinds is something remarkable. They plainly believe
what many Christians say, "cleanliness is nearest to godliness." The
cottager cannot in this matter do better than follow the example of
these admirable sanitary philosophers.

5. Bees set a beautiful example of Christian sympathy. I have seen a
wounded bee, accidentally hurt, carried out from the hive and laid
tenderly on the bee-board in the warm sunshine. One bee would lick
the sufferer with his tongue from head to foot; another would roll
him over and over in the sunshine; and at sunset they would carry him
in to his sick bed. I do not complain of want of such sympathy among
the poor. I have seen much of it in the homes of the most destitute,
and witnessed personal attentions and sacrifices and services in a
district surrounding Brewer's-court ragged schools, which have never
been exceeded, if equalled, in the houses of the great.

6. Bees are very fond of fresh air. A hive is one of the best
ventilated homes; and I have some doubt about the wisdom or success
of the various arrangements made by some bee-masters for increasing
the ventilation of their hives. In a hot and sultry day I have seen
successive lines of bees take up their position at the mouth of the
hive, and, joining the tips of their wings, work these fanners for ten
minutes, and then retire and let the second parallel line come to the
front and continue the same process. This example is not efficiently
followed in city or cottage. People who are most careful about what
they eat and drink and put into their stomachs, are utterly careless
what they allow to enter their lungs. Now, the truth is, it is easier
to poison a man through his lungs than through his stomach. My bees
would die in a London bed-room in twelve hours.

7. Bees are very early risers. The first ray of sunshine is their
matin bell, and by seven o'clock P.M. they are most of them at home.
People that live long and are healthy differ in many of their habits,
but generally agree in being early risers. Early light has sanitary
as well as photographic influences, which post-meridian light is a
stranger to. "Early to bed and early up" is an admirable maxim--an
axiom among bees, and it should be a habit among rational men.

8. Bees are peaceful and peacemakers. This will appear a hasty
statement to all who remember that bees have stings. But a little
thought will justify what I say. Bees never give way to aggressive
warfare. They never attack those who do not attack their queen or
their homestead. Their stings are purely defensive. This is a very
curious fact, and very suggestive also. If they had no stings at all,
they would be an argument for the Peace Society. But as it is, they
prove that the best defence of home is a good preparation to repel the
aggressor. When, therefore, Mr. Bright preaches the duty of breaking
up the navy and disbanding the army, it would be the conduct of a
great hornet impressing on bees the duty of extracting their stings.
Were the bees such simpletons as to listen to his plausible logic, and
give up their stings, they would be surrounded by swarms of wasps, who
would very soon make them give up their honey. As if to teach the bees
that their weapons are to be used only in the last extremity, every
bee knows that the use of his sting is followed by its inevitable loss
and his destruction. It sticks where it strikes, and the violence
done to the bee ends always in death. While admiring Mr. Bright's love
of peace, I hope every bee-keeper in England will prefer the bees' way
of maintaining it. So sweet and short is a bee-master's sermon.

I think I have shown in these letters that morals, money, country, and
enjoyment may all be helped a little by keeping bees; and, therefore,
that I have done some good by directing attention to these "great and
marvellous works" of One who still gives his care to a bee-hive and to
Buckingham Palace.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

A Bee-Master.

Tunbridge Wells.

IX.--BEE-THINGS IN GENERAL.

As this work does not profess to be an entomological essay but a practical bee-master's directory, I have omitted those erudite questions about which apiarians wrangle, and unfortunately lose their temper and employ their stings.

But there are some interesting bits of instruction scattered over bee-books which it may interest the reader to lay before him. If they contribute nothing to the amount of the honey harvest, they may increase the pleasure of the bee-master in the long winter evenings.

THE INSTINCT OR INTELLIGENCE OF BEES.

Huber relates:--

"He put under a bell-glass about a dozen humble-bees, without any
store of wax, along with a comb of about ten silken cocoons, so
unequal in height that it was impossible the mass should stand firmly.
Its unsteadiness disquieted the humble-bees extremely. Their affection
for their young led them to mount upon the cocoons for the sake of
imparting warmth to the inclosed little ones, but in attempting
this the comb tottered so violently that the scheme was almost
impracticable. To remedy this inconvenience, and to make the comb
steady, they had recourse to a most ingenious expedient. Two or three
bees got upon the comb, stretched themselves over its edge, and with
their heads downwards fixed their fore-feet on the table upon which it
stood, whilst with their hind-feet they kept it from falling. In this
constrained and painful posture, fresh bees relieving their comrades
when weary, did these affectionate little insects support the comb
for nearly three days. At the end of this period they had prepared a
sufficiency of wax, with which they built pillars that kept it in a
firm position; but, by some accident afterwards, these got displaced,
when they had again recourse to their former manœuvre for supplying
their place; and this operation they perseveringly continued, until M.
Huber, pitying their hard task, relieved them by fixing the object of
their attention firmly on the table."

Lardner quotes from Kirby the following curious illustration of the
habits of the clothier-bee:--

"Kirby mentions the example of nests of this kind found by himself and
others, constructed in the inside of the lock of a garden-gate.

"A proceeding has been ascertained on the part of these insects
in such cases, which it is extremely difficult to ascribe to mere
instinct, independent of some intelligence. Wherever the nest may be
constructed, the due preservation of the young requires that until
they attain the perfect state, their temperature should be maintained
at a certain point So long as the material surrounding their nest is
a very imperfect conductor of heat, as earth or the pith of wood is,
the heat developed by the insect, being confined, is sufficient to
maintain its temperature at the requisite point. But if, perchance,
the mother-bee select for her nest any such locality as that of the
lock of the gate, the metal, being a good conductor of heat, would
speedily dissipate the animal heat developed by the insect, and thus
reduce its temperature to a point incompatible with the continuance of
its existence. How then does the tender mother, foreseeing this, and
consequently informed by some power of the physical quality peculiar
to the metal surrounding the nest, provide against it? How, we may
ask, would a scientific human architect prevent such an eventuality?
He would seek for a suitable material which is a non-conductor of
heat, and would surround the nest with it. In fact, the very thing
has occurred in a like case in relation to steam-engine boilers.
The economy of fuel there rendered it quite as necessary to confine
the heat developed in the furnace, as it is to confine that which
is developed in the natural economy of the pupa of the bee. The
expedient, therefore, resorted to is to invest the boiler in a thick
coating of a sort of felt, made for the purpose, which is almost a
non-conductor of heat. A casing of sawdust is also used in Cornwall
for a like purpose. By these expedients the escape of heat from the
external surface of the boiler is prevented.

"The bee keeps its pupa warm by an expedient so exactly similar, that
we must suppose that she has been guided either by her own knowledge,
or by a power that commands all knowledge, in her operations. She
seeks certain woolly-leaved plants, such as the _stachys lamata_ or
the _agrostemma coronaria_, and with her mandibles scrapes off the
wool. She rolls this into little balls, and carrying it to the nest,
sticks it on the external surface by means of a plaster, composed of
honey and pollen, with which she previously coats it. Thus invested,
the cells become impervious to heat, and consequently all the heat
developed by the little animal is confined within them.

"The name of _upholsterers_ has been given by Kirby to certain species
of bees, who, having excavated their nest in the earth, hang its
walls with a splendid coating of flowers and leaves. One of the most
interesting of these varieties is the _megachile papareris_, which has
been described by Reaumur. It chooses invariably for the hangings of
its apartments the most brilliant scarlet, selecting as its material
the petals of the wild poppy, which the insect dexterously cuts into
the proper form.

"Her first process is to excavate in some pathway a burrow cylindrical
at the entrance, but enlarged as it descends, the depth being about
three inches. After having polished the walls, she next flies to a
neighbouring field, where she cuts out the oval parts of the poppy
blossoms, and seizing them between her hind legs returns with them
to her cell. Sometimes it happens that the flower from which she
cuts these, being but half-blown, has a wrinkled petal. In that
case she spreads out the folds, and smoothers away the wrinkles,
and if she finds that the pieces are too large to fit the vacant
spaces on the walls of her little room, she soon reduces them to
suitable dimensions, by cutting off all the superfluous parts with
her mandibles. In hanging the walls with this brilliant tapestry she
begins at the bottom, and gradually ascends to the roof. She carpets
in the same manner the surface of the ground round the margin of the
orifice. The floor is rendered warm sometimes by three or four layers
of carpeting, but never has less than two.

"Our little upholsterer having thus completed the hangings of her
apartment, fills it with a mixture of pollen and honey to the height
of about half an inch. She then lays an egg in it, and wraps over
the poppy lining, so that even the roof may be furnished with this
material. Having accomplished this, she closes the mouth of the
nest.[A]

[Footnote A: Reaumur, vi. 139 to 145.]

"It is not every insect of this class which manifests the same
showy taste in the colours of their furniture. The species called
leaf-cutters hang their walls in the same way, not with the blossoms
but the leaves of trees, and more particularly those of the rose-tree.
They differ also from the upholsterer described above, in the
external structure of their nests, which are formed in much longer
cylindrical holes, and consist of a series of thimble-shaped cells,
composed of leaves most curiously convoluted. We are indebted likewise
to Reaumur for a description of the labours of these.

"The mother first excavates a cylindrical hole in a horizontal
direction eight or ten inches long, either in the ground or in the
trunk of a rotten tree, or any other decaying wood. She fills this
hole with six or seven thimble-shaped cells, composed of cut leaves,
the convex end of each fitting into the open end of the other. Her
first process is to form the external coating, which is composed of
three or four pieces of larger dimensions than the rest, and of an
oval form. The second coating consists of portions of equal size,
narrow at one end, but gradually widening towards the other, where the
width equals half the length. One side of these pieces is the serrated
edge of the leaf from which it was taken, which, as the pieces lap
over each other, is kept on the outside, the edge which was cut being
within.

"The little animal next forms a third coating of similar material,
the middle of which, as the most skilful workman would do in a like
case, she places over the margins of those that form the first side,
thus covering and strengthening the junctions by the expedient which
mechanics call a break-joint. Continuing the same process, she gives a
fourth and sometimes a fifth coating to her nest, taking care at the
closed end, or narrow extremity of the cell, to bend the leaves so as
to form a convex termination.

"After thus completing each cell, she proceeds to fill it to within
the twentieth of an inch of the orifice with a rose-coloured sweetmeat
made of the pollen collected from thistle-blossoms mixed with honey.
Upon this she lays her egg, and then closes the orifice with three
pieces of leaf, one placed upon the other, concentrical and also
so exactly circular in form, that no compasses could describe that
geometrical figure with more precision. In their magnitude also they
correspond with the walls of the cell with such a degree of precision,
that they are retained in their situation merely by the nicety of
their adaptation.

"The covering of the cell thus adapted to it being concave,
corresponds exactly with the convex end of the cell which is to
succeed it; and in this manner the little insect prosecutes her
maternal labours until she has constructed all the cells, six or seven
in number, necessary to fill the cylindrical hole.

"The process which one of these bees employs in cutting the pieces of
leaf that compose her nest, is worthy of attention. Nothing can be
more expeditious, and she is not longer about it than one would be in
cutting similar pieces with a pair of scissors. After hovering for
some moments over a rose-bush, as it were to reconnoitre the ground,
the bee alights upon the leaf which she has selected, usually taking
her station upon its edge, so that its margin shall pass between her
legs. She then cuts with her mandibles, without intermission, in such
a direction as to detach from the leaf a triangular piece. When this
hangs by the last fibre, lest its weight should carry her to the
ground, she spreads her little wings for flight, and the very moment
the connection of the part thus cut off with the leaf is broken, she
carries it off in triumph to her nest, the detached portion remaining
bent between her legs in a direction perpendicular to her body.
Thus, without rule or compass, do these little creatures measure out
the material of their work into ovals, or circles, or other pieces
of suitable shapes, accurately accommodating the dimensions of the
several pieces of these figures to each other. What other architect
could carry impressed upon the tablet of his memory such details
of the edifice which he has to erect, and, destitute of square or
plumb-line, cut out his materials in their exact dimensions without
making a single mistake or requiring a single subsequent correction?