combs to the sides and roof, fasten the hives to the stand, stop up crevices, varnish the cell-work of their combs, and emnbalm any dead or noxious animal that they catch within their hive: Faraday or Liebig, being exuded in small, of which we shall rather call bee-gum. scales from between the armor-like folds It is at once the glue and varnish of their of their body. This was noticed almost carpentry. With this resinous substance* contemporaneously by John Hunter and (quite distinct from wax) they fix their Huber, and confirmed by the most conclusive experiments of the latter. A legal friend, to whom we are indebted for much of our bee-law, thus records his own observation:-'I have often watched these fellows, hanging apparently torpid, after," as I think, a plentiful meal. Suddenly they make their whole persons vibrate like the prong of a tuning-fork: you cannot see their outline. This is a signal for one of the wax-collectors to run up quickly and fumble the lately-agitated gentleman with the instruments with which they hold the wax; and after collecting the scales, they hasten to mould them into the comb." What would our bon-vivans give if they could thus, at their pleasure, shake off the effects of a Goldsmiths'-Hall dinner in the shape of a temporary fit of gout and chalk stones? Many in their schoolboy days, though we aver ourselves to be guiltless, having too often followed Titania's advice, and "Honey-bags stolen from the humble-bee," need not to have much told them of how they carry about them their liquid nectar. "Kill me," says Bottom to Cobweb, “a redhipped humble-bee on the top of a thistle, and, good monsieur, bring me the honey. bag." They never swarm without a good stock of honey in their inside, to enable them to make a fair start in their new housekeeping. The honey which they sip from the nectaries of the flowers probably undergoes some change, though it is but a slight one, before it is deposited in the cells. It was formerly considered a balm for all ills, though now deemed any thing but wholesome when eaten in large quantities. The following are some of its virtues, besides others which we omit, given by But ler. It is only wonderful that our grandfathers, living in the midst of such an universal medicine, should have ever died. "Honey_cutteth and casteth up phlegmatic matter, and therefore sharpeneth the stomachs of them which by reason thereof have little appetite: it purgeth those things which hurt the clearness of the eyes; it nourisheth very much; it breedeth good blood; it stirreth up and preserveth natural heat, and prolongeth old age: it keepeth all things uncorrupt which are put into it; and therefore physicians do temper therewith such medicines as they mean to keep long; yea the bodys of the dead, being embalmed with honey, have been thereby preserved from putrefaction," &c. &c. Caulk every chink where rushing winds may roar, And seal their circling ramparts to the floor."Bees may often be seen settling on the bark of the fir, the gummy leaf of the hollyhock, or on the we dare not use Horace Walpole's expression-varnished bud of the horse-chestnut. They are then collecting neither bread nor honey, but gum for the purpose above mentioned. Huish mentions a case of their coating over a dead mouse within the hive with this gum, thus rendering their home proof against any impure effiuvium; but they were much more cunning with a snail, which they sealed down, only round the edge of the shell, thus fixing him as a standing joke, a laughing-stock, a living mummy (for a snail, though excluded from air, would not die), so that he who had heretofore carried his own house was now made his own monument. As one of the indirect products of the bee we must not forget Mead, Metheglint of Shakspeare and Dryden. It was the drink of the ancient Britons and Norsemen, and filled the skull cups in the Feast of Shells in the Hall of Odin. In old Welsh laws ran thus: "There are three such esteem was it held, that one of the things in the court which must be communicated to the king before they are made known to any other person:-1st, Every sentence of the judge. 2d, Every Queen Bess was so fond of it, that she new song. 3d, Every cask of Mead." had some made for her own especial drinking every year; and Butler, who draws a distinction between Mead and Metheglin, making Hydromel the generic term, gives ter drink, the same used by "our renowned a luculent receipt for the latter and betQueen Elizabeth of happy memory." The Romans softened their wine sometimes with honey (Georg. iv., 102.), sometimes with mead-mulso. (Hor., 1. 2, 4, 24.) "The good bee," says More, "as other As a further proof of the minute attention with which the ancients studied bees, the Greeks had three names at least for the different qualities of this substance:-πρόπολις; κόμμωσις ; and πισσόκημος. + The derivation of this word, which one would rather expect to be Celtic or Scandinavian, is very The fourth product of the bee is propolis, plausible, If not true, from the Greek: piov diyλñer. "Attic maiden, honey fed, Tomtits, Chirping warbler, bear'st away Yellow guest, whom summer brings!" Many are the fables and stories of the bear and the bees, and the love he has for honey. One, not so well known, we extract from Butler. The conteur is one Demetrius, a Muscovite ambassador sent to Rome. good people, hath many bad enemie" a more provoking position. and though opinions and systems of man- which are called bee-biters in Hampshire, agement have changed, the bees' enemies are said to tap at the hive, and then snap up have remained much the same from the the testy inmates who come out to see time of Aristotle. Beetles, moths, hornets, what it is allabout: if birds chuckle as well wasps, spiders, snails, ants, mice, birds, as chirp, we can fancy the delight of this lizards, and toads, will all seek the hives, mischievous little ne'er-do-good at the suceither for the warmth they find there, or cess of his lark. The swallow is an eneoftener for the bees, and more frequently my of old standing, as we may learn from still for the honey. The wax-moth is a the verses of Euenus, prettily translated sad plague, and when once a hive is infest- by Merivale : ed with it, nothing effectual is to be done but by removing the bees altogether into a new domicile. Huish tells of an old lady, who, thinking to catch the moths, illluminated her garden and bee-house at night with flambeaux-the only result of which was that, instead of trapping the marauders, she burnt her own bees, who came out in great confusion to see what was the matter. The great death's-head moth (Sphinx Atropos), occasionally found in considerable numbers in our potato-fields-the cause of so much alarm wherever its awful note and badge are heard-was noticed first by Huber as a terrible enemy to bees. It was against the ravages of this mealy monster that the bees were supposed to erect those fortifications, the description and actual drawing of which by Huber threw at one time so much doubt on his other statements. He speaks of bas-life, he was strangely delivered by the means of a great bear, which coming thither about the same tions, intersecting arcades, and gateways business that he did, and smelling the honey (stirmasked by walls in front, so that their con- re dwith his striving), clambered up to the top of the structors "pass from the part of simple sol- tree, and thence began to let himself down backdiers to that of engineers." Few subsequent ward into it. The man bethinking himself, and observers have, we believe, detected the knowing that the worst was but death (which in that place he was sure of), beclipt the bear fast counter-scarps of these miniature Vaubans, with both his hands about the loins, and withall but as it is certain that they will contract made an outcry as loud as he could. The bear, their entrance against the cold of winter, it being thus suddenly affrighted (what with the handseems little incredible that they should put ling and what with the noise), made up again with in practice the same expedient when other all speed possible: the man held, and the bear necessities call for it; and to style such pulled, until with main force he had drawn Dun conglomerations of wax and propolis bas-out of the mire; and then being let go, away he tions, and battlements, and glacis, is no trots, more afeard than hurt, leaving the smeared more unpardonable stretch of the imagination than to speak of their queens and sentinels. * An old toad may be sometimes seen sitting under a hive, and waiting to seize on such as, coming home loaded with their spoil, accidentally fall to the ground. We can hardly fancy this odious reptile in ♦ The ever-amusing Mr. Jesse says, "I have now in my possession a regular fortification made of propolis, which my bees placed at the entrance of their hive, to enable them the better to protect themselves from the wasps."-Gleanings, vol. i. p. 24. It may have been with some such idea that the Greeks gave the name "propolis," "out-work," to the principal material with which they construct these barricades; and Virgil has "munire favos." Did Byron allude of this in his "fragrant fortress ?" "A neighbor of mine," saith he, " searching in the woods for honey, slipt down into a great hollow tree; and there sunk into a lake of honey up to the breast; where-when he had stuck fast two days, calling and crying out in vain for help (because nobody in the meanwhile came nigh that solitary place)--at length, when he was out of all hope of swain in a joyful fear."- Butler, p. 115. The bear, from his love of honey, acts as a pointer to the bee-hunters of the North, who note the hollow trees which he fre quents and rubs against, knowing thereby that they contain honey. "The bears," said a bee hunter to Washington Irving, "is the knowingest varmint for finding out a bee-tree in the world. They'll gnaw for days together at the trunk till they make a hole big enough to get in their paws, and then they'll haul out the honey, bees and all." Wasps are sad depredators upon bees, and require to be guarded against. The large mother-wasp, which is often observed quite early in the spring, and which common people call a hornet, should always be destroyed, as it is the parent of a whole swarm. In many places the gardeners will give sixpence a piece for their destruction, and bee-masters should not refuse at least an equal amount of head-money. These brazen-mailed invaders take good care never to attack any but a weak hive: here they very soon make themselves at home, and walk in and out in the most cool, amusing manner possible. As an instance of the extent to which their intrusion may be carried, there was sent to the Entomological Society, in July last, a very complete wasps'nest, found in the interior of a bee-hive, the lawful inhabitants of which had been put to flight by the burglars. "But not any one of these" (we quote from the old fellow of Magdalen, from whom so many have borrowed without acknowledgment), "nor all the rest together, do half so much harm to the Bees as the Bees." And here again they too truly represent human nature. As riches increase, they set their hearts the more upon them. The stronger the stock is, the more likely are they to turn invaders, and of course they fix upon the weakest and most resistless of their brethren as the subjects of their attack. Then comes the tug of war; and a terrible struggle it is. Here is an extract from Mr. Cotton's note-book :"I was sitting quietly in the even of a fine day, when my sister came puffing into the room, Oh! Willy, make haste and come into the garden, the bees are swarming! Nonsense,' said; they cannot be swarming; it is August, was bound, as a loving brother, to see what grounds my wise sister had for her assertion. I got up, went to the window, and although I was at least 400 yards from my bees, the air seemed full of them. I rushed out to the garden; the first sight of my hive made me think my sister was right. On looking more narrowly, I per ceived that the bees were hurrying in, instead of swarming out; and on peeping about, I saw lying on the ground the same experiment has failed, though nothing can be more true than the rest of Virgil's description of the Battle of the Bees; but dust is certainly efficacious in causing them speedily to settle when they are swarming, whether it is that the dust annoys them, or that they mistake it for hail or rain. There is yet one greater enemy than all, and that is Man. And this leads us to consider the different systems of management and harvesting which he has adopted; and some consolation it is that, various as may be the plans proposed, there is only one exception, among the many bee-books we have ately read, to the heartily expressed wish that the murderous system of stifling the bees may be wholly condemned and abolished. Iudeed, if Mr. Cotton's statement be correct, England shares with the valley of Chamouni the exclusive infamy of destroying the servants whose toil has been so serviceable. Cobbet says it is whimsical to save the bees, if you take the honey; but on the other hand, to sacrifice them for the sake of it, is killing the goose for her golden eggs. A middle line is the safest : take a part. First, be sure that you leave enough to carry a stock fairly through the winter-say 30lbs., hive and all-and the surplus is rightly your own, for the hives and the flowers you have found them, and the trouble and time you have bestowed. To devise such a method has engaged the attention of English bee-masters for many generations back; and to eke out the hive by a temporary chamber which may be removed at pleasure, has been the plan most commonly proposed. Dr. Bevan (pp. 115, 120) gives a detailed account of the different schemes, to which we refer our readers curious in such matters. There can be but three ways of adding to a hive-first, at the top, by extra boxes, small hives, caps, or bell-glasses, which may be called generally the storifying system-(we use the bee-man's vocabulary as we find it); secondly, at the side, by box, &c., called the They all had died fighting, as the play-book collateral system; and thirdly, by inserting says, pro hares et foxes. My thoughts then additional room at the bottom, called nadirturned to my other stock, which was about a ing. To enter into all the advantages and quarter of a mile off. I ran to it as fast as I disadvantages of these plans would be to could; hardly had I arrived there, when an ad- write a volume; we must therefore content vanced body of the robber regiment followed me; they soon thickened; I tried every means I could think of to disperse them, but in vain; I threw dust into the air among the thickest; and read them the passage in Virgil, which makes the throwing of the dust in the air equivalent to the Bees' Riot Act; and four o'clock in the even.' Nevertheless I 'defuncta corpora vitâ Magnanimûm heroum.' "Hi motus animorum atque hæc certamina tanta Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescent." p. 319. But all in vain. We know how often this ourselves with Dr. Bevan's general rule, which we think experience fully bears out, that old stocks should be supered and swarms be nadired. Side-boxes are the leading feature of Mr. Nutt's plan, about which so much has been written and lectured-but that there is nothing new in this, the title of a pamphlet published in 1756 by the Rev. Stephen White, "Collateral Bee boxes," will sufficiently show. The object ing it from these supports. Now it having of Mr. Nutt's system is to prevent swarm- been observed that bees, unless obstructed, ing, which he seems to consider an unnatu- always work their combs exactly parallel, ral process, and forced upon the bees by and at a certain distance apart, a hive has the narrowness and heat of the hive, caused been constructed somewhat in the shape of by an overgrown population. To thi: we a common straw one, only tapering more altogether demur: the unnatural part of the towards the bottom, and having a lid liftmatter is that which, by inducing an artifi- ing off just where the circumference is the cial temperature, prevents the old Queen largest. On removing the lid are seen bars from indulging her nomadic propensities, about an inch and a half apart, running and, like the Gothic sovereigns of old, parallel from the front to the back of the heading the emigrating body of her people. hive, and these being fixed into a ring of Moreover, with all his contrivances Mr. wood that goes round the hive, are reNutt, or at least his followers, cannot wholly movable at pleasure. Now it is obvious prevent swarming-the old people sti con- that, could we always get the bees to hang trive to make their home "too hot" for the their combs along these bars, the removal of young ones. But great praise is due to one or two of them at a time would be a him for the attention which he has called very simple way of procuring a fair share to the ventilation of the hive. Whatever of honey without otherwise disturbing the be the system pursued, this is a point that hive; but how to get the bees always to should never be neglected, and henceforth build in this direction was the question. a thermometer, much as the idea was at This Huber solved; he fixed a small piece first ridiculed, must be considered an indis of comb underneath each of the bars exactly pensable accompaniment to a bee-house. parallel; the bees followed their leader, so To preserve a proper temperature within, that any one of the pendant combs might the bees themselves do all they can; and it be lifted up on the bar, the bar be replaced, is quite refreshing to see them on a hot day and the bees set to work again. This fanning away with their "many-twinkling" starting-point for them to commence from wings at the entrance of the hive, while is called the guide-comb, and the hive itself, others are similarly employed inside, crea- though somewhat modified, we have the ting such a current of air, that a taper ap- pleasure of introducing to our readers as plied to the inlet of the hive would be very that of the Greek islands (Naturalist's sensibly affected by it.* Mr. Nutt's book Library, p. 188); the very form perhaps is worth reading for this part of the subject from which the Corycian old man, bringing alone-but our own experience, backed it from Asia Minor, produced his early by innumerable other instances within our swarms;-from which Aristotle himself knowledge, is unfavorable to the use of his may have studied, and which, no doubt, boxes; and even those bee-keepers who con- made of the reeds or oziers of the Ilyssus, tinue them, as partially successful, have not had its place in the garden of Socratesyet got over the disappointment caused by "That wise old man by sweet Hymettus' hill." his exaggerated statements of the produce. Before entering further on the varieties We must refer our readers to p. 96 of Dr. of hives, we must premise for the uninitia- Bevan's book for the later improvements ted that bees almost invariably begin build-upon this hive, as respects brood and honeying their comb from the top, contiuuing it cells (for these are of different depths), and down as far as room allows them, and finish- the fixing of the guide-comb, suggested by ing it off at the bottom in a rather irregular curved line. Each comb contains a double set of honey-cells, dos-à-dos, in a horizontal position. To support these in To support these in common straw-hives cross-sticks are used, around which the bees work, so that the comb is necessarily much broken in detach Perhaps Dr. Reed might take a hint from them in place of his monstrous apparatus and towers that out-Babel Babel. It never can be that such furnaces and chambers and vents are necessary to procure an equable and pure atmosphere. When we have spent the £80,000 (we think that was the sum voted for this purpose for the new Houses of Parliament) we shall find out some simpler way. Mr. Golding of Hunton, who, together with the Rev. Mr. Dunbar, has rendered very valuable assistance to Dr. Bevan's researches. It is no slight recommendation of Mr. Golding to our good graces to learn that so practised a bee-master has discarded boxes from his apiary, and almost entirely restricted himself to the use of straw-hives, and this not from any fancy about their appearance, but from a lengthened experience of their advantage. For ourselves, we dare hardly avow, in this profit-loving age, how many pounds of honey we would yearly sacrifice for the sake of preserving this too would save the bees from the painful operation of nibbling off and smoothing down the rough edges of the straw. Those who have seen the beautiful bell. glasses full of virgin honey from Mr. Nutt's hives, which were exhibited lately either at the Polytechnic or Adelaide Gallery, and still more those who have tasted them on the breakfast-table, may perhaps fancy that boxes only can produce honey in so pure and elegant a form; but by a very simple alteration in the common straw hive this may be effected, as a reference to Mr. Payne's "Improved Cottage-hive" will show. His book is a very useful one, from its practical and concise directions, and perfectly free from any thing like being "got up." The only fault of his hive seems to be its flat top. the associations that throng around a cottage-hive. To set up in our humble garden the green-painted wooden box, which Mr. Nutt calls the " Temple of Nature," in place of our time-honored straw hive, whose sight is as pleasant to our eyes as "the hum of murmuring bee" is to our ears!-we had as lief erect a Pantheon or a red-brick meeting-house on the site of our village church. If our livelihood depended on the last ounce of honey we could drain from our starving bees, necessity, which is a stern mistress, might drive us to hard measures, and, secundum artem, they being used to it, we might suffocate them "as though we loved them;" but to give up-and after all for a doubtful or a dis-advantage-the pleasant sight of a row of cleanly hives of platted. straw, the very form and fashion of one of which is so identified with its blithe in- Mr. Bagster's book chiefly recommends ithabitant, that without it a bee seems with- self to us by the promise of a new "Ladies' out its home to cast away as nought every Safety Hive." We are always a little shy childhood association, the little woodcut of these schemes for "Shaving made Easy," in Watts's Hymns, the hive-shaped sugar- and "Every Man his own Tooth-drawer," basin of the nursery, the penny print that which go to do away with the division of we have covered with coatings of gamboge labor, and bring every thing" within the -to lose forever the sight of the new straw level of the meanest capacity;" and though hackle that jauntily caps it like the head- nothing certainly can be more in character dress of an Esquimaux beau-to be no than that the lady-gardener should have her longer cheered in the hot dusty city by the bee-house, where she may observe the workrefreshing symbol that "babbles of greenings and habits of this "Feminine Monarfields" in the midst of a hard wareman's shop-this would be too much for us, even though we might thus have assisted, as Mr. Huish would say, "to unlock the stores of apiarian science, and disperse the mists of prejudice by the penetrating rays of philosophy." We would rather bear the character of heathenish barbarism to the day of our death, and have Hivite written on our tomb. Seriously, it is no slight pleasure we should thus forego; and pleasure, simple and unalloyed, is not so cheap or so tangible a commodity in this life that we can afford to throw away any thing that produces it, even though it hang but on the gossamer thread of a fancy. Apart, however, from all such considerations, which, think and write as we may, would, we fear, have but little influence with the practical bee-keeper, we are convinced that the moderate temperature which a straw hive produces, both in summer and winter, will not easily be conterbalanced by any other advantages which boxes offer; and as for management, there is scarcely any system or form to which straw may not be accommodated. One of the greatest complaints against it, harboring moths and other insects, might be obviated by two or three good coats of paint inside; and chy," yet, for aught we see, it is just as reasonable for her to clean her own shoes as to take her own honey. And yet this is the only object or new feature about Mr. Bagster's plan. Practically, we should consider his centre box to be as much too large as the side ones are too small. The fact is, that safety from bees is not to be gained by any modification of hive or bee-dress whatever. If a man means to keep bees, he must make them his friends; and the same qualities which will ensure him golden opinions in any other walk of life are those which make a good beemaster. Firmness of mind with kindness. of manner will enable you to do with them what you will. Like horses, they know if you are afraid of them, and will kick and plunge accordingly. Like children and dogs, they find out in a moment if you are fond of them, and so meet you half way. But, like the best-tempered people in the world, there are times and seasons when the least interruption will put them out— "ut fortè legentem Aut tacitum impellat quovis sermone molestus." A sharp answer or a sharp sting on such occasions will only be a caution that we must watch our opportunity better for the |