John Cumming

“ It is enjoyment to stand by one's bee-hives and watch the intense and untiring work of one's bees. It is like standing at a window in Cheapside, and watching the counter-currents of human beings that ceaselessly traverse its pavement ”

“ As soon as the young queen comes from the egg, numbers of nurse bees wait on her; she receives finer and more -139- 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? ”

“ I do not pretend to say bee-masters are rich men, or that the way to a fortune is through a bee-hive; but I do assert that a poor parish minister, vicar, or curate with a little glebe—a cottager who works all day for the squire—or maiden ladies who desire to engage in very delightful and loving labour—may add to their little income or stipend or dividend from ten to twenty pounds a year. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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."
The moth is a dangerous enemy. During the day there is no risk of his attacks. But during the night he is, like other thieves and burglars, alive and active. "He loves the darkness rather than the light, because his deeds are evil." As no bee-master can do without sleep, I cannot expect of the most enthusiastic and devoted that he will watch his hives the whole night. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have sat for hours by my hives with glass windows, and watched the orderly and beautiful array in which some give wax, others build it into forms of strength and beauty, others clear away incidental dirt, others pour honey into the warehouses, others carry out their dead, and all reverently and loyally attend to the instructions of their queen. Relays of ventilators, joining the tips -8- of their wings and making fanners, take up their position at the doors, and send in currents of fresh air. ”

“ Bees are perfectly harmless in swarming. But of course any attempt to drive them off from their queen by violence never can be made with impunity.
But in the swarming season it is most expedient that nobody but their bee-master should take any share in hiving a swarm; for so nervous are most people at the presence of ten thousand stings, that they will indiscreetly and ignorantly irritate such members of the young family as may accidentally alight on them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I think many apiarians talk nonsense when they allege that a district may be overstocked with bee-hives. If the surrounding country be wholly -12- arable, with little common, and with too good farming, it may be overstocked. But there are still left commons unenclosed, woods and heath, and clover and tiny weeds, which farmers persecute and bee-masters love; and far off are gardens of all sorts and sizes, in which flowers are cultivated for the owners' pleasure, constituting admirable bee-pasture. I only regret there is such a wide-spread rage for double flowers, for bees never touch them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Of course, the carrying in pollen was soon discontinued, as there was no brood to feed; the material, weighing sixteen pounds, being all honey and wax. I also saw them active in defence of their homes against the wasps; and although some wasps contrived to enter, I have seen the bees bring out their corpses now and then since, showing that they appear right.
To-day, the sun shining very bright and the temperature being warm, I am flabbergasted by seeing crowds of drones going in and out, and no slaughtering of these now unnecessary mouths. I say, can all be right? Is the queen still alive? ”

“ 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. ”

“ He perches on the landing-place of the bees on a wet day, taps with his bill, apparently inquiring after the health of the inmates; a watcher bee comes out to reconnoitre, and is instantly snapped up by the wicked hypocrite. The spider, also, catches weary bees in his web; but the occasional use of a brush disposes of this peril. The snail, attracted by the warmth, occasionally creeps in. The bees successively attack him, but find their stings blunted and broken by the shell, as shot is by our iron-sides. ”

“ No humane man can look on the straw hive, rotting on a stand, wasted and worn by wind and rain, covered with a brown earthenware basin, under which vermin breed and multiply, and doomed to brimstone and bee-cide, without feeling it is a penal settlement, or cell of doom, for subjects unworthy of it. ”

“ A hive should remain as fixed to the spot as the ancient oaks, in the hollows of which they delight to establish themselves; where they have their young, their companions, their beloved queen, and all their treasures. When the young bees take wing for the first time, they do it with great precaution, turning round and round, and fluttering about the entrance, to examine the hive well before taking flight. They do the same in returning, so that they may be easily distinguished, conducting themselves -28- nearly after the same manner as the workers of a newly-hived swarm. ”

“ But there are regular inquisitors who do not use sulphur. Those scientific crinkum-crankum hives, from which bees with difficulty get out, and with more difficulty get in, are little purgatories, over which the inquisitors preside. Vivisection is no worse. Yet these men complain that all who advocate simple, easily accessible, and comfortable homes for bees are behind the age, and ignorant of apiarian progress! There are not more than three sorts of hives that are humane. All the others bewilder the brains, weary the legs, and spoil the tempers of the best bees that ever dwelt in a hive. ”

“ 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 -172- 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? ”

“ But of all the varieties of this insect, that of which the architectural and mechanical skill is transcendently the most admirable is the bee-hive. The most profound philosopher, says Kirby, equally with the most incurious of mortals, is filled with astonishment at the view of the interior of a bee-hive. ”

“ A bee-shed is an absolute necessity; it may be rough and coarse, and badly put together, but it cannot and must not be dispensed with. I will assume, in the first instance, that the cheapness of a common straw hive—a rough one costing sixpence, a better a shilling, and a very excellent one eighteen-pence—brings it within the reach of a very poor cottager. On this assumption I proceed to show how he can make the best of a bad house. Placed in his shed with a good swarm in May, it is likely in a good year to be full by the end of June. ”

“ 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. ”