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 12½ 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.