Home Life in All Lands—Book III—Animal Friends and Helpers - Charles Morris

For long ages men have kept bees, making hives for them. Every season new swarms come from the old hives and are brought in various ways to start fresh colonies in new ones. Hives have been made of many things, often of straw, which was long used in England. To get the honey from these the bees were first killed by the fumes of sulphur. It seems a cruel thing to kill them in order to rob them, and it is not now done.

In our country the straw hive has never been used. The hives now in use have frames on which combs may be built and filled with honey and then drawn out, leaving the lower combs for the bees' own use. There is a process by which the honey can be drawn from the combs without breaking them in any way, so that they may be filled again by the bees. As in this case they do not have to make new combs the active insects can soon fill the old ones again.

Little more remains to be said. There are certain flowers which yield honey of fine flavor, such as those of the heather, the white clover, the buckwheat, the rosemary and the orange-flower. In ancient times the most famous honey was that of Mount Hybla in Sicily and Mount Hymettus in Greece. In our own days the countries in which bee-farming is carried on most largely are the United States and Canada, and of this country, Southern California is the paradise of the beekeeper.

On some bee farms are from two thousand to three thousand hives and it is said that as much as seven hundred pounds of honey have been taken from one hive. Thus this little buzzing insect is one of the most active and able of the animals that help to feed and serve us, and with the busy bee we may close our list of man's Animal Friends and Helpers.

Index

Albatross, the, [333], [334]
Alderney cattle, [139]
Alligator, the, [326];
story of a tame one, [327]
Alpaca, the, [111], [113]
Anecdotes of the dog, [29-39];
of the cat, [49-51];
of the horse, [82-85];
of the mule, [85];
of the elephant, [121-132];
of the pig, [174];
of song-birds, [225], [226];
of the parrot, [232-236];
of the raven, [236], [237];
of the jackdaw, [238-240];
of the crow, [240], [241];
of the starling, [241-246];
of the monkey, [250], [255], [257], [259], [262], [263], [266], [267-282];
of snakes, [291];
of the squirrel, [307-309];
of the bear, [321];
of the seal, [325], [326]
Angora cat, the, [48]
Angora goat, the, [165]
Angora rabbit, [52]
Animals of the household, [13-15];
of the earth, [283-285];
of the aquarium, [286]
Animals, varied uses of, [133]
Apes, man-like, [260-262]
Aquarium, pets of the, [286]
Arab horse, the, [66], [79-81]
Arabia, falconry in, [311]
Arabian camel, [104], [109]
Armadillo, the, [300], [304];
as a pet, [305], [306]
Ass, the wild, [87-88]
Astrakhan fur, [155]
Aylesbury duck, [189]
Ayrshire cows, [139]