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 20s., 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 2½ 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 10s. 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.