CHAPTER XXIV.
ENEMIES OF BEES, AND MEANS OF OVERCOMING THEM.
All amateurs that have written on the subject of bees, have spoken of their enemies, but few have given any directions in what way they may be overcome. I should neither attain my aim, nor realise the title of my work, if I did not notice them.
Nothing is more prejudicial to bees than ignorant attention. Their most formidable enemies are, perhaps, their possessors, who busy themselves to torment them, and weaken and kill them by too much care. In winter they hurt them, by shutting them up for fear of the snow, without considering that many more perish in their unwholesome prison; and that the great humidity, having no outlet, moulds the combs, and sometimes even rots them. Who shuts up the wild bees in the forests of Lithuania, where they thrive so well? Their own instinct suffices; there they have no master to thwart them.
In spring, the giving them a little honey, that would suffice to save them, is not always attended to, neither is the guarding them from moths, which at that time make the greatest havoc, nor is the narrowing of the entrances to prevent them being robbed. In summer I have seen persons leave only very small entrances to very populous hives, even when the bees were forming clusters, and so increase the ardour and activity of the workers. But this embarrassment only pained them, and retarded the gathering and laying up of their store.
Some let swarms escape from mere carelessness. People suffocate them in autumn, that they may possess themselves of their provisions; and others take out the best of the honey and often too much of it, and so expose them to die of hunger; and they even sometimes annoy them by leaving too great a quantity of candied honey-comb, which is of no use to them, and the extraction of it from the cells costs many valuable lives, as I have already observed.
I therefore place, in the foremost rank of their enemies, those of their possessors, who, by their own ignorance and inexperience, hinder them from prospering and multiplying.
Ants are their least dangerous enemies; true, the bees cannot sting them to death, because they are small and well defended with armour, but they seize hold of them with their teeth, and carry them to a distance. Had they not this means of getting rid of them, their colonies could not exist in the vast forests full of ants' nests, and where they thrive so well, in spite of the horrible massacres that annually take place. I have never seen a hive destroyed by ants; they attack only weak swarms, that have been either pillaged before, or happen to be established in a lodging too large for them to defend.
I recommend, however, to plaster up all chinks through which these little insects could gain an entrance.
Moths are little known, and never injurious, in the high valleys, nor on the mountains, but they attack and destroy a vast number of hives in the plains or in the vineyards, where they are a great scourge. As soon as a moth has penetrated a weak hive, it establishes itself in a comb, envelopes itself in a silken web, multiplies rapidly, consuming the wax, and spreading its destructive galleries from side to side, until, arriving at a certain point, the evil has no remedy.
I shall not repeat what I have said in the twentieth chapter, of the admirable ingenuity with which well-stocked hives defend themselves, by gnawing and reducing to crumbs every part of the wax that harbours a moth. Nor the means I have pointed out in [Chapter VII.] to diminish the number of their enemies in the spring, by frequently examining the little bits of wood used for contracting the entrance, or whenever the heated air of the hive is likely to attract butterflies, for the purpose of depositing their eggs. I shall only add, that when any trace of a moth is observed about a hive, it should immediately be cleaned away, and every little fragment of wax be swept off the board. If, in defiance of these precautions, it should seem that the moths have invaded some of the combs, the only means of saving the colony is, to imitate the surgeon, who cuts off a deceased limb to save the other,—every bit of infected comb must be cut out, leaving only those occupied by the bees. And the bees must then be liberally fed, by giving them every evening as much honey as will maintain them until the fields shall yield them a sufficient quantity. Thus I have preserved hives whose circumstances seemed to be desperate.