British Bees / An Introduction into the Studies of the Natural History and Economy of the Bees Indigenous to the British Isles

by William Edward Shuckard

The name of bougie for wax-candle or taper, is used by all the languages of the south of Europe, and is derived from the name of Bugia, a town of Northern Africa, whence, even as long back as the time of the Roman Empire, wax was obtained to make candles for lighting. The inhabitants of Trebizonde paid their tribute to the Roman Empire in wax. Both honey and wax are largely employed in pharmacy, and were also, in ancient times, both extensively used in embalming. The honey of Mount Hymetta in Attica, and of Hybla in Sicily, were each in as high repute in classical countries as is that of Narbonne in Languedoc, by reason of its choice delicacy, with us, and throughout France. Distributed over the wide pastures of the Ukraine, every peasant has his store of hives, which frequently, in their harvests, realize more largely than their crops of grain,—multitudes of that peasantry computing as important items in the estimate of their wealth the number of their beehives, which often exceed five hundred to the individual possessor. In Spain and Italy bees are largely cultivated; and in the former country many a poor parish priest, the religious monitor of an obscure hamlet, can count his five thousand.

In countries so rich in the productions of Flora, whose seasons there are perennial, and which fluctuate only in special locality, bees are removed to and fro to meet these peculiarities. Thus in the south of France, where large tracts are cultivated with aromatic shrubs and flowers, for the distillation of essential oils and fragrant waters, the hives of bees are moved up and down the adjacent rivers upon rafts, as the flowering of the crops succeed each other. In Italy, Spain, and Southern Russia, the same practices are pursued, although we have no detailed accounts of the precise spots; but we know from Niebuhr, Savigny, and Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, that upon the Nile it is customary thus to transport the bees from flower-region to flower-region upon rafts containing about four thousand hives, each numbered by the proprietors of the hives for identification, who thus double the seasons by continually shifting their bees from Lower Egypt to the Upper Nile and back again.

In ancient Greece also, they were conveyed for this purpose from Achaia to Attica; in the former of these provinces, owing to its higher temperature, flowers had passed their bloom before spring had opened in the latter. All these circumstances tend to show that the experience of bee-masters, both ancient and modern, has ascertained that their insects have not a very extensive range of flight.

Of the fact that the honey of bees is not always salutary to man, there is a remarkable instance recorded in Xenophon, in his narrative of the retreat of “The Ten Thousand,” who reports that upon falling in with quantities of it, in Asia Minor, those who indulged in its enjoyment were seized with vertigo, or headache, and violent diarrhœa, attended with sickness, but which had no fatal consequences, although they did not recover from its injurious effects for a couple of days, and were left then in a very prostrated condition. The celebrated physician and botanist Tournefort, when travelling in the East, towards the end of the seventeenth century, found, in the neighbourhood of Trebizonde, an excessive luxuriance of the flowers of the Rhododendron ponticum and of the Azalea pontica, which, although sumptuous in their blossoms, were held in bad repute by the inhabitants, who ascribed to their odour the deleterious effect of causing headache and vertigo. He was thence induced to surmise that these had possibly been the flowers the bees had extracted the honey from which had been so baneful to the troops of Xenophon.

But it seems that bees themselves cannot collect with impunity the honey of noxious flowers, for they are occasionally subject to a disease resembling vertigo, from which they do not recover, and which is attributed to the poisonous nature of the flowers they have been recently visiting.

Several different kinds of honey and wax have been described, but some degree of uncertainty exists as to whether they are all the produce of genuine species of the genus Apis; for it will be found, in a rapid notice I purpose giving of the more conspicuous genera of foreign bees, that there are two exotic genera of this section of the family, both social in their habits, and which both produce the same materials; there is a wasp also that makes honey. But of all the many kinds of honey noticed, the green kind furnished to Western India by the island of Réunion, the produce of an Apis indigenous to Madagascar, but which has been naturalized in the French island, and also in the Mauritius, is perhaps the most remarkable. It is of a thick syrupy consistency, and has a peculiar aroma. It is much esteemed upon the most proximate coasts of the peninsula of India, where it bears a high price. Whether its greenness of colour is derived from the flowers which this species frequents, or whether it be incidental to the nature of the bee, has not been ascertained, but the honey of the South American wasp, the sole species producing the material, has also a green tinge.

Nature has assigned the task of thus catering for man, by collecting and garnering from the recondite crypts within the blossoms of flowers, to about sixteen species congenerical with our honey-bee, but sufficiently differing. As I have before noticed, the species of this genus greatly more resemble each other in structure than perhaps do the species collocated within any other genus of insects, and whence may be inferred an exact similitude of habits, although as yet unconfirmed by direct observation.

The second European species, the Apis Ligustica, or Ligurian bee, is rather larger, but very like ours, and inhabits the whole of the north of Italy, its occupation of that country extending from Genoa to the vicinity of Trieste; its progress further north being impeded by the Alps of Switzerland and the Tyrol. It is also found in Naples, and may likewise spread to the Morea, Turkey, and the Archipelago of Greece, and is perhaps the bee noticed by Virgil. Either this species, or possibly one distinct from ours, is that which is so extensively cultivated in Spain, although ours is found in Barbary.

Another smaller kind, the Apis fasciata, has been cultivated in Egypt from time immemorial, and which yielded its abundant harvests for the gratification of the ancient Romans. Only five other distinct species, so far as is yet known to us, appear to occupy the vast continent of Africa,—two on its western coast at Senegal and Congo, the A. Adansonii and the A. Nigritarium; two in Caffraria, the A. scutellata and the Apis Caffra. That at Madagascar, and doubtless on the adjacent mainland, which has also been naturalized in the Mauritius and at Réunion, is the Apis unicolor, which produces the green honey mentioned above.

India, however, at present appears to be the true metropolis of the genus. Further discoveries in Africa may hereafter give that vastly larger continent the predominancy; but there is no doubt that, so far as present information extends, India has the superiority. Thus Apis dorsata, Apis nigripennis, and Apis socialis, are cultivated in Bengal, the latter being also found along the Malabar coast and at Java. It is singular that the only instance of the occurrence of the very distinct genera of Apis and Mellipona, both honey-storing genera, yet known to exist indigenously in the same locality, is found in this island. At Pondicherry and its vicinity are found Apis Delessertii and Apis Indica. This latter bee is extensively cultivated, and its hives are perhaps the most largely inhabited of any of the species; the numbers occupying a single nest being estimated at above eighty thousand.