HINTS ON THE MANAGEMENT OF BEES. By the Rev. W. C. Cotton, M.A. (Concluded.) THE BEE'S STING.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 272, 8 March 1848, Page 2

HINTS ON THE MANAGEMENT OF BEES. By the Rev. W. C. Cotton, M.A. (Concluded.) THE BEE'S STING.

A good deal of the craft of Bee keeping it different in New Zealand from that which is usefuL in England. The length of the summer, the mildness of the winter, and greater, consequently, increase of the Bees — all these make the odds ; and so 1 have compiled this

little manual, which I believe will give you more practical hints than any European Bee book would do, not excepting my own. If any other manual could give you the needful information, this never would .have been written. But a Bee sling is the same all over the world : the pain is sharp for a minute or two ; and it is not pleasant to have an eye entirely closed, or a nose twice as large as Nature intended it. As the sting of the Bee is the same here as it was in England, I can have nothing new to say on the subject ; and will only quote what I wrote some years ago. Ido not think however, that the Bees are near so irascible here ts they are in England ; and I account for it in this way : They,, have not so many enemies to contend with ; the absence of wasps, in particular, enables them to preserve a more equal temper. I wish all Englishmen were as much improved in this respect as their Bees are. Remember that a man's sting is not so easily cured as a Bee's. So, if you are ever inclined to use your own in the shape of a sharp or angry word, substitute for it the honey of kindness, and then you will gain a lesson from your Bees worth learning. But now for my quotation :— »• " Many people, who would otherwise keep Bees, are afraid of their stings, and so will have nothing to say to them. There are some people, it is true, to whom a sting is really dangerous : let them have nothing to do with them, unless they love their Bees so much as rather to brave all consequences than to give up keeping them. There are some people who, if they get a sting in their finger, straightway swell up to their shoulder, or even further; this is certainly not pleasant, though I do not believe any great harm comes of it. The worst place that you can be stung is the inside of the throat ; I have heard of a man dying of swallowing a wasp, which was inside a peach which he bit in half ; it stung him in the throat, which, as he did not know what to do to cure himself, closed up the passage of the breath, and so stifled him. If he had been an uubappy Bee murderer, he would then find how unpleasant it is to be stifled. He ought to have run straight off to a doctor, who would, I believe, have put a small pipe down his throat, to keep the passage for the wind open. I myself was once blowing into a giass, to drive the Bees out (N. B. — This was in my days of ignorance ; I know better now) when in drawing in my breath sharply, I swallowed a Bee. I prepared myself for a run to the doctor's, had I fejt its sting in my throat, or lower down in my " inside pocket ;" but the Bee passed so rapidly down, that he had not time to sting ; when he got to his journey's end, no doubt not a little surprised at the path he had travelled, he resigned himself to his fate, like a good Bee, and did not revenge himself by stinging me. Many remedies have been given for a sting ; above all, pull the sting completely out, as it is barbed, like a fish-hook, and will work into the flesh. Then squeeze the poison out with the pipe of a small key, as you would a thorn, and put a little honey on the place, just to keep the air away ; if this, is done at first, the swelling will generally be a mere nothing. The pain only lasts two minutes : at worst it is only a swelled eye for a day or two. Another very common nostrum for rubbing on the place after the poison is squeezed out with a key is the washerwoman's blue bag. It is well to keep a lump of indigo in your Bee house* Other people recommend the application of a drop of sweet oil, laudanum, or eau-de-luce; you my try each and all of these till you find the one best suited to your temperament. The stiangest cure of all is that recommended by an old Bee book printed in 1792, by Robert Sydserf, who says " If I am stung in the face, I generally swell almost blind. If on the back of the hand, the swelling ascends to the tops of my fingers ; but if I am stung by two Bees near the same place, the swelling is not so much ; and if lam stung by ten or more Bees, the swelling is very little, or none at all. I would not of choice be Siting' 1 by them, if it can be avoided, but after 1 have been stung once, I have no objection against being stung twice ; and after I have been stung twice or three times, Ido not mind if I am stung fifty or a hundred times." He then gives several instances in which this strange mode of cure was effectual in bis own person, which, if true, would be a curious addition to a list of homoeopathic remedies ; and adds as the result : — " from these circumstances I come to the conclusion never to be stung by one Bee alone unless another is not to be had," He < speaks not a little contemptuously of one of his Bee apprentices, because " sooner than take my advice, and make use of my infallible speedy remedy, he will be content to be swollen almost blind, and go blinking like an owl for near a week together." But after all prevention is better than cure. Listen to the words of an old writer, who lived two hundred years ago : — " If thou wilt have the favour of thy Bees that they sting thee not, thou must avoid some things whicb offend them ; thou must not be unchaste and uncleanly ; for impurity

and sluttiness (themselves being most chaste and neat) they utterly abhor : thou must not come among them smelling of sweat, or having a stinking breath, caused either through eating of leeks, onions, garlick, and the like, or by any other means, the noisomeness whereof is corrected with a cup of beer : thou must not be given to surfeiting or drunkenness ; thou must not come puffing and blowing unto them, neither hastily stir among them, nor resolutely defend thyself when they seem to, threaten thee: but softly moving thy hand before thy face, gently put them by ; and lastly, thou must be no stranger unto them. In a word, thou must be chaste, cleanly, sweet, sober, quiet, and familiar : so will they love thee, and know thee from all other." Above all, never blow on them ; they will try to sting directly, if you do. If they come all about you making the noise which you will soon learn to know, as a sign of anger, go quietly nway, and put your head into a thick shrub, if any is near. This will brush them off. If you want to catch any of the Bees, make a bold sweep at them with your hand, as though there mas no such thing as a sting in che world ; the Bee will be so astonished that she will not sting at first. Then hold her in your closed hand, without pressing her, and she will not sting. I have so caught three or four at a time. If you want to do anything to a single Bee, catch her "as if you loved her," between your finger and thumb, where the tail joins on to the body : she thus cannot sting you. By handling a Bee dexterously you may make her push out her sting, down which a drop of poison will be seen to trickle — you may cause her to deposit this drop on the back of your thumb nail, and if you are so disposed may taste what it is like — as I have done many a time. You will find it a very sour and bitter acid, unlike any other taste I know, and by no means agreeable ; so that you will be sure to spit it out again. Even were you to swallow it, I do not tnink it would hurt you. Though it pioduces so violent an effect when introduced into the system through a sting, it is quite harmless when taken internally. I believe it is a substance in itself called Melittic Acid by the Chemists. Formic Acid (that of ants) is nearly like it, and is equally hai raless taken internally. I have read somewhere, though I cannot remember the book, that our soldiers in the Peninsular, when parched with thirst, relieved themselves by eating a number of ants which they fell in with. A curious sort of travelling" lemon-aid machine is an ant ; Ido not fancy you will make the same use of your Bees. The poison of a Bee, though very powerful in its operation on men, is still more so on Bees. A Bee sting by another seems immediately paralyzed, losing the entire use of her lower extremities, which she drags after her in a piteous way, ami soon dies. I have seen one Bee dragging by her sting another Bee whom she had wounded, so that it is entirely untrue that one Bee never stings another. People have argued a priori that it is so, because say they, she would in that case lose her sting land perish, — but the argument a posteriori, r/bicb is in this case the argument in point, proves that she does sometimes sting other Bees, though very rarely ; for a forcible ejectment is the usual method which she uses with intruders. If she stings a man, she loses her sting and dies ; — for our skin is of a compact nature, like leather, but she has power to retract her weapon, although it be barbed, from the softer membranes of a sister Bee. Drones too are sometimes put to death by a sting ; — though the usual method employed for killing these non-producers is by biting them about the root of the wing, when they fall on the ground and perish miserably. In England I have seen the Wasps, who are Vultures in relation to the Bees, eating out the insides of Drones who were crawling about the ground in front of the hive from which they had been forcibly expelled. The Queen has a sting, though it is more 'deeply seated in her body ; I have often made her protrude it, though I believe she never uses it on a man, reserving this poisoned dagger for the rivals to her throne. This is alluded to in Gwillim's heraldry, who says — " Louis XII entered Geneva bearing a coat studded with a swarm of Bees, or ; — a King in the middle with this motto : — Rex non utitur aculeo, to show that he pardoned the rebellion of the Genevese." And we learn in the same curious record that " Pope Urban the 111, had for bis bearing azure, 3 Bees, or, — A Frenchman who regarded him as more attached to his nation than to the Spaniards wrote this line — Gallis mella dabunt, Hispanis spicula figunt. To which the Spaniard answered — Spicula si figant emorientur apes. The Pope was made to answer in an ingenious way, and in a manner perfectly consistent with his office of pastor to the Church — ; Cunctis mella dabunt, sed nullis spicula figunt, Spicula rex etenim figere nescitapum. I