HELD UP BY WILD BEES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 16 July 1907, Page 4

HELD UP BY WILD BEES.

I A remarkable story of Ihe "wrath of the liee'' comes from Sedgebrook Farm, J near Plumpton, Sussex. The Farm is .the East Sussex Small-po.x Hospital, the caretaker of which and, in a lesser dejgree, his wife, have been terrorised by bees for nearly live years. The bees are not hive ltfes, though it is possible that their projectors at some remote jdate were domesticated. They are a swarm of countless thousands (some local gossips say millions), which for live year at least have had their abode under the tiles of the farmhouse and have lived the wildest of wild lives. When the present caretaker came into residence. foar Decembers ago. he little dreamed of the unpleasant tenants already in possession. Hut in the following spring he had a painful revelation, lie attempted a little,innocent gardening, and was badly stung for his pains. During the lasl four seasons he has been stung all over his body and chased about the farm times without number. Once last year he was bud low with a sting in the nostril which almost deprived him of his eyesight. The bee, themselves are pirates, outlaws, vicious ne'er-do-wells of the worst type that bees can descend to. It is their pleasure that this poor .caretaker shall Ik> one with them in their depravity. Let him try to do a little gardening, and forth from their hiding place they sally with fierce martial music as ever fired Maeterlinck to write a bee epic. Straight at. the would-be worker they dash, and in a moment his tools are dropped and he is fling for refuge. "Look at my garden.'' he said to a Press representative, waving his liand over a beautifully situated plot of ground which, under ordinary circumstances, would be made highly profitable. "It never looks respectable and orderly. It never gives me what it ought to give. The truth is, 1 am afraid to touch It except when the bees are indoors. All my gardening has to be done either before the bees come out, or after they have gone in. Tliey never waste time buzzing round me when they come out. 'Without any warning they dash straight at my head, and they will often follow me a long way down the lane. I seem to be a marked man!"

Many attempts have been made to destroy tlie bees, and several kindly-dis-posed persons who have assisted the caretaker in this way luive been badly stung. On one occasion the caretaker thought he had rid himself of the insects. They swarmed one morning, and thousands on thousands of them made for the grating of an air-brick, which led into a ventilation pillar inside a secondfloor room. As the caretaker saw the black, clustering mass slowly melt through the grating he bethought himself of a cunning device. He watched them all safely inside the ventilator, and then closed it securely, and plied his hospital fitmigator for all he was worth. Not a single liee came out alive; but their dead bodies rolled out of the grating in scores of thousands, and thickly strewed the ground I>olnw. But next morning out from the same hole tinder the tiles came, seemingy. as many bees as ever, and set the man running, hat in hand, from his potato patch as fast as his legs would carry him. It is thought by local people that the bees were originally abandoned by n former tenant of the farm, and consequently sought refuge in the roomy gables of the house, where by now they have prolKibly stored hundreds of pounds of hohev.