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.
Spiders annoy the bees much. The bees get entangled in their webs, and
are not able to extricate themselves. Here cleanliness is the best
protection; therefore care should be had to sweep the webs away from
the hive and its avenues as fast as they appear.
Birds eat a prodigious quantity of bees, especially in spring, when the
trees are in blossom. Whatever people may say to the contrary, I have
reason to think that the swallows, which are perpetually cruising about
in the air, like so many corsairs, destroy a great number, to regale
themselves, and to feed their young: this was the opinion of Virgil[5].
[Footnote 5:
"Absint ... meropesque, aliæque volucres,
Et manibus Progne pectus signata cruentis.
Omnia nam late vastant, ipsasque volantes
Ore ferunt, dulcem nidis immitibus escam."
Georg. iv.]
Moths destroy whole colonies: birds do not entirely destroy, but they
diminish the population; the queens, especially, become an easy prey to
them, their flight being heavy, from the great length of their bodies
and shortness of their wings; and the queen, being the very soul of
the hive, when she dies the whole will infallibly perish, if there is
not some of the proper brood ready to fill her place; and, even in the
latter case, the population is retarded in the fine weather, and the
hive becomes languid. As this happened to me several times, I imputed
it to the loss of my queens.
The poultry, too, that roam about near the water where the bees go to
quench their thirst, gobble up a great many of them, making a constant
war on them, as deadly as that carried on by the birds. I have even
seen a tame magpie place herself between two hives, peck right and
left, and snap up hundreds of bees to her breakfast. She was caught in
the act, condemned to death, and executed in the same instant.
Mice, especially the red mouse, or _Sorex araneus_, sometimes penetrate
a hive in the winter time, either from the entrance being left too
wide, or by gnawing a hole for themselves in the straw. They eat the
honey, and even the bees, when clustered together on the side of the
hive, in which position they are unable to defend themselves, and
scarcely even see the enemy. I have frequently seen a mouse's nest
inside of a hive in spring, seemingly unperceived by the inhabitants.
Wasps are also reckoned among the numerous enemies of bees. I have,
however, seldom seen a hive destroyed by wasps: although they
are larger, stronger, and armed with a formidable sting, and an
impenetrable cuirass, they seldom dare enter a well stocked hive.
Once attacked, they soon fall beneath the united efforts of these
brave citizens, who sacrifice themselves to defend the place of their
nativity. Wasps only appear in great numbers when the fruit is
ripening, and then they range unceasingly round the hives, and enter
the weak ones, or those of which the too spacious lodging hears no
proportion to the number of its inhabitants. There are three ways of
providing against the attacks of wasps. The first, is to unite weak
hives by doubling or tripling the population, thereby enabling them to
defend themselves. The second, is to contract the entrances as soon as
the swarming time is over, after the massacre of the drones: and the
third is, to destroy their nests.
The bees are continually fighting between themselves, and robbing each
other; avarice, not necessity, leads them to do so, it being almost
always the strongest and best provisioned hives that pillage the weak
ones. When once a bee has been able to introduce herself into a hive,
and carry away a load of honey without being arrested, she will return
a hundred times the same day; and, making it known to her companions,
they will then come in hordes, nor cease their pillage until there
is nothing left to take. In one day the whole of the honey will be
carried off, and with a determination which one can scarcely have an
idea of without seeing it. This kind of pillage is most frequent in
the spring and autumn, and it is easier to prevent than to stop it;
and, for this purpose, the entrance of the hives ought to be straitened
in proportion to the population. Four soldiers, as I have already
said, will more easily guard a narrow pass than thirty or forty would
defend a great one. Whenever the bees cluster themselves in front of
the hive, it is a proof that the whole of the interior is filled, and
there is then no fear of pillage, excepting in a very rare case, when
they happen not to observe the thieves, and of which I shall speak
presently. In proportion as the cluster increases, the entrance should
be widened, even opened entirely, and contracted again in the autumn
after the destruction of the drones. When these precautions are not
sufficient, and the pillage has commenced, it is not easy to stop it.
It may succeed, however, in spring or autumn, by entirely closing the
entrance of the besieged hive for one or two days, and putting a large
cape upon it, or an empty hive, plastering it all round to prevent
the bees getting out. This affords them a volume of air sufficient
to prevent them from being suffocated, and they go up and down at
pleasure through the hole in the top of the hive from which the stopper
must have been previously withdrawn; every evening the entrance must be
opened to give them air, and carefully shut up again in the morning. I
have always found the two days seclusion sufficient to put a stop to
the pillage. But this means is not practicable during the hot weather,
for then the bees would infallibly be suffocated, if they were to be
shut up but one hour. In this case, I have saved several by covering
them with a wet table-cloth, and extending it over the front of the
hive. The thieves, who were arriving in hundreds, threw themselves
into the neighbouring hives, where they were arrested and killed; for
all theft, even suspicion of theft, is invariably punished with death
in these republics. Some of the thieves that happen to escape, regain
their own dwellings, and warn their companions to beware of returning,
and next day there will be no more thieving. I have never been obliged
to spread the wet table-cloth a second time. True, many of the bees of
the hive I was defending were sacrificed, returning from the fields,
and being unable to gain admittance, they perished in some way or
other: it was a small sacrifice, to avert a greater evil, but my hive
was saved, and that was my object. It is a cure that does not always
succeed, however, and is quite useless when the besieged hive is a weak
one, or if much of the honey has been carried away.
I shall not speak of toads, lizards, and all kinds of reptiles, that
are ranked among the enemies of the bees, for I have never seen that
they did them much harm.