ON DRIVING BEES.
As my reverend correspondent has introduced the subject of _driving_
Bees from their full hive into an empty one, in order that they may be
deprived of their honey and wax, and has animadverted upon that practice
with some severity, I will take the opportunity of here stating my
objections to it.
Mr. Huish, in his treatise on Bees, has twice described the manner in
which "_driving a hive_" may be performed; but nowhere, that I can
find, has he once recommended it. In a note (in page 24) he says---that
"by _driving a hive_ may be understood the act of obliging the Bees to
leave their own domicil, and take refuge in another. This is performed
by placing the full hive under an empty one, (or he might have said, by
placing an empty hive upon the full one inverted) and by gently tapping
the lower hive the Bees will ascend into the upper, and the lower one
then remains vacant for experiments, or the purpose of deprivation." He
afterwards (in page 252) gives a more detailed account of the manner of
performing this operation; and having done so, he presently observes that
"by the driving of the Bees a number is unavoidably killed." I do not
find that Mr. Huish himself practises it further than for the purpose of
making experiments; and that, having made those experiments, he returns
the driven Bees to their hives and to their treasures in them. In short,
he describes it to his readers because they may wish to be acquainted
with it, and not because he approves of it. I mention this because I
consider Mr. Huish to be respectable authority on such a subject.
Now, were there nothing in a hive but Bees and honey, driving them into
an empty hive (were it as easy in practice as it seems to be upon paper,
though I presume it is not) in order to rob them of their all, would be
a most arbitrary and unjust method of treating them: but, besides Bees
and honey, there are other substances in a prosperous hive which ought
not to be disturbed. There are the future inhabitants of the colony in
every stage of existence, from the egg to the perfect Bee, and these in
a driven hive are all totally destroyed--eggs, larvæ, nymphs, in one
word, _the brood_, in whatever state, is all destroyed, when the Bees are
driven from it and not suffered to return. And is it not an unnatural
operation that thus destroys many thousands of lives in embryo, over and
above the "_number unavoidably killed_" thereby? as painful must it be
for the Queen--the mother of the colony, and to all the other Bees, to
be _forcibly expelled_ from a hive and home of plenty and prosperity,
as it is for an industrious man and his thriving family to be rudely
ejected from a comfortable house and home, without the least notice
of, or preparation for, so calamitous an event, and forced by lawless
marauders to take shelter in an empty house, and left there destitute,
to subsist as best they can, or to starve, as probably they may, their
spirits being cast down by the violent deprivations and desperate robbery
they have experienced, and it may be, the winds, and the weather, and the
elements of heaven, are warring, as it were, against them at the same
time. And, comparatively speaking, is it not so with _driven_ Bees? They
are turned topsy-turvy, and in that strange, unnatural position their
fears are operated upon, or excited, by unusual, and to them, no doubt,
terrible sounds made by even "gently tapping" their inverted-hive--their
house turned upside down. Though no advocate for suffocating Bees,
but the contrary--a decided opponent to it, I agree in opinion with
my correspondent that suffocation at once is preferable to the very
reprehensible practice of "driving a hive," inasmuch as an instantaneous
death is preferable to a lingering and unnatural one by starvation,
which, whatever may befal the driven Bees, is the hard, untimely fate
of the brood and young larvæ of a hive when the Queen and commoners are
driven from them into a new and empty domicil. They leave, because they
are forced to leave behind them, and to perish, thousands of the young
brood in a state of helplessness. Their mother and their nurses are
driven into banishment and pauperism, while her offspring are doomed to
perish for the want of their aid and support. If driving be practised
early in the season, that is in June or July, all the brood then in
the driven hive must inevitably perish; if later, it is hardly to be
expected that the surviving Bees will or can prosper. Can the Bee-master
for a moment think that when Bees are so driven from their old hive, they
will work in their new one, as if they had swarmed voluntarily and then
been put into it: it is some considerable time before Bees thus treated
will work vigorously; and during that time of lingering and irresolution
the honey-season fast declines,--the Bees' difficulties multiply,--and
they become paupers at a time they should be rich. Nine times out of ten
the hive so treated perishes by famine, and like the young brood, dies
the worst of deaths,--the whole hive becomes a melancholy wreck, and is
absolutely sacrificed to the mistaken notions of the speculating, or
experiment-making proprietor. It is a practice of which _I disapprove
altogether_: and I am surprised that any one could so far misunderstand
the principles and nature of my practice as to recommend the driving
of Bees out of a full hive into an empty one as an admirable addition
to my Bee-hive--that is--to my Bee-boxes. I have the satisfaction,
however, to state that in the management of Bees in my boxes _no driving
is necessary, nor even possible_: by them _driving_ and _suffocation_
are both superseded, and rendered as useless to operators as they have
long been destructive to Bees,--and, I cannot but say--disgraceful to
apiarians. What I have already said (in page 48) I will here repeat with
as much emphasis as I am able, because that passage comprehends the
very essence of my directions relative to the management of Bees in the
middle-box,--and because those directions are utterly incompatible with
_driving_. "I say, then, DISTURB NOT THIS HIVE--THIS PAVILION OF NATURE:
WEAKEN NOT ITS POPULATION; RUT SUPPORT ITS INFLUENCE, AND EXTEND TO IT
THOSE ACCOMMODATIONS WHICH NO PRACTICE, EXCEPT MY OWN, HAS YET PUT INTO
OPERATION, OR MADE ANY ADEQUATE PROVISION FOR.
"This humane practice partakes not of the _driving_, nor of the
_fumigating_, nor of the _robbing_ system. It is a _liberal principle_
of Bee-cultivation, founded on _humanity_. And it is by such practice
that we must succeed, if we hope to be benefited in the culture of
Honey-Bees."