CHAPTER XXIV.
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].
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.