Humanity to Honey-Bees: or, Practical Directions for the Management of Honey-Bees Upon an Improved and Humane Plan, by Which the Lives of Bees May Be Preserved, and Abundance of Honey of a Superior Quality May Be ObtainedNutt, Thomas
Science
Humanity to Honey-Bees: or, Practical Directions for the Management of Honey-Bees Upon an Improved and Humane Plan, by Which the Lives of Bees May Be Preserved, and Abundance of Honey of a Superior Quality May Be Obtained
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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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