CHAPTER XIV. ROBBING. Bees are exceedingly prone to rob each other, and unless suitable precautions are used to prevent it, the Apiarian will often have cause to mourn over the ruin of some of his most promising stocks. The moment a departure is made from the old-fashioned mode of managing bees, the liability to such misfortunes is increased, unless all operations are performed by careful and well informed persons. Before describing the precautions which I successfully employ, to guard my colonies from robbing each other, or from being robbed by bees from a strange Apiary, I shall first explain under what circumstances they are ordinarily disposed to plunder each other. Idleness is with bees, as well as with men, a most fruitful mother of mischief. Hence, it is almost always when they are doing nothing in the fields, that they are tempted to increase their stores by dishonest courses. Bees are, however, much more excusable than the lazy rogues of the human family; for the _bees_ are idle, not because they are indisposed to work, but because they can find nothing to do. Unless there is some gross mismanagement, on the part of their owner, they seldom attempt to live upon stolen sweets, when they have ample opportunity to reap the abundant harvests of honest industry. In this chapter, I shall be obliged, however much against my will, to acknowledge that some branches of morals in my little friends, need very close watching, and that they too often make the lowest sort of distinction, between "mine and thine." Still I feel bound to show that when thus overcome by temptation, it is almost always, under circumstances in which their careless owner is by far the most to blame. In the Spring, as soon as the bees are able to fly abroad, "innatus urget amor habendi," as Virgil has expressed it; that is, they begin to feel the force of an innate love of honey-getting. They can find nothing in the fields, and they begin at once, to see if they cannot appropriate the spoils of some weaker hive. They are often impelled to this, by the pressure of immediate want, or the salutary dread of approaching famine: but truth obliges me to confess that not unfrequently some of the strongest stocks, which have more than they would be able to consume, even if they gathered nothing more for a whole year, are the most anxious to prey upon the meager possessions of some feeble colony. Just like some rich men who have more money than they can ever use, urged on by the insatiable love of gain, "oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow and the fatherless," and spin on all sides, their crafty webs to entrap their poorer neighbors, who seldom escape from their toils, until every dollar has been extracted from them, and as far as their worldly goods are concerned, they resemble the skins and skeletons which line the nest of some voracious old spider.