: ifip MS WW: ..:.;! i : '..'. •" ;:;: • " ;::":::\ ':!" -.:: Hiuiiiilllliili : . y^i/^Mrtc^s Zoadon,. Shertvocd.. Gilbert & Pip, <• J~a tuary 1S4Z. BEES: THEIR NATURAL HISTORY AND GENERAL MANAGEMENT: COMPRISING A FULL AND EXPERIMENTAL EXAMINATION OF THE VARIOUS SYSTEMS OF NATIVE AND FOREIGN APIARIANS; WITH AN ANALYTICAL EXPOSITION OF THE ERRORS OF THE THEORY OF HUBER; CONTAINING, ALSO, THE LATEST DISCOVERIES & IMPROVEMENTS IN EVERY DEPARTMENT OF THE APIARY, WITH A DESCRIPTION OF THE MOST APPROVED HIVES NOW IN USE. ROBERT HUISH, F.Z.S. HONORAKY MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OP FRANCE, MEMBER OF THE ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES OF GOTTINGEN, AND CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY OE BAVARIA. Pluris est oculatus testis unus quam auiiti decern. LONDON: PRINTED FOR SHERWOOD, GILBERT, AND PIPER, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1842. Sf~ LONDON : gilbert & rivington, printers, st. John's square. INTRODUCTION. If we take a retrospective view of the apiarian know- ledge of the ancients as far back as Democritus, who lived four hundred and sixty years before Christ, we shall find that they directed their attention more to the natural history of the bee than to its economy. The major part, however, of their writings is lost, and the traces of them are only to be found in two works of the seventeenth century, one of which is en- titled, " The Portrait op the Honey Fly, its Virtues, Form, and Instructions how to reap Advantage prom them," printed in 1646. The other was printed in Antwerp in 1649, and entitled, "The Spring op the Honey Fly, divided into two parts, in which will be pound a curious, true, and new History op the admirable and natural Conduct of the Bee, drawn solely from the Hand op Experience." The author of the first of these works is Alexander de Montfort, captain in the service of his imperial and catholic majesty, and who was born in the county of Luxemburg. De Montfort estimates the number of authors who have written en bees before his time, at between five a 2 iv INTRODUCTION. few, such as Galen, and six hundred ; and he quotes a Aristeus, Aristomachus, Menus, Misald, Philistrius, So- lin, John of Lebanon, &c. &c, whose works, however, on that subject are wholly unknown to us. He, how- ever, cites a few with whose works we are conversant, viz. Aristotle, Columella, Varro, Moufet *, Aldrovan- dus t> &c. &c. The writings of De Montfort are so far valuable, that they unite the romantic reveries of the ancients with some weak scintillations of modern knowledge. Some of the ancients imagined that the bees were bred from the purest juice which could be extracted from the flowers in summer ; others conceived that they were bred from putrid animals, an opinion entertained by Virgil in his Georgics. They were acquainted with the existence of one superior bee, whom they called the king, and who was supposed to originate from a flower or an animal more distinguished and noble than that from which the common bees originated. They re- garded the drones or males as lazy, idle flies, of no particular use, and in some degree actually noxious, and only fit to be exterminated. They called them hornets, or flies of an ugly shape. When they saw two queens in a swarm, they believed that one of them was * Thomas Moufet, an English physician, who died about 1600, known by a work written in Latin, entitled, " Theatrum Insect- orum." Londini, 1634, in fol. with plates. t A celebrated professor of physic at Bologna, one of the many authors whose researches into natural history have been most extensive. His works amount to thirty volumes in folio. They, however, did not enrich him, for he died blind in the hospital at Bologna at the age of eighty. ; INTRODUCTION. V a false king or a tyrant ; they therefore called him the usurping prince who plays on the flute to divert the bees all due homage was, however, paid to him. At the close of the seventeenth century, three cele- brated naturalists appeared. Swammerdam, a Dutch physician, IVlaraldi, an astronomer, and Ferchault de Reaumur, members of the Academy of Sciences, who, by their researches and dissections, began to uplift the veil which had hitherto concealed from us the most im- portant and interesting features of the natural history of the bee. They discovered that there were males and females amongst the bees, and from that period, the theory of De Montfort was admitted to be founded on truth. Amongst those who in later times have written on bees, may be distinguished principally Schirach, who discovered that the bees who have lost their queen can raise another for themselves from larvae of their own kind, by imparting to them a peculiar kind of nourish- ment. (2) Riems, who discovered that there are common bees, which lay eggs. (3) De Braw, who attempted to establish by experiments and specious arguments, that the eggs laid by the queen are fecun- dated by the drone in the manner of fish ; and lastly, Butler, who attributed to the bees a knowledge of the art of solfaing. This may be considered as the second epoch of the natural history of the bee. At the close of the eighteenth century, Mr. Huber, a blind naturalist, appeared, who directed his servant, or his servant directed him in those researches, for the supposed verity of which a surreptitious fame has been a 3 vi INTRODUCTION. awarded him, and which has placed him on the pinnacle has of apiarian science, an eminence on which he been undeservedly elevated by a host of commentators, encyclopedists, editors, and compilers, who have been led away by the apparent originality of his pretended to de- discoveries ; but who never deemed it necessary vote any portion of their time or ability in the investi- gation of the principles of that theory, of the truth of which they expressed their unqualified assent. If, in the course of the ensuing work, we may have laid ourselves open to the charge of having applied the lash of ridicule too severely upon this falsely celebrated naturalist, we can only answer, in extenuation of that transgression, that we have been encouraged to the commission of it by the thorough conviction, arising from an ex- perience of above forty years, that the majority of the vaunted discoveries of Huber are the result of fiction and delusion, founded on obsolete theories and anti- quated prejudices. The man who will assert, that from his own evidence he has heard the queen bee speak the French language,—that he has seen the queen bee place herself in such an attitude as to strike the bees motionless,—that he has seen the queen bees for six consecutive nights engaged in a duel,—that he has seen fortifications erected by the bees ; we affirm, that the man who will tell us, and call upon us in a dogmatical tone to believe him, that ten hives will warm an apart- ment, and twelve a green-house if the bees be well shaken, —that the queen bee is sometimes afflicted with the ague,—that he has seen a bee construct a cell from the foundation to the coping, with numerous other similar INTRODUCTION. Vll fooleries, possesses but a very slight claim indeed to the character of a profound or accurate naturalist. We are bold enough to declare, that the discoveries of Huber are not only improbable, but even impossible ; and it is on the basis of that knowledge that we have so unequivocally expressed our dissent to the principal points of the theory of Huber. We have, however, fearlessly thrown down the gauntlet to the advocates of Huber, and although we may stand single-handed in the contest, we fight under the banners of truth, and as such we despair not of the victory. If an individual, with the view of acquiring some knowledge of the natural history of the bee, or of its management, consult the works published by the " Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge," the " Naturalist's Library," the works of Bagster, Bevan, or any of the periodicals which casually treat upon the subject, will he not rise from the study of them with his mind surcharged with falsities and mystification ? Will he not discover throughout the whole of them a servile acquiescence in the opinions and discoveries of one man, however at variance those opinions and dis- coveries may be with truth or probability; and if he enter upon the discussion with his mind free from prejudice, will he not experience that an outrage has been committed upon his reason, in calling upon him to give his assent to positions and principles, which at best are merely assumed, but to which he is called upon dogmatically to subscribe his acquiescence as the indubitable results of experience, skill, and ability ? Huber may have attempted to amuse and astonish a 4 INTRODUCTION. the inexperienced apiarian with the miraculous rearing of a queen bee in a glass cell, and he may have thrown over his description of it all the varnish of direct ex- perimental knowledge; but the editors of the works above alluded to, instead of disgracing their pages by the admission of such a visionary tale, should boldly and indignantly have declared, that from their own experience in the natural economy of the insect, they were able to pronounce the circumstances as related by Huber to be directly impossible, and the whole of them based on fiction and imposition. If we examine the account which Huber gives of his invention of the royal jelly, the existence and efficacy of which are fully acquiesced in by the aforesaid editors, to what other conclusions are we necessarily driven, than that they are the dupes of a visionary enthusiast, whose greatest merit consists in his inventive powers, no matter how