Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1874 — A Bee-Story. [ARTICLE]

A Bee-Story.

The following illustration of the power possessed by insects to communicate their experiences to one another is given by a lady correspondent of the London Spectator : “ I was staying in the house of a gentleman who*-was fond of trying experimfflftb and who was a bee-keeper. Having read in some book on bees that the best and most humane way of taking the honey without destroying the bees was to immerse the hive for a few minutes in a tub of cold water,-when the bees, half drowned, could not sting, while the honey*was uninjured, since the water could not penetrate the closely-waxed cells, he resolved on trying the plan. I saw the experiment tried. The bees, according to the recipe, were fished out ol the water after the hive had been immersed a few minutes, and, with those remaining in the hive, laid on a sieve in the sum to dry; but as, by bad management, the experiment had been tried too late in the day, as the sun was going down, they were removed into the kitchen, to the great indignation of the cook, on whom they revenged their sufferings as soon as the warm rays of the fire before which they were placed had revived them. As she insisted on their being taken away, they were put back into, their old hive, which had been dried, together with a portion of their honey, and. placed on one of the shelves of the apiary, in which were five or six other strong hives full of bees, and left for the night. Early the next morning my friend went to look at the hive on which he experimented the night before, but to his amazement not only the bees from that hive were gone but the other hives were all deserted—not a bee remained in any of them. The halfdrowned bees must, therefore, in some way or other have made the other bees understand the fate which awaited them.” All dresses continue to be made gored, short in froHt and just sufficiently long behind to touch the ground.