Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 November 1874 — How Bees Bury Their Enemies. [ARTICLE]

How Bees Bury Their Enemies.

These capable little people have a sort of hospitable vengeance for visitors that come without being invited and stay without being w’anted. They provide them with beds that they never get out of. Mrs. Elizabeth Oakes Smith says, speaking of her own bees: “ At one time we found in the bottom of the hive several oblong pellets lying in a row, resembling little bodies in a winding-sheet, which proved to consist of bugs of noxious odor that the community were unable or unwilling to eject, and had, by a grand, simultaneous effort, incased in a shroud of wax. “A friend of mine informed me that his bees (he having glass hives) were panic-stricken at one time by the advent of a mouse in the hive. The little folks mustered in great force and stung him to death. After having achieved this much, their next difficulty was to get the monster out. A great meeting was called; a committee of inspection appointed, and it was determined to seal him up. Hermetically sealed, no offensive decomposition could takeplace; accordingly, with right good-will, the workers bent to the task, and in an incredibly brief period hid the offensive relic from sight, but in the bottom of the hive appeared what looked like a mountain of wax.”