BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
The uses of wax for domestic purposes, and in the arts, are various and extensive. The greater portion of that imported into England is used perhaps in candles. But I have already said that I hope the day may come when wax candles of our own make will take the place of dips. But there are many smaller articles which a careful housekeeper will like to have at hand ; to say nothing of the pleasure of sewing with a well waxed thread. Lip salve and cerate are no bad things to have in the house : the latter is made by melting an ounce of wax, and heating an ounce of sweet oil, not boiling either. Pour them together at about the same temperature, and keep stirring steadily until they leave the fluid for the buttery state. If you leave off stirring just at the setting point, the wax and oil will separate, and you will have to melt again. But if you stir steadily all the time, you will have a substance soft as butter and smooth as oil, --of such excellent healing powers, that I have sometimes wished to have a sore placo to test its virtues. The cerate may be made harder or softer by altering the proportion of oil to the wax.
The softer cerate is best for dressing a blister ;nothing better: the harder, for spreading on linen, to apply to any sore made by long confinement in bed. An excellent ointment for a barn is made by dissolving a lump of camphor in the oil before you add it to the wax. Remember what I said about stirring.
Many other things may be made of wax--lip salve, &c.; but I shall not stop now to give the receipts for them, as almost any old woman knows how to make them.
Now, to speak of the uses of honey: It will save you many a sugar bill if you have plenty of it; and many a bill for other things too. Excellent wine may be made from it, which, when it has been kept some few years, can hardly be told from sherry. The old receipts for meteglin I shall give in an appendix. Anybody who pleases may try it, or modify it so as to suit our altered tastes, by leaving out some of the yarbs. I fancy a few of us would like so many as suited queen Elizabeth's palate. The other receipts have been tried in New Zealand, and succeed well.
If your wine is a failure, remember that by sun and air it will turn into excellent vinegar.
First rate beer may be made from honey, according to the subjoined receipt. Without reckoning the worth of the honey, it is found to stand the maker at a penny a gallon. And what hard working man can have any excuse for setting in a pothouse, when he can have a drink so strengthening and wholesome as this, if taken in moderation; with his wife, too, to share it with him after the labour of the day is over?
Honey cakes, such as Cerberus delighted in (hehad three mouths to fill, remember), may be made by any thrifty bee wife; and many other niceties which her own talent will lead her to try. I believe that clear run honey will do very well for preserving, though I have never yet seen it tried. No one can fear having too much honey, if it can be used for all these purposes. I have a great opinion of its virtues, though I do not sing them in quite so lofty a strain as good old Sir John More.
IX. Bees' Enemies.--There is no greater foe to bees than man. Alas that it should be so! What with mismanagement, what with neglect, what with mistaken kindness, the poor bee has a sorry time of it from him who ought to be her guardian and friend; and yet she knows fall well how to repay her master's care, and, if I mistake not, becomes attached even to his person. Much of the ill treatment which the bee receives from her owner springs, doubtless, from ignorance; and this little manual may, I hope, go some way towards lessening the evil. Let my bee pupil but keep these maxims constantly in mind:--"That if he is to succeed with his bees, it must be by following nature, not by thucarting it."--"That one lesson which his bees teach him is worth a dozen which he can learn from this or any other bee books." You may, if you will but use your eyes and reason, and take advice from those who are able to give it to you, change sides, as it were, and become a bee friend, instead of a bee enemy. But there are other foes of the poor bee who cannot be taught better manners, because they have no reason to work upon; they are their "natural enemies," as an Englishhman once used to think himself of the French. And I will now give you, who are on the bees' side, short and plain directions for destroying, or at least guarding against, these implacable foes.
I. The most deadly are the spiders. It is a piteous thing to see a bee, when it is returning from abroad heavily laden, rejoicing doubtless at the treasure which it is about to add to the common stock, caught in the deadly snare which the spider has spread for her. Vain are her struggles ; they only serve to wind the fatal meshes more closely round her, and unless speedily extricated by a friendly hand, she perishes miserably : I say, speedily ; for even if you release the captive, unless it be done almost immediately, you will find it impossible to free her from the fetters in which she is bound ; and although you return her to the mouth of her own hive, which she will try to enter, she will be turned out by her own mates as a sick and disabled cripple. Prevention, therefore, is better than cure. Brush away the cobwebs every time you visit your bee house (and I assume that you are a constant visitant). Only a sluttish housewife allows a cobweb inside her house, and only a careless bee master will suffer a cobweb to remain about his hives. In the first position, they are only a sign of untidiness ; in the latter, his children get hung up :--for such he ought to consider his bees.
II. The mouse is a deadly enemy to the bee ; but not so much in this as in colder climates. When the bees are in a state of torpor during several months of the year, then the mouse makes his insidious attacks, crawling through the doorway, if it be a large one, or even gnawing a passage through the straw ; and when once within a hive, he commits
not made so much head. But still the prudent bee master had better beware of it in time. Prevention is here again better than eure. About twice a year, in spring and autumn, shift the bottom boards of all your hives ; clean them well by scraping them, or even planing them, and if there are any signs of this grub, pour scaling water upon them. The place where they chiefly harbour is between the hive and its bottom board, so the closer they fit one to the other the better. I have seen these little hard-headed creatures tunnelling even in the solid wood of the bottom boards. Also clean the edge of the hive before you put it down again, remembering what I said about turning the combs up in their own planes, and that a few puffs of smoke, blown into the hive before you move it, will take away from the bees all inclination to sting. When a hive is weak, and the children of the wax moth numerous, they no longer content themselves with lying hid between the hive and its bottom board, but push their ravages amongst the empty.combs, burrowing in them, and spinning their nasty webs, which the bees have great difficulty in getting rid of. So you must come to their aid. They themselves show you how to act ; for a strong swarm gnaws away and carries out piecemeal every bit of comb which contains any of these grubs. A weak hive seems to give it up in despair. So, to use the words of De Gelion, " the only means of saving the colony is to imitate the surgeon, who cuts off a diseased limb to save the rest. Every bit of infected comb must be cut out, leaving only those occupied by the bees." This may be easily done by means of the comb knife, which I have figured and described in a former letter. The odd shaped holes which are often found in the middle of combs in an old hive, are made, I doubt not, by the bees having cut out an infected part. A curious point here arises connected more with natural history, and the distribution of living creatures over the surface of this globe of ours, than with the management of bees ; and yet I will not pass it altogether by. It is this : Supposing this wax grub is the same as that which is the pest of European and American apiaries, how did it come to these far away isles? Were the eggs or grubs brought in the first hive which arrived here from New South Wales? At all events this question, unsolved as I am content to leave it, leads to these practical results :--
1st, That it is of great importance thoroughly to cleanse old hives into which new swarms are put, by scraping and scaling them ; and, 24ly, That where bees are sent to a distant station, be very careful to send them in clean hives or boxes, in which it is next to an impossibility that any grub or egg of the bee moth can harbour ; and then it will be curious to see how long the bees remain free from the persecution of their "_natural enemies_."
IV. All these enemies to the poor bee are common both to England and New Zealand. With them the bees, and the bee master as their ally, have to fight in both lands. But there is another foe peculiar to New Zealand of a very nasty nature : 1 mean that stinking beetle, whose real name is _kekereru_, but which has been transmogrified by pakchas into cockeredoo. When a hive dwindles away to nothing,and the bee master turns up his hive to see what is the cause and extent of the damage, he will often find a number of these black rascals in possession of the empty combs. I do not think they ever have the impluence to push their way into a fully occupied hive; but when a swarm becomes weak, they creep in by stealth. A stock which has lost heart from the death of its queen, and its inability to replace her, will not make any vigorous efforts to expel these intruders, though they continue for a time to work a little in very fine weather. When at last they come to nothing, and the bee master turns up his deserted hive, to see what has been the cause of his loss, he finds these kekererus skulking away between the empty combs, and thinks, naturally enough, that they are to blame, whilst they are rather the _result_ than the _cause_ of the ruin. A strong stock is well able to defend itself against these intruders. Just drop one of them, or a spider, into an observatory hive, and you will see them turn him out quickly enough, " hand over hand," as I have heard a sailor say. But yet it is well to keep your apiary as free as possible from these crawling stinkpots. Put your foot upon one whenever you meet him, and have as little shelter for them about your bee house as may be. For this reason, I like to have my hives, even though they be of straw, standing under one roof common to them all, rather than each protected by its own hackle. Nothing indeed is more sightly about a cottage than a row of these conical roofs; only mind, if your hives are protected in this way, to lift up the hackles every now and then, to see if these bee enemies are harbouring there. If you find them, take the law into your own hands.
Fowls should be kept away from an apiary ; they are very destructive ; and when they once get a taste of the bees, will stand near the mouth of the hive, and snap them up as they come out. Here the remedy is self-evident : keep your bees and your fowls apart.
The large species of dragon flies catch a great many ; and many a queen, I fancy, falls a victim to these birds of prey. The queen is heavier of flight than a common bee, and thus is more easily captured. I have seen the large dragon fly "hawking" the bees, just as a kite does the small birds, and bearing them away in her sharp mandibles. Knock these robbers down whenever you can. They are not very numerous.
There are many of the New Zealand birds which, I doubt not, seize the bees in their flight. The kurimako I have taken in the fact ; and I strongly suspect the tui, and other honey eating birds. They find it less trouble, I suppose, to gobble up the bee, with its burden of honey inside, rather than gather the honey, like honest birds, from a number of flowers for their own consumption. Whatever kind of bird you catch in this act of piracy, show no mercy, but shoot a number, and hang them up as scarecrows. I shall be curious to know whether New Zealand birds have made a sufficient advance in colonization to take this warning.
But all these enemies of the bees are nothing when compared with the bees themselves. The enemies I have spoken of attack and kill the bees single handed, whilst a piratical - hive sends out its
use the smoker : drive away the robbers from the combs, and secure all that is left to yourself.
If you are aware of an attempt to plunder at an early stage of the proceedings, stop up the hive which is attacked at once, by putting little wedges in the doorway, so that a passage may be left for the air, but not for the robbers. If the attempt is made in the middle of the day, when a number of bees are out at work, those who return home laden will of course be a good deal surprised to find the door of their own hive closed against them. But there is no cure for it ; they must wait patiently till even, for then you may open the door.
The most certain remedy against robbers is to remove the hive which is attacked a mile or two off. Set it in some sheltered place, and leave it there till all danger of further attack is over. But if your apiary is fully stocked, and you have no particular reason for wishing to save this hive, the shortest and best way is to unite the bees, and take the honey and wax for yourself. So much for bees' enemies, and the means of guarding against them.
X. Miscellaneous Remarks.--The Bee's Sting. A good deal of the craft of bee keeping is different in New Zealand from that which is useful in England. The length of the summer, the mildness of the winter, and greater consequent increase of the bees--all these make the odds ; and so I have compiled this little manual, which I believe will give you more practical hints than any European bee book would do, not excepting my own. If any other manual could give you the needful information, this never would have been written. But a bee sting is the same all over the world : the pain is sharp for a minute or two ; and it is not pleasant to have an eye entirely closed, or a nose twice as large as nature intended it. As the sting of the bee is the same here as it was in England, I can have nothing new to say on the subject; and will only quote what I wrote some years ago. I do not think, however, that the bees are near so irascible here as they are in England ; and I account for it in this way : They have not so many enemies to contend with ; the absence of wasps, in particular, enables them to preserve a more equal temper. I wish all Englishmen were as much improved in this respect as their bees are. Remember that a man's sting is not so easily cured as a bee's. So, if you are ever inclined to use your own in the shape of a sharp or angry word, substitute for it the honey of kindness, and then you will gain a lesson from your bees worth learning. But now for my quotation :--. " Many people who would otherwise keep bees are afraid of their stings, and so will have nothing to say to them. There are some people, it is true, to whom a sting is really dangerous : let them have nothing to do with them unless they love their bees so much as rather to brave all consequences than to give up keeping them. There are some people who, if they get a sting in their finger, straightway swell up to the shoulder, or even further ; this is certainly not pleasant, though I do not believe any great harm comes of it. The worst place in which you can be stung is the inside of the throat : I have heard of a man
By handling a bee dexterously you may make her push out her sting, down which a drop of poison will be seen to trickle; you may cause her to deposit this drop on the back of your thumb nail, and if you are so disposed, may taste what it is like, as I have done many a time. You will find it a very sour and bitter acid, unlike any other taste I know, and by no means agreeable; so that you will be sure to spit it out again. Even if you were to swallow it, I do not think it would hurt you. Though it produces so violent an effect when introduced into the system through a sting, it is quite harmless when taken internally. I believe it is a substance in itself called melittic acid by the chemists. Formic acid (that of ants) is nearly like it, and is equally harmless taken internally. I have read somewhere, though I cannot remember the book, that our soldiers in the Peninsula, when parched with thirst, relieved themselves by eating a number of ants which they fell in with. A curious sort of travelling lemon-aid machine is an ant: I do not fancy you will make the same use of your bees.
The poison of the bee, though very powerful in its operation on men, is still more so on bees. A bee stung by another seems immediately paralyzed, losing the entire use of her lower extremities, which she drags after her in a piteous way, and soon dies. I have seen one bee dragging by her sting another bee whom she had wounded; so that it is entirely untrue thatone bee never stings another. People have argued _a priori_ that it is so; because, say they, she would in that case lose her sting, and perish: but the
more attached to his nation than to the Spaniards, wrote this line--
Gallis mella dabunt, Hispanis spicula figunt.
To which the Spaniard answered--
Spienals si figant emorientur apes.
The Pope was made to answer in an ingenious way, and in a manner perfectly consistent with his office of pastor to the church--
Cuncetis mella dabunt, sed nullis spicula figunt,
Spienla rex etenim figure nescit apum.
## Appendix A The Situation of the Hives ought never to be changed.
I have seen people shift about their hives very inconsiderately; but change of place invariably weakens them, as the bees will return to their old residence, the environs of which are so familiar to them. A hive should remain as fixed to the spot as the ancient oaks, in the hollows of which they delight to establish themselves, where they have their young, their companions, their beloved queen, and all their treasures. When the young bees take wing for the first time, they do it with great precaution, turning round and round, and fluttering about the entrance, to examine the hive well before taking flight. They do the same in returning, so that they may be easily distinguished, conducting themselves nearly after the same manner as the workers of a newly hired swarm.
When they have made a few hundred excursions, they set off without examining the locality, and, returning in full flight, will know their own hive in the midst of a hundred others. But if you change its place you perplex them, much the same as you would be, if, during your absence, some one lifted your house, and placed it a mile off. The poor bees return loaded, and seeking in vain for their habitation, either fall down and perish with fatigue, or throw themselves into the neighbouring hives, when they are speedily put to death.
The following fact proves how much these precious insects are attached to place, and how far they retain the recollection of it.
During my residence at Lignieres, where I passed twenty-seven years, I removed all my hives into the house towards the middle of November, to guard them from the drifted snow in which my apiary would sometimes be buried, and I replaced them again some fine day in March.
Having hives of wood and straw, of different sizes and shapes, I arranged them with more order and symmetry; and, with this view, I placed the first on the opposite side of the apiary to where it formerly stood.
Although it had been shut up nearly four months, the bees returned to the same place they had occupied the year before, which obliged me to return my hive with all speed, and led me to conclude that they should not be moved about, and that the bees will not be pliable to our fancies and caprices.
When hives are transported to a considerable distance, there is no fear that the bees will return. But this inconvenience would re sure to take place, and many of the working bees would perish, if they were removed only a few hundred paces from the spot they have been accustomed to. The hive may not perish, but it will be greatly weakened. In my opinion, if the situation is to be changed at all, they should be removed at least a mile and a half.
RECEIPTS. MEATH or HYDROMEL.
Mouth or hydromel is of two sorts; the weaker, and the stronger meath, or metheglin.
If your mead be not strong enough by the refuse of your oombs, then put so much of your coarse honey into it as will make it strong enough to bear an egg the breadth of a twopence above the top of the liquor, which is sufficient for ordinary mead; and afterwards, till night, ever and anon, stir it about the kive. If you would make a greater quantity, then you must add a greater measure of water and honey; namely, six gallons of water to one of honey. Some will boil this proportion of six to one, to four; but I think to five is very sufficient: the spices to this proportion are cinnamon, ginger, pepper, grains of paradise, cloves, of each two drams. The next morning, put to the liquor some of the scum of the honey; stir them together, and stoop the kive a little backwards; when it hath settled an hour or two, draw it off to be boiled; and when you see the sediment appear, stop, and let the rest run into some vessel by itself, which, when settled, strain into the boiler, and the dregs of all cast into your garden for the use of your bees.
When your liquor is set over a gentle fire, and a thick seam is gathered all over, and the bubbles by the sides begin to break the seam, having damped your fire to cease the boiling,
skim it clean; and then presently blow up your fire; and when you see the second scum ready, having again damped the fire, take off the seam as before; and then, having again stirred your fire, let it boil handsomely for the space of an hour, or thereabouts; but be sure you always keep seumming of it as there is occasion.
After all this is done, put in your spices according to the former receipt, and let it boil a quarter of an hour more at least. The end of boiling is to cleanse the mead, which once done, any farther boiling does but rather diminish than increase the goodness and strength of the mead.
As soon as it hath done boiling, take it from the fire and set it to cool; the next day, when it is settled, strain it through a hair sieve or linen bag into the kive, reserving still the dregs for the bees, and let it stand covered three or four days till it work, and let it work two days; then turn it into a barrel sealed with bay leaves, making the spice bag fast at the top. If you make no great quantity of mead, you may turn it the next day, and let it work in the barrel; your ordinary mead which turns sour will make excellent good vinegar.
Metheglin is the more generous and stronger sort of hylro-mel, for it beareth an egg to the breadth of a sixpence, and is usually made of finer honey with a less proportion of water, namely, four to one. To every barrel of sixteen gallons of skimmed liquor, add thyme one ounce; egalantine, sweet marjoram, rosmearay, of each half an ounce; ginger, two ounces; cinnamon, one ounce; eloves and pepper, of each half an ounce; all gross beaten, the one half boiled loose in the liquor, and the other half put into a bag before in mead; so that after this manner being made, as ordinary mead will not keep above half a year, this, the longer it is kept, the stronger it is, and hath the more delicate flavour and taste.
This was a drink frequently used among the ancient Romans, who, I suppose, first taught the ordering of bees, and brought this wholesome liquor into our island. We find by history, it was the approved and common drink of our ancestors, even of our kings and queens, who, in former ages, preferred the liquors of _the_ product of this island, before those imported from foreign countries; as did the famous and renowned Queen Elizabeth,who every year had a vessel of metheglin made for her own drinking. A receipt of this queen's metheglin coming to my hands, I shall oblige the reader therewith, as follows:--