Semi=weekly graphic., 1899-04-19
GIANT PHILIPPINE BEES.
Honeymakers Which It Is Proposed to In-
 troduce Into the United States.

troduce Into the United States.
 There is one race inhabiting the Philippines which will be q welcome addition to American citizenship and will receive every facility and induce ment to emigrate to the United States and engage in the skilled labor in which it has no peer This is the giant East Indian honey bee, whose whose immense capacity for making honey and wax has interested the De- partment of Agriculture in the consid- eration of an early effort to introduce it into the United States. To science this bee is known as Apis dorsata. It is common throughout the tropical re- gions of the East, and in the Philip pine Islands tue very largest variety of the species is found It is nearly one-half larger than the American na- tive honey bee, and builds a comb heavy with wax and honey five or six times as large as those found in American orchards and forests.
 The question of acclimatizing these inhabitants of the Philippines in the colder attitudes of America is not dis couraging. The giant bees are found in the mountain regions all through Ahdlets sll4b ndAC C DSCiI DuSly dt MOih at attitudes of 5,000 feet In the Phil ippine Islands their colonies are most numerous in the mountains. as the unceasing quest of the natives for their honeycomb has driven them from the unprotected fiatlands of the coast to the less thickly inhabited and more heavily wooded mountain re- gions. The Filipinos find their daily hpaod vof Ia.rk they are very fond of honey on the staff of life. There is also a large de- mand for wax for use in dyeing.
 The big bees build their hives on tall forest trees or on the overhanging lodges of cliffs. When undisturbed branch swarms build near the parent eolony,so that in a few years an i'm mense bee settlement often grows up in the forest The bees build a comb five or six feet long, four feet wide and from seyen-eights to one and one- half inches in thickness. The largest combs of American honey bees are not of more than one-ffth these di- mensiOns. In appearance the giant bee is a smoky glittering, iridescent black wasp-like figure, with orange bands encircling it's body. There have been reports that this bee is most fer ocious and on account of its great size extremely dangerous, but Prof. Frank Benton, of the Department of Agricul- tllre. has seen and handled them in their Jungle haunts, and he tells diff ferent story. They are such busy and persevering workers, according to 1rof. Benton's account, that they have lost dexterity with their stinging ap- paratus, and though they may alight, full of wrath and with evil intent, up on human hand or neck, they do not handle their offensive weapon with skill and it takes them twenty or thirty seconds to get their sting in working order They are quiet as compared with American bees.
 Petitions have been coming into the Department of Agriculture for years asking that the Government introduce these giant bees into the United States. No attempt at bringing them here has ever been successful. Prof. Benton tried to bring to the United States a swarm of these honeymakers which he captured in the jungle. While Le was sick in bed on his way home, no one else on the vessel would attend to them, and they all died.