The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-07-04
THE PHILIPPINE BEES.

ment to Get Them-Huge Honey
 Gatherers That Make Combs Six Feet
 High-Mr. Frank Bentons Experience
 With Them.
 The acquisition of the Philippine ls- lands has given new life to the old De- lief of the bee-keepers of this country that the giant honey bee of India, when is known to be common in Java, Bofneo, Sumatra, Luzon and Mndanao, can be introduced in the sub-tropical regions ot the United States. For several weeks letters and petitions have been coming to the Secretary of Agriculture, asking hln to secure East Indian queen bees from Manila and make the effort to domesu- cate tke species here. Precedent for thls course is found in the fact that the ltal- ian bee was in this way brought to the United States by Commissioner Hollo- way in 1860, thereby adding vastly to the resources of the country.
 The East Indian bee, known scientlil- cally as apis dorsata, has never yet been successfully transferred from it's native haunts to any part of Europe, and the naives stoutly maintain that 1t cannot be done As a rule they are very much afraid of it. and do not care to molest lu unless they can find a colony at a dls- advantage and attack it in such way as to compass the death of the bees. The product of the big Indian bee that is most desired is not honey, but the wax. which enters so largely into the processes of dyeing cotton cloth in the orient. The wax is used to cover the cloth where the color Is to be stopped it ic iSpl for 9nGrdN- ing on steel with acid. Where there is no wax the dye sets, and where there IA wax the original white remains. As there are millions upon millions of na- tives there is large demand for the services of apis doIsata, and for his wax alone he is hunted everywhere through out the east. Owed and above the home consumption the Philippines export from ten to twenty tons of wax annually.
 The only attempt by an American to bring these giant bees to this country was made in 1881 by MT, Frank Benton, now the apiarst of the agricultural de- nartment, who spent fourteen years studying the bees of Cyprus, Carniola, | Syria and the east He made a journey | at his own expense as far IS Borneo' 1 studying the native bees wherever he went. He found the big bees in Ceylon 1 and decided to try to take several colo nists of them back to his apiary at Bel rout, Syria. Far up in the mountains with the aid of several natives, he fount a number of the huge combs hanging i from a tall cliff, a place which the bees 1 had evidently sought to keep out or reach of wax hunters. The natives were not very successful in getting the bees Their way of doing it was to let man down over the cliff by rope, who by | fighting the bees with torch finally managed to slip a big bag over the pen dant comb and so secure a mass of bad ly smashed comb, honey and bees As these combs were some of them over SIX | feet long and from three to four feet wide. the sack method did not prove eff fective, and MT Benton decided to do the job himself He rigged two scaf- folds. such as painters use, and let them, down under the combs. On these he had placed two big boxes At night he had his force of natives let him down by a rope, and swinging there hundred feet i from the rocks below and in constant danger of a general attack from the bees, he succeeded in shaking the bees into one of the boxes, also catching the queen and then putting the comb into the other In this way he secured four colonies and carried them through the weeks tourney to Syria. But one colony was much enfeebled by the hot weather and the confinement on the steamer, and when it was allowed a flight for exercise, | as was absolutely necessary to keep IL alive, it scattered and was lost During the trip MT Benton was prostrated by
 jungle fever, caught while in Borneo and could not give the bees the care that might have brought them through alive
 and 50 produced a plant from which queens could have been produced and
 sent to the United States. The expert ence was enough to satisfy MT, Benton that the giant bee is reasonably doclle and can be kept in a hive and handled just as Italians are.
 For centuries the Indian bee has been
 the subject of a good many large sto-
 ries, Some travellers have said that II was so ferocious that it could not be
 bived Others have claimed that It built
 it's comb horizontally; while others said
 that the insect was an incorriglble mo-
 mad and bound to wander every year SD that it could never be kept In an api'
 arv. It is true that they love the will
 derness and build their combs on high
 trees. choosing long, outstretching limbs from which to hang their long, single
 tiered comb. They will also fight when molested by the wax hunter, whose usu- al method is to hold a torch under the
 comb and smoke out the bees, which fly
 about in great consternation and soon
 fall within the flame. Their wings are
 thus burned off and they fall to the ground to perish. With club the hun ter knocks down the coveted comb, and gets away. leaving behind him thou
 sands of dead bees.
 The giant bees, MT. Benton says are
 splendid honey gatherers, and he had nc
 difficulty in handling them without the
 use of smoke. The expectation is that
 these bees would get nectar from d larSe @---------