Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1899-08-16
THE PHILIPPINE BEE.
AMERICAN APlARISTS WANT Gov
ERNMENT TO DoMESTlCATE THEM.

Six Feet High - Have Never Yet Been
Successfully Transferred from Their
Native Haunts Legends About Them.
The acquisition of the Philippine
Islands has given new life to the old
belief of the bee-keepers of this coun-
try that the giant honey bee of India,
which is known to be common in Java,
Borneo, Sumatra, Luzon and Minda-
mao, can be introduced in the sub
tropical regions of the United
States. For several weeks letter md
petitions have been coming to the
secretary of agriculture asking him to
secure East IndiaA queen bees from
Manila and make the effort to domes-
ticate the species here. Precedent for
this course is found in the fact that
the Italian bee was in this way
brought to the United States by Com
missioner Holloway in 1860, thereby
adding vastly to the resources OF the
country.
The East Indian bee, known scien-
tifcally as apis dorsata, has never yet
been successfully transferred from Its
native haunts to any part of Europe,
and the natives stoutly maintain that
it cannot be done. AS a rule they are
very much afraid of it and do not care
to modest it unless they can find col
ony at a disadvantas, and attack it
in such way as to compass the death
of the bees. The product of tho big
Indian bee that is most desired is not
honey, but the wax, which enters SO
largely into the processes of dyelng
cotton cloth in the Orient. The wax
is used to cover the cloth where the
color is to be stopped out, very much
as it is used for engraving Oh steel
with acid. Where there is no wax
the dye sets, and where there is
wax the original white remains. AS
there are millions upon millions OF
natives there is large demand for
the services of the apis dorsata, and
for his wax alone he is hunted every
where throughout the East. Over 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 coun-
try was made in 1881 by Mr.. Frank
Benton, now the apiarist of the agri-
cultural department, who spent four
teen years in studying the bees of Cy-
prus, Carniola, Syria and the East.
He made q journey at his own eX-
pense as far as Borneo, studying the
native bees wherever he went He
found the big bees in Ccylon and de-
cided to try.to take several colonies
of them back to his apiary ut Bairut,
Syria Far up in the mountains, with
the aid of several natives, he found o
number of the huge combs hanging
from tall cliff, place which the bees
had evidently sought to keep out of
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 a
torch finally managed to slip bag
over the pendant comb and so secure
mass of badly mashed 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 effective, and
Mr.. Benton decided to do the job
himself. He rugged two scaffolds,
such as painters use, and let them
| down under the combs. On these he
placed two big boxes. At night lie
had his force of natives lie! him down
by rope, and swinging there hun
dred feet from the rocks below and in
constant danger of general attack
from the bees, he succeeded in shak-
ing the bees into one of the boxes,
also catching the queen, and then put
ting the comb into the other. In this
way he secured four colonies and car
riel them through the weeks journey
to Syria. But one colony was alive
when he got there. This was much
cnfeebled by the hot weather and the
confinement on the steamer, and when
it was allowed flight for exercise,
rs was absolutely necessary to keep it
alive, it scattered and was lost. Dur
ing the trip Mr.. Benton was pros
trated by jungle fever caught while in
Borneo. and could not give the bees
the care that might have brought them
through alive, and so produced aplant
from which queens could have been
produced and sent to the United
States. The experience was enough
to satisfy Mr.. Benton that tho giant
bee is reasonably docile and can be
kept in e hive and handled just as
Italians are.
For centuries the Indian bee has
been the subject of good many large
stories. Some travellers have said that
1t was so ferocious that it could not be
hived. Others have claimed that it
built it's comb horizontally, while
others said that the insect was IN in
corrigible nomad and bonnd to wan
der every year, so that it could never
be kept in an apiary. 1t is true that
they love the wilderness and build
their combs on high tsees, choosing
long, outstrctching limbs from which
to hang their long, single-tiered comb.
They will also fight when molested by
the wax hunter, whose usual method
is to hold torch under the comb and
smoke out the bees, which fly about
in great CONSERVATION and soon fall
within the fame. Their wings are
thus burned off and they fall to the
ground to perish. With club the
hunter knocks down the coveted comb
and gets away, leaving behind him
thousands Of dead bees.
The giant bees, Mr.. Benton says,
are splendid honey gathererss and he
had no difficulty in handling them
without the use of smoke. The ex-
pectation is that these bees would get
nectar from a large variety of honey
producing plants that our native and
Italian bees cannot forage upon be-