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Bee-Culture at Present: Apis

The honey of the Apis Dorsata is said not to be of excellent quality, being thin and liable to ferment and mixed with all sorts of impurities, a condition which is partly or perhaps wholly the result of carelessness in handling. It is consumed mostly by the natives. The wax, however, is excellent and valuable, and is produced by the bees with great prodigality.

The size of the honeycomb cells corresponds to the size of the bee, which is much larger than our honey-bee. These strange, wild, tree and rock building bees of India have a peculiar interest for us, as an attempt has already been made to bring them to this country, and the time may come when from the trees of our Southern States will depend these large combs.

Mr. Frank Benton, in 1880-81, made a trip to India on purpose to get swarms of the big bees. Although they never have been tamed by the natives of India, the enterprising American succeeded in inducing them to live in hives and found them no more difficult to handle, by using proper precautions, than other bees.

The climate defeated the enterprise, however, and a long illness on the part of Mr. Benton, while trying to transport the bees, resulted in the loss of them.

The presence of Apis Dorsata is desired by the beekeepers of this country because of its large size and consequently long tongue. Undoubtedly it could collect the honey from the deep flowers of red clover, which are, as a rule, inaccessible to our honey-bee. At present a great part of the delicious honey in these flowers goes to waste for want of gatherers, only the bumble-bees being able to profit to any extent by the luscious store.

It is not improbable, however, that the red clover may be replaced before long by the new clovers which have been developed by careful experiments and which combine the excellent qualities of both the red and the white clover as forage-plants. Experiments in producing new Bee-Culture at Present forms of clover may well result in depriving the bumblebee of his monopoly by giving us clovers with tubes short enough for our ordinary hive-bee.

This, however, need not discourage the introduction of Apis Dorsata, as certainly there will be plenty of honey for all gatherers. It is a question, though, whether the Apis Dorsata, being a tropical bee, could endure the northern climate without a great deal of care; it might take to the woods in the South, however, and build its enormous combs of valuable wax, which would be worth seeing, to say the least. Besides possessing the largest of honey-makers, India also possesses one of the smallest, - the little Apis Florea, of which "the workers, more slender than house flies, though longer bodied, are blue-black in color, with the anterior third of the abdomen bright orange."

This little bee builds an exceedingly delicate comb no larger than a man's hand and attaches it to thorn bushes or the twigs of small trees. It holds only about a teacupful of honey and this is not held in very high esteem excepting for medicinal purposes in some sections.

The common hive-bee of India is Apis Indica, a pretty little yellow creature, smaller than our hive-bees and producing in comparison but a meagre amount of honey, though this is usually of good flavor. It is found wild in hollow trees and rock crevices, and is easily hived. Honey-gathering in the jungles of southern India results in the accumulation of quite a large amount of honey and wax, but bee-culture is not practised south of the Punjab excepting in some of the hill villages of Kanara, where the people desiring honey place an earthen pot with a small hole in the side, mouth down, in a hole in the ground, and trust that it will become the selected quarters of bees!

Strange to say it often does. Bee-culture is quite extensively carried on in certain valleys in the hills of the Punjab. In some of these places the hives are of mud, in the form of cylinders, larger at one end. The bee-keeper makes a hole in the wall of his hut and into it inserts the larger end of his mud hive. He then closes the large opening with a sort of door made of grass and mud and closes the other end also, leaving but a small entrance hole. He is now ready for business and by smearing this curious hive with honey and other aromatic substances he hopes to call to it a swarm of bees. If they do not come he is obliged to go to the forest and capture them. When he wishes to take out the honey he retires to his hut, opens the large end of the hive, drives the bees by means of smoke out through the opposite entrance and helps himself.

In the Simla hills, however, bee-culture has assumed large proportions. It is carried on in most of the valleys, where special houses are built for the bees, sometimes three stories high. Recesses are built into the walls of these bee-houses, each closed on the outside by a wooden panel in which a hole for the entrance of the bees is made. A man is usually in charge of each bee-house, whose business it is to prevent excessive swarming, keep the apiary well stocked with early swarms and guard it against attacks of bears, martins, hornets, wasps, and caterpillars.

The bees are invited to these places by smearing the inside of the recesses with honey and aromatic herbs, and where they fail to appear the bee-keeper is obliged to go to their nests in the forest and use more urgent measures with them.

In some places there are nooks reserved for the bees in the lower parts of the people's houses, and in others bees are kept in the upper verandas of the houses in hives formed of short lengths of hollow trunks of trees.

The honey of India varies at different seasons of the Bee-Culture at Present year, being watery and yellow early in the season and of good quality in the fall.

It is said that the Punjab-Himalaya honey is principally used in the manufacture of an alcoholic liquor. This the natives prepare by mixing equal quantities of honey and water together and leaving it to stand in closed earthen vessels for a year.

This Indian mead is very potent, one cupful being enough to produce intoxication.

Honey here as elsewhere forms the basis of several popular remedies and has long held an important place in the Hindu Materia Medica.