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Bee-Culture at Present: India

In India, however, where the bees are as highly valued by the people to-day as when Kalidasa gave them such frequent place in his love songs, Apis Mellifica is not indigenous. Indeed, India has four or more species of honeymaking bees, though but one of these, the Apis Indica, is kept in hives. The others live in rocks or trees and store quantities of "wild honey," which the natives gather. The most famous of the wild honey-bees of India is the large Apis Dorsata, found also in the adjoining countries. It is said to be a fierce wild bee, and builds an enor- Bee-Culture at Present mous single comb, sometimes five or six feet long and three or four feet wide, suspending it in the tops of the highest trees, or beneath overhanging rocks, or in ruins or other inaccessible places. Sometimes, under favorable conditions, it builds a double comb, and as many as fifteen or twenty swarms may occupy one favorite tree.

Honey in India is in many places under government control, only certain persons or "honey-men" being granted a license to gather it.

The honey and wax of the Apis Dorsata are eagerly sought in spite of the difficulty and danger of securing them. Into the forest the honey-men steal twice a year at the darkest part of the night and climb the high trees by means of bamboo ladders, the branches lopped off to serve as steps, or they are let down by ropes over the high cliffs. One comb is said to yield on an average from eight to fifteen "beer-bottles" of reddish-brown honey, and from one to two-and-a-half pounds of wax, and this is considered a plentiful harvest, well worth the cost of gathering. Hooker. in his "Himalayan Journals" speaks of the honey-seekers in one of the valleys he visited: - "The slope on either side of the valley is very steep; that on the north in particular appearing too precipitous for any road, and being only frequented by honey-seekers, who scale the rocks by cane ladders, and thus reach the pendulous bees'-nests, which are so large as in some instances to be conspicuous features at the distance of a mile. This pursuit appeared extremely perilous, the long thread-like canes in many places affording the only footing, over many yards of cliff: the procuring of this honey, however, is the only means by which many of the idle poor raise the rent which they must pay to the Rajah."