Bee

The Educational Bee-Hive For Observation, Instruction, And Experiment.

Designed By Edward F. Bigelow, Ph. D. Nature and Science Editor of the St. Nicholas Magazine; lecturer on Nature Pedagogy; Author of " How Nature Study Should be Taught."

A bee-hive's hum shall soothe my ear.-Rogers.

Make him observe the subject, and the plot,

The manners, passions, unities, and what not.

-Pope.

Bees approach nearer to man, in reason, than any other creature.-A. J. King.

Studying the Honey-Bee

I hold, and exaggerate nothing, that our interest herein is of the most considerable. The discovery of a sign of true intellect outside ourselves procures us something of the emotion Robinson Crusoe felt when he saw the imprint of a human foot on the sandy beach of his island. We seem less solitary than we had believed. And, indeed, in our endeavor to understand the intellect of the bees, we are studying in them that which is most precious in our own substance.

And the closer our acquaintance becomes, the nearer is our ignorance brought to us of the depths of their real existence; but such ignorance is better than the other kind, which is unconscious, and satisfied.

Besides, I myself have now for a long time ceased to look for anything more beautiful in this world, or more interesting, than the truth; or at least than the effort one is able to make toward the truth. - Maurice Maeterlinck, in "The Life of the Bee."

The Bigelow Educational Beehive

Insect Study-Bees in Particular. -It is in the world of insects, vast and varied, its members innumerable, beautiful, and almost miraculous in transformation, that the naturalist revels. The entomologist proclaims the attractions of his favorite pursuit as does no other naturalist, and no other disputes his claim. The most exuberant language fails to do full justice to the subject. Kirby and Spence, years ago, wrote as follows :

" Were a naturalist to announce to the world the discovery of an animal which, for the first five years of its life, existed in the form of a serpent; which then, penetrating into the earth and weaving a shroud of purest silk of the finest texture, contracted itself within this covering into a body without external mouth or limbs, and resembling more than any thing else an Egyptian mummy; and which, lastly, after remaining in this state without food and without motion for three years longer, should, at the end of that period, burst its silken garment, struggle through its earthy covering, and start into day a winged bird-what, think you, would be the sensation excited by this strange piece of intelligence? After the first doubts of its truth were dispelled, what astonishment would succeed!

" But you ask, 'To what do all these improbable suppositions tend? ' Simply to arouse your attention to the metamorphoses or transformations of the insect world, almost as strange and surprising, to which I am now about to direct your view - miracles which, though scarcely surpassed in singularity by all that poets have feigned, and, though actually wrought every day beneath our eyes, are unheeded alike by the ignorant and the learned because of their commonness and the minuteness of the transforming objects."

All this, bear in mind, is in praise of what is already known. Of the charm of discovering these facts, the entomologist James Rennie wrote:

It can never be too strongly impressed upon a mind anxious for the acquisition of knowledge, that the commonest things by which we are surrounded are deserving of minute and careful attention.

If it be granted that making discoveries is one of the most satisfactory of human pleasures, then we may affirm without hesitation that the study of insects is one of the most delightful branches of natural history, for it affords peculiar facilities for its pursuit.

"If you speak of a stone," says St. Basil, one of the Fathers of the church, " if you speak of a fly, a gnat, or a bee, your conversation will be a sort of demonstration of the power of Him whose hand formed them, for the wisdom of the workman is commonly perceived in that which is of little size. He who stretched out the heavens and dug up the bottom of the sea is also He who has pierced a passage through the sting of a bee for the ejection of its poison."

This very large order of animal life, Professor L. O. Howard states, "comprises nearly 30,000 described species; but the enormous number of undescribed species ... would probably swell this number to more than 300,000."

Of this vast number of insects, the one pre-eminent in human interest is probably the honey-bee. Says Morely, "Both ends of the honey-bee have always been of singular interest to us, and this for exactly opposite reasons. It is a double-ender - one end the friend, the other the enemy of man."

This supreme interest in the bee, Prof. John Comstock expresses less humorously but no less truthfully when he says:

"The honey-bee, through its useful products, has been known and cared for by man for centuries. Philosophers have written about it, poets have sung its praises, and naturalists have studied it during past ages, until there is probably no other insect with which man has such an intimate acquaintance."

In face of this overwhelming interest, the study of the honey-bee, so far as apparatus is concerned, has fared the worst of all at the hands of the scientists or the educational naturalist. They have sold the master study, and relinquished chief title in it for a bag of gold. In the hands of commercialism bees have fared well. Father Langstroth lifted out the honey; Bingham and Root smoked out the bees; Coggshall and Dixie brushed them off; Porter kept them out of their home; Cowan whirled out the liquid honey, and Danzenbaker and others made it convenient to capture comb and all. Alley caught the queens and drones; Doolittle, Miller, and Boardman said, "Let us feed them when they are weak, so that they can work better for us;" Hershiser and Mason bottled the honey, and Sturwold exhibited it to the public, all saying, in effect, " Bring up your money, and eat." Then they all snouted in chorus, "There's money in it! keep bees, and get rich!"