Page:Jardine Naturalist's library Bees.djvu/153

Rh remove them into a dwelling-house in order to shelter them from the winter's cold, or when a long track of inclement weather confines them within doors, they are obliged to retain their fæces so long that the consequence is an attack of dysentery. Its existence is easily detected; the floor-board and the combs are covered with stains produced by the excrement, of a dark brown colour, and which diffuse through the hive a most offensive smell, and this last circumstance, no doubt, contributes to augment the evil, for the bees and brood, inhaling only an unwholesome air, must be fatally affected. Enemies of Bees.—The enemies of bees are numerous, though many of them are by no means formidable. Swallows, spiders, ants, frogs, wood-lice, poultry, small birds of almost every kind, are all reckoned amongst their foes, but their ravages are trifling, and seem to have for their object rather the dead bodies than the living insects. During the time of the massacre of the drones, we have often seen blackbirds stealing from among the bushes near the apiary, in the autumnal evenings, and carrying off, one by one, the whole of the carcases of the males that had been destroyed during the day; we have never observed them attacking the living insect. There is a kind of beetle also, (Clerus Apiarius, Pl. VIII. fig. 1,) which, according to Aristotle, inhabits bee-hives, and which, while yet in the larva state, feeds on the larvæ of the bees; we have never heard of any instance of such being met with, or injurious to bees in this country. More to be dreaded are field-mice, which sometimes