Does Its Loss Prove Fatal?
Categories:
IRRITABILITY OF BEES.
Bee Keeping:
Mysteries Of Bee-keeping Explained
It is said "to the bee itself this mutilation proves fatal." This last
is another assertion for fact, so often repeated, that perhaps we might
as well admit it; seeing the difficulty we should have in disproving
it. Only think of the impossibility of keeping our eye, for five
minutes, on a bee that is flying about, after it has left its sting.
Yet there are some persons so very particular about what they receive
as fac
s, that they would require this very unreasonable thing of
watching a bee till it died, before they could be _positively sure_
that the loss of its sting caused its death. (It is much easier to
guess.) They might even take analogy, and say that other insects
possess so little sensation that they have been known to recover after
much more extensive mutilation--that beetles have lived for months
under circumstances that would have instantly killed some of the higher
animals--that spiders often reproduce a leg, even lobsters can replace
a lost claw, &c. I have put off describing any protection against their
attacks, because I wish to get up a little more courage in our doings
among them. Yet it is folly to expect all will manage successfully
without something for defence.