40,000 DRUNKEN BEES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12955, 26 August 1905, Page 2 (Supplement)

40,000 DRUNKEN BEES.

HIVE INMATES FEAST ON NECTAR, Few people would have thought it possible to add another department to Whiteley's, but this has just been done. The "Universal Provider" now supplies everything, living or dead, which naturalists collect, from" frog-spawn to an observatory hive oi 40,000 bees. The first hive of bees which came to Wliiteley's almost caused a panic. On the evening of arrival the hive was taken up to the glass roof of a ground floor department, and the bees were let loose for an airing, in which it was thought they would fly away to Kensington Gardens in quest of honey. But the bees were not going so far for honey when they had it close by all the time. Instead, they came back loose into the stores—the whole 40,000 of them—and took possession of the flower and grocery departments, the latter having an abundance of sugar and other sweet things lying about openly. It was hours before the last bee came home. The insects had such a debauch as they are never likely to have again. Some blundered back in a drunken state, as full as they could be of nectar. The hives are now kept closed until four o'clock in the afternoon, when they are taken up to the leads on top of the building, the front doors opened, and the insects come and go as they please until dark..

Already these hives, and the formicariurns, or 'nests of living ants, are in great demand. A herd of the ant's cows— common green fly—and about half a dozen of their domestic pels—the little white woodlouse, which is not as big as one letter of its terrific name, Platyarthus Hoffmannaeg'gii— introduced into each nest.

The ants may lie seen building, laying out roads, boring tunnels, constructing cowsheds, and milking their cows, playing with their pets, attending in state on their queen, storing away their eggs and food, feeding and washing their young, and burying their dead in the cemetery each colony has built in one corner of its nest.

The greatest demand so far in the new department has been for Japanese waltzing mice, which come out of their nests and indulge in periodical mad whirls until they look like nothing but balls of black-and-white wooi.

There are lizards, frogs, and newts alive and in spirti, aquaria illustrating the development of pond life, and mounted moths f, and butterflies, as well as cases showing the life history of insects injurious to crops and cattle.