PEACE TREATY BEES.

Waikato Times, Volume 96, Issue 15016, 12 August 1922, Page 14 (Supplement)

PEACE TREATY BEES.

TRAIN WITH 500 MILLION PASSENGERS. WHY 23,000 SWARMS OF BEES HAVE CHANGED THEIR COUNTRY. A railway train not long ago left Hanover for France and Belgium with one of 1 lie strangest companies Of passengers over seen on a railway. Not only were Hie passengers unusual, hut there were about 500 million of I hem on Hie one train—as many as all Hie passengers on all the trains of Hie United Kingdom in four months. These pasengers were bees, and there were 23,000 swarms, sent by Ihe German Government to France and Belgium as part of the War indemnity. Boos were not specially mentioned in the Peace Treaty, as were horses, cows, and pigs, but they yore named in a list prepared within GO days of flip Treaty coming into force, setting forth a number of articles to lie restored to Ila e Allies; and it was in accordance with this that this train-load.of bees was sent.* America the Biggest Beekeeper. Officials on both sides of Ihe Rhine were asked what would happen if by any chance the train met with an accident! The work of rescuing the bees would certainly not have been an easy one. There must have been about forty tons of Uwu.

A second train-load of Bees will leave Germany early next year. Before the war France had about a million hives and Belgium a quarter of a million, but these numbers were sadly reduced during tlie years of con> liict. > Germany had about two million hives, and Austria over a million and a half.

The’United States is the biggest bee country in tlie world, possessing nearly three million hives.