Bees, etc.
The native not seldom adds to his usual stock of food by robbing a bee-hive. When he sees bees busy near a tree, he can tell usually at once where the aperture leading to the hive is, and he proceeds to cut open the trunk with his tomahawk and take out the honey. Sometimes large quantities of comb are taken from a hive. I have myself assisted in opening a hollow tree in which a hive had secreted its stores, and the quantity of honey that was found in it was surprising. It was peculiarly flavored, but not at all inferior to the honey of Europe.
Occasionally in the bush the hunter in olden times would see a single busy bee feeding on the flowers near his track. He would adroitly catch this bee and affix to it a particle of down, and follow it until he found its nest.
In the narrative of the overland expedition of the Messrs. Jardine from Rockhampton to Cape York (1867) the following account is given of the native bee:—
"This little insect (called Wirotheree in the Wellington dialect), the invasion of whose hoards so frequently added to the store of the travellers, and no doubt assisted largely in maintaining their health, is very different from the European bee, being in size and appearance like the common house-fly. It deposits its honey in trees and logs, without any regular comb, as in the case of the former. These deposits are familiarly known in the colony as 'sugar-bags' (sugar-bag meaning, aboriginicè, anything sweet), and require some experience and proficiency to detect and secure the aperture by which the bees enter the trees, being undistinguishable to an unpractised eye. The quantity of honey is sometimes very large, amounting to several quarts. Enough was found on one occasion to more than satisfy the whole party. Its flavor differs from that of European honey almost as much as the bee does in appearance, being more aromatic than the latter: it is also less crystalline. As the celebrated 'Narbonne honey' derives its excellence from the bees feeding on the wild thyme of the south of France, so does the Australian honey derive its superior flavor from the aromatic flowers and shrubs on which the Wirotheree feeds, and which makes it preferred by many to the European."
Mr. Braim says that in New South Wales wild honey is collected by a small stingless bee, not so large as the common fly; and that the honey-nest is generally found at the summit of remarkably high trees. The honey is of delicious flavor, after it has been carefully separated from the comb, the cells of which are generally filled with small flies. The natives, however, devour it just as they find it, and are very fond even of the refuse comb, with which they make their favorite beverage called Bull, and of this they drink till they become quite intoxicated.[1]
Professor McCoy informs me that the only bee in Victoria that makes a honey-comb is the imported one (Apis mellifica). It is more than thirty years since it was first introduced. The honey-comb is always stored in the hollows of trees.
- ↑ History of New South Wales, by Thomas Henry Braim, 1846, vol. II., p. 248.
