Hi all
I am digging up info on the state of Honey Bee Science in the latter 1800s, and found this in the ABJ, 1894

NO LONGER - THE BUSY BEE.

Science bas shattered another tradition. The bee, so long praised for its habitual diligence. is at last shown up as a loafer. An investigator of the habits of the honey-makers informs us that the popular impression that the bee is a “busy creature is all wrong, and that as a matter of fact the little fraud works only about three hours per day, and is a most thorough-going loafer for the rest of the time. However, ages must come and go ere mortals will cease to think of the bee as other than a hustler improving “each shining hour.” I think the writer of that might have better improved the “shining hour." If any. one agrees with him, why just let him look at an apiary in clover, bass wood or buckwheat season! Not much loafing then! – W. K. FISHER. Lake George, NY

How tired Science must be after making such an astounding "shattering" discovery! Who'd have thought it? The poor, lazy bee – and the “busy" scientist! We think the best thing to do is to let such “scientists” work themselves to death — the Fool-Killer* will hardly care to waste his time on them. -- Editor

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* The Fool Killer is probably North Carolina's most notable contribution to the gallery of American folk heroes. He was a little fellow (according to an 1857 woodcut of him) with a longtail coat, a floppy hat, and a big club. And though his avowed aim was to inflict his own brand of crude but well-merited justice upon the many different sorts of fools in mid-19th century North Carolina society., his business was never done. Jesse Holmes the Fool Killer was the fictional creation of Charles Napoleon Bonaparte Evans, editor from 1841 to 1883 of the weekly Milton Chronicle in Caswell County. Five letters, written of course by Evans but purporting to be communications from Jesse Holmes, have previously been located in the scattered extant issues of the Chronicle. Fortunately, other editors cherished the Fool Killer and copied his epistles in their own newspapers. -- Tom Parramore

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