The Ovimbundu people of Portuguese West Africa, who live in the interior of Angola, have as much of a "sweet tooth" as Americans, but far less sugar, rationed or otherwise, to gratify it. Forty years ago they had no sugar at all, although they grew some sugar cane, and chewed it for its sweet taste. Now they buy unrefined sugar from a sugar factory, spending more money for it than they ran easily spare from their microscopic wages. But honey was and is, their most delectable sweet, and honey hunting is a favourite pastime. Some of the honey comes from wild bees unknown in this country. One type is sting less, about a third the size of the Italian bees in commercial American use. These sting less bees produce good honey in fair quantity, and the natives will go long distances to find a hive. Another type of bee is very small, the size of a gnat. Native children like to go looking for it in its hives in hollow trees. Like the sting less bee it makes honey, although in small amounts. The nectar is dark, the wax black and sticky. This wax is used for fastening feathers on arrows, and as a make-weight on drumhead's to tune them.
But bee-keeping is popular. The hunters of a tribe form a sort of trade union, and by common consent each man ordinarily has the exclusive right to put hives in a certain territory. One person may have from seventy-five to a hundred hives in his range. These hives are made from hollowed-out sections of logs. They are hung up on a tree branch by means of a forked stick with a hook end. The end is fitted over a branch; the hive body is bound between the forks. In the end of the log hive is a ventilating crack, often stuffed with corncobs, except for a hole at the bottom. The hive body is insulated against the heat by a covering of long, dry grass like American turkey-foot. If a hive were placed on the ground, it would be taken over by ants; if it were fastened to a tree trunk rather than hung in mid air, the monkeys or honey-bears would destroy it.
The bees that the Ovimbundu hive are Cyprian in type, much like the Italian bees used in America as to size, but with shorter tongues and shorter tempers. Cyprians have the reputation, in every country where they have been tried, of being extremely cross and difficult to handle. But Ovimbundu bee-keepers work without benefit of veil or gloves; a man without courage to do that simply does not keep bees. I have heard stories of these bees stinging men to death, but I have never known of an actual case, although I have known men to be very badly stung.
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