LAYINd WORKERS. 



301 



LOCALITY 



and they will have none other until she is 

 removed; yet yon can not tind her, for she is 

 just like any other bee; you may get hold of 

 her, possibly, by carefully noticing the way 

 in which the other bees deport themselves 

 toward her, or you may catch her in the act 

 of egg - laying ; but even this often fails, 

 for there may be several such in tlie hive at 

 once. You may give them a small strip of i 

 comb containing eggs and brood, but they j 

 will seldom start a good queen-cell, if they i 

 start any at all ; for, in the majority of cases, 

 a colony having laying workers seems per- 

 fectly demoralized, so far as getting tliem 

 into regular work is concerned. 



It is almost impossible to introduce a lay- i 

 ing queen to such colonies ; for as soon as 

 she is released from the cage she will be 

 stung to death. No better results would 

 follow from introducing a young virgin ; 

 but the giving of a queen-cell, if the colony 

 has not been too long harboring laying 

 workers, will very often bring about a 

 change for the better. In such case the 

 cell will be accepted, and in due course of 

 time there will be a laying queen in place 

 of the laying worker or workers : but often 

 cells will be destroyed as fast as they are 

 given. The only thing then to be done is to 

 scatter brood and bees among several other 

 colonies, perhaps one or two frames in each. 

 From each of these same colonies take a 

 frame or two of brood with adhering bees, 

 and put them into the laying-worker hive. 

 The bees of this hive, which have been scat- 

 tered into several hives, will for the most 

 part return ; but the laying worker or work- 

 ers will remain and in all probability be 

 destroyed in the other hives. Of course, the 

 colonies that have been robbed of good brood 

 will suffer somewhat ; but if it is after the 

 honey season, no great harm will have been 

 done. They will proceed to clean up the 

 combs ; and if they do not need the drones 

 as they hatch out they will destroy them. 



Sometimes a laying worker may be dis- 

 posed of by moving the combs into an emp- 

 ty hive, placed at a little distance from the 

 other ; the bees will nearly all go into their 

 old hive, but the queen, as she thinks herself 

 to be, will remain on the combs. The re- 

 turning bees will then accept a queen or 

 queen-cell. After all is right the combs may 

 be returned, and the laying workers will be- 

 well, we do not know just wliat does become 

 of them, but we suspect they either attend to 

 their legitimate business or get killed. 



See that every hive contains, at all times, 

 during the spring and sunnuer months at 



least, brood suitable for rearing a queen, and 

 you will never see laying workers. 



HOW TO DETECT THE PKESENCE OF LAY- 

 ING WORKERS. 



If you do not hnd any queen, and see eggs 

 scattered around promiscuously, some in 

 drone and some in worker cells, some attach- 

 ed to the side of the cell, instead of the cen- 

 ter of the bottom, where the queen lays 

 them, several in one cell and none in the 

 next, you may be pretty sure you have a 

 laying worker. Still later, you will see the 

 worker-brood capped with the high convex 

 cappings, indicating clearly that the brood 

 will never hatch out worker-bees. Finding 

 two or more eggs in a cell is never conclu- 

 sive, for the queen often so deposits them in 

 a feeble colony where there are not bees 

 enough to cover the brood. The eggs depos- 

 ited by a fertile queen are in regular order, 

 as one would plant a field of corn; but those 

 from laying workers, and usually from drone- 

 laying queens, are irregularly scattered 

 about. 



LAUREL. See Poisonous Honey. 



LOCALITY. This has a greiiJ influence 

 in bee-keeping. Many of the manii)ulations 

 recommended in one locality will not an- 

 swer for another. A hive well adapted to 

 one place might give indifferent results in 

 another having different conditions. The 

 length of the honey-flow, the time it comes 

 on, whether the nectar conies in a rush for 

 three or foui weeks at a time as it does in 

 the East, or whether the flow extends over 

 a period of three or four months, coming 

 in very slowly, are all conditions the bee- 



! keeper must study and be able to meet as 

 they are. A slow honey-flow, continuing 



I over a period of four or five months, may 

 require an altogetlier different hive. It 



I may render the production of comb honey 



! impracticable, for the reason the combs will 



I be travel-stained, and therefore not fit to 

 compete with honey from other localities. 



I On the other hand, a short rapid honey-flow, 

 as in the basswood regions, and wliere the 

 honey is mainly white, and of good flavor, 

 makes the ijroduction of comb honey more 

 profitable than extracted as a rule. Then 

 locality, too, has a bearing on the kind of 

 treatment the bees should receive. If there 

 is no honey after the first or middle of July, 

 and the bee-keeper is located in a region 

 where snow falls in winter, and where 



! cold winter weather prevails for five or six 



