QUEENS. 



370 



QUEENS. 



queen for a single day. Beginners should 

 remember this, for their untimely, or, rather, 

 inconsiderate tinkering, just before the flow 

 of honey comes, often cuts short their in- 

 come to a very considerable degree. What- 

 ever you do, be very careful not to drop the 

 queens off the combs when you handle 

 them at this time of the year, and do not 

 needlessly interrupt the queen in her work 

 by changing the combs about so as to ex- 

 pose the brood or upset their little house-> 

 hold matters in the hive. With a little prac- 

 tice you will be able to detect a queenless 

 hive simply by the way the bees behave 

 themselves on the outside. Where they 

 stand around on the alighting-board in a 

 listless sort of way, with no bees going in 

 with pollen, when other colonies are thus en- 

 gaged, it is well to open the hive and take a 

 look at them. If you find eggs and worker- 

 brood you may be sure a queen is there; but 

 if you do not, proceed at once to see if there 

 is not a queen of some kind in the hive, that 

 does not lay. If you do not find one, pro- 

 ceed at once to give them a frame contain- 

 ing brood and eggs, and see if they start 

 queen-cells. You ought to be able to find 

 incipient ones in about twelve hours, if 

 the bees have been some little time queen- 

 less. As soon as you see these, give them a 

 queen if possible. If no qneen is to be had, 

 they may be allowed to raise one, if the col- 

 ony has bees enough. If it has not, they had 

 better be united with some other stock. 



ODOR OF A LAYING QUEEN. 



After bees have been some time queenless 

 they usually become, if no fertile or laying 

 workers make their appearance (see Laying 

 Workers), very eager for the presence of a 

 queen; and we can in no way describe this 

 eager behavior, if we may so term it, so well 

 as to describe another way of testing a colony 

 you have reason to think is queenless. Take 

 a cage or box containing a laying queen and 

 hold either the cage or simply the cover of 

 it over the bees, or hold it in such a way as 

 to let one corner touch the frames. If queen- 

 less, the first that catch the scent of the piece 

 of wood on which the queen has clustered 

 will begin to move their wings in token of 

 rejoicing, and soon you will have nearly the 

 whole swarm hanging to the cage or cover. 

 When they behave in this manner we have 

 never had any trouble in letting the queen 

 right out at once. Such cases are generally 

 where a colony is found without brood in 

 the spring. 



There is something very peculiar about 

 tUg scent of ft laying queen. After having 



had a queen on the fingers, we have had bees 

 follow and gather about the hand, even 

 when we had gone some distance from the 

 apiary. By this strange instinct they will 

 often hover for hours about the spot where 

 the queen has alighted for even an instant, 

 and, sometimes, for a day or two afterward. 

 Where clipped queens get down into the 

 grass or weeds or crawl sometimes a consid- 

 erable distance from the hive, we have often 

 found them, by watching the bees that were 

 crawling about along the path she had tak- 

 en. When cages containing queens are be- 

 ing carried away bees will often come and 

 alight on the cage making that peculiar shak- 

 ing of the wings which indicates their joy 

 at finding the queen. See Scent of Bees. 



queens' stings. 

 There is something rather strange in the 

 fact that a queen very rarely uses her sting, 

 even under the greatest provocation possi- 

 ble, unless it is toward a rival queen. In 

 fact, they may be pinched or pulled limb 

 from limb, without even showing any symp- 

 toms of protruding the sting at all; yet as 

 soon as you put them in a cage or under a 

 tumbler with another queen, the fatal sting 

 is almost sure to be used at once. There 

 seems to be a most wise provision in this; 

 for if the queen used her sting on every pro- 

 vocation as does the worker, the prosperity 

 of the colony would be almost constantly en- 

 dangered. It is true, that instances are on 

 record where queens have stung the fingers 

 of those handling them; but these cases are so 

 very rare it is quite safe to say queens never 

 sting. We are inclined to think the cases 

 mentioned were of queens that were not fully 

 developed; for we have often seen the dark 

 half-queen and half- worker, mentioned a few 

 pages back, show its sting when handled. 



caution in regard to deciding a stock 



TO BE queenless. 



As a rule, we may say that absence of 

 brood or eggs is a pretty sure indication of 

 queenlessness ; but it should be borne in 

 mind that all hives, as a rule, are without 

 eggs and brood in the fall and early winter 

 months, or, in fact, at any time when there 

 is a considerable dearth of pasturage. At 

 such seasons, beginners are more apt to 

 think their hives are queenless, because the 

 queens are much smaller than when they are 

 laying profusely. In weak colonies queens 

 often cease laying during the whole of the 



' winter months. See Introducing. 



I For particulars on how to find queens, see 

 Frames, to Manipulate. 



