1882 



GLEANIKGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



429 



Many thanks, my friend, for the recipe for 

 green-corn cake. I think it will be just the 

 thing for the lunch-room. 



QITEENS L.AYIN<i WHEN TIVO OU 

 THREE DAYS OLD. 



DRONE EGGS FIRST AND WORKER EGGS AFTERWARD. 



[HOUGH I have spent almost two seasons as api- 

 arist at the "Home of the Honey-Bees," I 

 have never yet written any of ray experience 

 for Gleanings, because I thought older and more 

 experienced heads could fill its pages with more 

 valuable information. But with an apiary of 4:^5 

 colonies to look after, and rearing from 80 to ICO 

 queens a week (of course, Ernest helps me), I have 

 abundant opportunity for a large experience in a 

 short time; and as one or two things, about which I 

 have seen nothing in the bee journals, have attract- 

 ed my attention of late, I have concluded to write 

 this letter, giving you a few facts which may be 

 worth mentioning. June ]3th I took from a good 

 colony a best imported queen, and left them to build 

 queen-cells. On the 23il I cut out all the cells but 

 one, leaving that to hatch in the hive. I did not 

 look again till the 29th, when 1 found the young 

 queen, a beauty, hatched from the cell (she proba- 

 bly had been hatched two or three days). I also saw 

 at this date a little patch of drone comb laid full of 

 eggs, which was done regularly, one egg in a cell, 

 and it looked like the work of a queen. This, of 

 course, roused mj' curiosity, and I decided to watch 

 these eggs to see if they would be raised to drones. 

 There were about half a dozen eggs in the worker 

 cells also. 



Oq the 10th of July my queen was laying, and to- 

 day, Aug. 1st, she is tested, producing as nice bees 

 as I ever saw. On the2-tthof July I found the drones 

 hatched from those cells where the eggs had been 

 laid. They were as large as any drones I ever saw, 

 and as fully developed, as far as I could see. 



There is another case, not quite as far on as the 

 one described. The young queen started to lay 

 worker eggs July 28th, and at that date there was a 

 patch of drones, not quite capped up, down on one 

 coi-ner of the comb, the eggs of which were laid 

 while the young queen was in the hive, and when 

 she was but a few days old. If these eggs had been 

 laid by a fertile worker, why should she select a 

 piece of drone comb down in one corner of the frame, 

 and when she had laid that full too, stop and lay no 

 more? The eggs were laid more regularly than any 

 I ever saw by a fertile worker. It seems to me that 

 the above is conclusive evidence that a young 

 queen may, or does sometimes, lay drone eggs in 

 their proper cells when she is but two or three days 

 old, and before she has been fertilized. The two 

 cases mentioned above are all that I have noticed ; 

 yet there may have been many more, that, in my 

 hurry, I overlooked. 



WHY DO BEES STING THEIR OWN QUEEN TO DEATQ? 



I do not intend to advance any opinion on this sub- 

 ject, but I want to ask some of the experienced bee- 

 keepers why so many valuable queens, just in the 

 prime of life, and not a year old, should turn up miss- 

 ing, and a lot of queen-cells started. I have had a 

 good many cases of this Ivind this season, and I can 

 not account for it in any way. There is one colony 

 in which there was an imported queen, reputed to 



have been raised the Season before. On opening 

 this colony a few weeks ago, I found, instead of the 

 imported queen, a young one just hatched. About 

 two weeks ago I opened the hive to take out this 

 queen, which had been laying three or four days, to 

 sell for a dollar quicn. As I lifted out the first frame 

 there was a ball of bees around thequeen at the bot- 

 tom tf the frame. I immediately got her away from 

 them, but she was dead. These bees were from the 

 imported (jueen that was in the hive before her, and 

 why should such bees sting their queen to death? 

 1 ha\e sometimes found queens that 1 had introduc- 

 ed, and that had been la>ing several days, dead at 

 the entrance. The only reason I know of for the 

 latter case is, that the queens were introduced dur- 

 ing a heavy flow of honey, when the bees will accept 

 a queen more readily, and this How suddenly stop- 

 ping by cold weather, the bees get displeased with 

 their new queen and kill her. This may not be the 

 reason, but I find it easier to introduce queen-cells 

 or virgin queens when there is a good flow of honey, 

 than when the bees are idle, and on the same ground 

 the above may be true. 



SMOKER FUEL. 



We received a piece of the punk friend Heddon 

 speaks of in July Gleanings, and tried it. It is very 

 good, but it is something we can't always get. 

 Friend S. Corneil, Lindsay, Ont., Can., sent us a 

 small roll of a kind of paper termed " felt," which, 

 he said, would burn four hours. He requested us to 

 try it and report. Here is the i-eport : I cut it in 

 two, and Ernest liurned his piece two houi'S, mine 

 burned three hours. It makes a very good smoke, 

 which smells like burning rags. I think that M lb. 

 would last a whole day, and it can be had at 4 cts. per 

 lb. ThisisonlyScts. per day for fuel, which, I think, 

 is as cheap, if not cheaper, than anything else to be 

 nad. J. T. Calvert. 



Medina, O., August 1, 1882. 



Since the above was written, other cases 

 have been found of a patch of drone brood 

 before the young queen commenced to lay ; 

 but the point now before us, is to prove the 

 queen laid the eggs and not a fertile worker. 



QUESTIONS FROM AN A B C SCHOIiAR. 



WHERE TO LOOK FOR BEES THAT HAVE ABSCONDED, 

 ETC. 



^3R] HE only failure I have had was in getting some 

 J8([ "' bees from a man who gave me i lbs. of bees 

 — ' for a Simplicity hive. I put 2 lbs. with a queen 

 into a box, and told my man, on the drive home, to 

 make large holes, so as to give plenty of air. He 

 did not do so; and when I got home, such a mess of 

 bees and honej' I never saw. I picked out the queen, 

 however, and gave her to the other two pounds that 

 had come through all straight, and put them into a 

 VanDeusen-Nellis Simp. hive. They accepted the 

 queen, but she was so feeble that I did not expect 

 her to live till morning; however, on looking at 

 them the next morning, they were working nicely. 

 I congratulated myself at this point of the pro- 

 ceedings; but when I went to look at the hive two 

 hours afterward, the sight that met my eyes knock- 

 ed all the congratulation out of me. Not a bee was 

 to be seen on the outside or inside of the hive. My 

 conclusion was that the queen had died, and the 

 bees were swarming in some tree near by. Well, I 

 hunted for two mortal hours in the hot sun, and 



