546 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Nov. 



falling rule, which in practice proves to have at 

 least one exception. 



On the ninth day of September, in the afternoon, I 

 put an empty frame of comb into a populous hive in 

 order to get it filled with eggs from which to rear a 

 queen. On the ]3th of the same month, in the morn- 

 ing, I removed this frame, partially filled with eggs 

 and honey, and placed it in the center of the brood- 

 chamber of a queenless colony, which had been 

 some eleven days without a queen, after cutting out 

 every cell in their hive, intending to cut out all the 

 capped cells from this last frame in eight or nine 

 days from the date of placing it in the hive. Unfor- 

 tunately for the queen-cells, I was obliged to be 

 away from my apiary, and unable to examine this 

 colony till the afternoon of the twenty-sccmitl of this 

 month, when, upon looking over the hive, I found 

 all the queen-cells torn down, or being torn down by 

 the worhers, and a fully formed queen, not over 24 

 hours old, marching around on the frames as though 

 she were the " monarch of all she surveyed," Now, 

 the question arises, If this queen was not hatched in 

 eleven days from the egg, how came she in the hive? 

 Of course, she could not have been hatched from the 

 first batch of cells, even if it is questioned that I 

 •overlooked one on cutting them out; for if she had 

 been, the cells would not have been capped on the 

 last frame which was put in the hive, but would 

 have been torn down at once on her appearance. I 

 was particularly careful to see that every cell of the 

 first batch was destroyed, for I did not wish to rear a 

 queen from those eggs, and did wish to rear one 

 from the eggs in the last frame. Now, this experi- 

 ment proves two things conclusively to my mind; 

 first, that queens do hatch out in less than 15 or IG 

 days from the egg, and may hatch in 10 or 11 days 

 therefrom; and second, that the queens do not, 

 when hatched, rush furiously around to kill their 

 sister queens, and destroy their cells before they 

 evacuate them, but leave its murderous job to their 

 loyal subjects and retainers, the workers. There is 

 no chance for a mistake in the dates, for the ninth 

 (Saturday) and the twelfth (Tuesday) were the only 

 days I could get from my business to attejul to this 

 work, and I set them down at once in my pocket reg- 

 ister, and also on the frame of eggs when I placed it 

 In the hive. The explanation of the matter, I leave 

 to others, contenting myself with stating the fact, 

 and simply advise that we go slow in the matter of 

 bee culture, and not assert any state of things as a 

 fixed rule, or that some things are impossible, or at 

 variance with natural laws, simply because we have 

 either been taught to the contrary, or do not under- 

 stand them. J. E. Pond, Jr. 

 I'oxboro, Mass., Sept. 32, 1883. 



Your experiment seems conclusive, friend 

 f ., except in one particular. The tirst queen 

 that hatches does not always tear down the 

 other queen-cells in the hive, or, perhaps, I 

 should say, the workers do not always tear 

 down all queen-cells as soon as a queen is 

 hatched. In our back numbers we have 

 once or twice reported that the cells are 

 sometimes passed over until they hatch ; and 

 I have twice found cells started on brood 

 when they had a young queen. The cells re- 

 mained, and the result was a newly hatched 

 queen, and a young laying queen, both in 

 the hive at the same time. Neighbor H. 

 has also had the same thing occur, so we 

 have set it down that queen-cells are not al- 



ways an indication that a young queen is 

 lost. In your case, it amounts to this: If 

 you overlooked a queen-cell, it might have 

 been the one producing this queen ; but then 

 again, she would have looked more than one 

 day old. I should be glad of more facts on 

 this interesting matter. How soon can the 

 bees get a queen hatched, after the egg is 

 laid? 



NORTH AMERICAN BEE - KEEPERS' 



CONVENTION. 



REPORTED BY A. I. ROOT. 



fIjIIE sun rose on us (Neighbor II. and I) 

 Oct. 3d, in the city of Cincinnati, and 

 ~-^ the first object of interest was the es- 

 tablishment of friend Muth, 97 «i, 978 Central 

 Avenue. We found this place a general 

 rendezvous for the bee-men, and the time 

 was spent most pleasantly until 9 o'clock. 

 Mr. Muth settled here about 23 years ago, 

 and now owns for some distance on both 

 sides of the street. He is not only esteemed 

 among all his countrymen, but he is author- 

 ity for the world on all that pertains to the 

 sale of honey, more especially extracted. 

 During the years he has been on this one 

 spot he seems to have gathered about him 

 his many friends and relatives ; and, judg- 

 ing from what we saw, he seems to be a man 

 held in universal respect by almost the whole 

 of Cincinnati. Although he does a general 

 grocery business, honey seems to be the main 

 item, for Ave see it in bottles and cans and 

 boxes, neatly arranged all about his store, in 

 quantities that fairly made us stare and 

 wonder. Still more did we stare and won- 

 der at the cellar lilled with barrels of honey, 

 just across the way. 



Our old friend Dr. O. M. Blanton, of Miss- 

 issippi, had just sold him one lot of forty- 

 seven barrels. A single shipment of eighty 

 barrels from another man is now on the way. 



This season he is getting some beautiful 

 honey from the South, and it was quite a 

 treat to us to taste of more kinds of honey 

 than we ever saw or heard of before. One 

 large shipment from Florida was so nice that 

 he paid the owner 2 cts. per lb. more than he 

 agreed to. Prof. Cook asked him if that was 

 the kind of man he was. lie replied, in his 

 quaint way, "It is the kind of man I was 

 that time.''^ 



His apiary on the roof is a marvel, and a 

 most pleasant place to sit and see the beauti- 

 fully marked Italians work. A part of this 

 apiary is protected by a roof, so as to form a 

 sort of porch, and the bees under this porch 

 go out of and come into these hives as well 

 as any. Although close up together, as there 

 are only eight in a row (four rows), the bees 

 seem to find their own hives without trou- 

 ble. A plank walk is laid between all the 

 rows of hives. The bees winter well here, 

 and well they might; for although they have 

 all the advantages of outdoors, they are pro- 

 tected on three sides, and partly so overhead. 

 Under the roofed part, and in a room ad- 

 joining, he has all the facilities for caring 

 for them. His report this yeai\ like almost 

 all others about Cincinnati, is no honey at 

 all, and he has fed already about 1700 lbs. of 

 honey. 



