Mar. 3, 1904. 



TH£ AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



165 



c 



Contributed Articles 





Queen- Pointers— Emenies of Bees. 



BY PROF. A. J. COOK. 



SUBSCRIBER asks what I think of the policy of clip- 

 ping the queen's wings, and whether it is wise to remove 

 the queen from the hive at the dawn of the honey har- 

 vest: 



Of course, clipping does not prevent the bees from 

 swarming, nor will they refuse to cluster if the queen is not 

 along. Indeed, the bees often, I think, generally begin to 

 cluster before the queen leaves the hive. But it is certain 

 that the colony will not go off if the queen be not with them. 

 Of course, if the queen's wing is properly clipped she can 

 not fly, and cannot go with the bees, and so clipping will 

 often, in the absence of the beekeeper, save to him a colony 

 of bees. The queen will, however, come forth as the swarm 

 issues, even if she has her wings clipped, and will wander 

 off, and may never get back to the hive. Indeed, it is com- 

 mon for the queen to be lost, in case there is no one by to 

 see that she regains the hive. She is often more easily 

 found, as a clump of bees usually find and form a ball 

 around her. 



In case no one is by, and the queen is lost, the bees will 

 wait till a new queen is hatched, when they will swarm 

 again, and in case there is no one by to hive the swarm, 

 they will hie them to their new home and be lost. 



Often, in large apiaries, several swarms may issue at 

 once, and may all alight on the same twig or tree. In this 

 case, it is much easier to hive them in one, two or three 

 hives at will, in case the queen is not with the cluster ; else 

 it is no easy matter to hive them and save all of the queens. 



I know a very thrifty farmer that has added substan- 

 tially to his gains for many years by keeping a consider- 

 able apiary. More than once his honey-product has secured 

 to him more than all else on the farm. He is not willing 

 that his wife shall hive the bees, as he thinks that too much 

 for her strength, but he and she are willing that she should 

 go out and catch the queen as a swarm issues, and cage her 

 and place the caged queen in the hive from which the 

 swarm issues. This takes but a little time, and she often 

 said in my presence that she rather enjoyed it. Of course 

 the bees soon go back to the old hive, and all is serene for 

 the present, and all is normal except that the queen is 

 caged. As the wife places the queen in the hive she places 

 a stone on the hive to mark it, and as soon as her husband 

 comes to dinner, or to the five o'clock supper, he divides the 

 colony, removes the queen-cells, or acts as his plan suggests. 

 In this way he cares for his bees, with no interference with 

 the general farm work. 



In case of "out-apiaries," this plan works well. One in 

 this case must hire a faithful boy to watch for the queens. 

 One can care for far more bees by this plan. I cared for the 

 bees for years at the Michigan Agricultural College, and 

 did my regular college work, and I rarely lost a colony from 

 swarming, and rarely lost a queen, and I could not have 

 done it had I not practiced clipping of the queen's wings. 



I know of but one valid objection to this practice, and 

 that is, it mars the appearance of the queen a wee bit. I do 

 not think that this objection will weigh much with many 

 of our practical bee-keepers. The objection that is some- 

 times urged that it injures the queen, or makes her less 

 pleasing to the bees, has, I am sure, no basis in fact. In- 

 deed, as is well known, the ants really practice this same 

 method. As soon as the queen has taken her wedding- 

 flight, the worker-ants fall to and bite off her wings, so she 

 must ever afterward remain dutifully at home whether she 

 likes it or no. Some of our bee-keepers, it is true, do not 

 clip their queens, but I think by far most of them do. 



As to the removal of the queen from the colony at the 

 dawn of, the harvest, I have practiced it but little - 

 just enough to prove that it is practical, and in some cases 

 will pay well. One of the most successful lady bee-keepers 

 I ever knew practiced this for years, and her large yields of 

 comb-honey was a guarantee that this was good policy in 

 her case. We all know that the difficulty in securing a good 

 yield of comb honey is in inducing the bees to enter the sec- 

 tions. It is the nature of bees to store close to the brood. 

 When we place the sections above in a receptacle, they 



often refuse to be led to them. By removing the queen the 

 egg-laying ceases, and they have energy to spare and so are 

 more ready to go up to the sections and fill them. In this 

 case they commence at once to rear queens, and if the bee- 

 keeper is sure to remove all but one large, fine queen-cell, 

 he will not only get ofttimes more honey, but will requeen 

 his apiary with young queens. This last is often a very 

 paying procedure. In cases of short honey seasons this has 

 even more to recommend it, as the brood lost would mature 

 after the season was over, when they were no longer use- 

 ful. 



I am aware that the best theory would seem to be that 

 we can not have too many bees in the hive, yet the phenom- 

 enal success of the lady referred to above would seem to 

 show that there may be exceptions to this, as to every good 

 rule. 



We readily see that the time lost is not very great any- 

 way, as the bees will soon get a new queen, and her youth 

 and youthful energy may more than make up for the time 

 lost ; this last, even in times of protracted honey harvests, 

 such as the best seasons always give in Southern California. 



VKRY QDEER ACTION — MISTAKEN ALFALFA FARMERS. 



Strange that in this day of better scientific knowledge, 

 anyone could be found that would believe that bees injure 

 bloom of any kind. Yet such is the case. The alfalfa 

 farmers of one of our States are threatening the bee-keepers 

 with a suit in law because the bees are robbing the alfalfa 

 of valuable material in gathering the nectar, and thus are 

 injuring the farmer, who produces the hay. This is wholly 

 an error, as every one should know. The nectar is so very 

 small in quantity, that it would affect the hay none at all. 

 The whole purpose of the bloom and nectar is only to at- 

 tract the bees and other nectar-loving insects for the good 

 of the plants. Pollination is absolutely necessary to seed- 

 ing of the plants, and bees do this work. No bees, no pollin- 

 ation ; no pollination, no seeds ; no seeds, no planting, and 

 soon there would be no alfalfa. Surely, these farmers need 

 instruction in the very rudiments of botanical science. 



ENEMIES OF BEES. 



I am asked for a list of animals that capture and kill 

 bees. I will say that these will be found, described and 

 illustrated, in my " Bee-Keeper's Guide." This is the list : 



Shrews, among mammals ; kingbirds, among our 

 feathered friends ; toads and frogs among Amphibians ; 

 among insects, we have cow-killers and ants in the 

 order Hymenoptera ; robber-flies, among Diptera, or two- 

 winged flies ; the Phymata bug among Hemiptera, and 

 others of the so-called-kissing bugs ; Mantis among Orthrop- 

 tera ; and darning-needles among the lace-wings ; among 

 the spider-like animals we have some of the true spiders 

 that are not adverse to a banquet of bees occasionally ; 

 some of the Datames in the Scorpion group, and some of 

 the mites among the lowest of the order of spiders. These 

 last, and also the bee-lice, are not usually fatal to the bees. 

 Of course, in the list I have made no mention of bee-moths 

 or the bacon beetles which do not destroy the bees but are 

 equally mischievous with those insects which do actually 

 destroy our pets of the hive. Indeed, the very worst insect 

 of all is the old bee-moth, which however is not very dis- 

 turbing to the provident bee-keeper. 



CORRECT NAME OF THE HONEY-BEE. 



I see a note in one of the recent bee-papers regarding 

 the correct name of the bee. It is " Apis mellif era," al- 

 though, as we know, almost all writers call it " Apis mellif- 

 ica." In all such cases priority rules, and so the first name 

 given to the insect holds. As I understand, Linnaeus first 

 gave the name, A. mellifera. He afterwards, in his rush 

 of work, evidently forgot that he had already named it, 

 and redescribed it as A. mellifica. We see, then, that the 

 correct name is A. mellifera, as that has priority. 



Los Angeles Co., Calif. 



No. 2.— Comb or Extracted Honey— Which? 



BY C. P. DAD.\NT. 



IN the previous article, I stated that in a large apiary 

 swarms were not wanted. We had another reason for 

 not wanting swarms. Every since 1872, or for over 30 

 years, we have had out-apiaries. It is not always possible 

 to hire help to take care of out-apiaries, neither does it 

 always pay to hire some one on purpose to catch swarms. 

 On the other hand, the farmer on whose land the out-apiary 



