THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Oct. 20, 1904. 



The Ordinary Length of Bee-Life. 



BV G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



A correspondent writes thus : "I am a beginner in bee- 

 keeping, and read the American Bee Journal. I see you some- 

 times answer questions through the cohmins of that paper. 

 Will you please answer one for me? I want to know how 

 long a bee ordinarily lives? One of my neighbors say, i8 

 months to two years is their age. Another says, 30 days in 

 the summer season. What is a novice to think in this matter? 

 Please tell how long the queen, drones, and workers live, 

 through the columns of the above-named excellent paper. 



There are somewhat conflicting opinions in this matter, 

 but it has always seemed to me that no one need be ignorant in 

 regard to the length of life of the worker-bee when one ex- 

 periment would tell him the truth in the matter. Take a 

 colony of black bees, and about the loth of June introduce 

 an Italian queen, or, if you have the Italian bee, procure a 

 black or German queen and introduce to them, keeping record 

 of the date when the change is made. In t.wenty-ono days 

 the last bee from the old queen will have emerged from its 

 cell, and if the introduced queen went to laying immediately 

 the first bee from this new mother will soon be making its 

 appearance, the time of the appearance of the first bee from 

 the new mother being jotted down also. 



Now, if your experiment comes out at all as has mine 

 along this line, you will find that at the end of forty-five days 

 from the time the last bee had emerged from the old mother, 

 no more of her bees will be found in that colony, if the 

 colony remains in a normal condition, after the new queen 

 goes to laying. At forty days bees from the old queen will 

 still be quite numerous, they becoming fewer and fewer each 

 day, so that on the forty-fourth day there will be a very few 

 indeed left. This is for the summer months, and during the 

 time of active work. 



Should the season be such that the bees stay in the hive 

 quite a share of the time, these old bees might hold out 

 a little longer than this, as the life of the bee depends quite 

 largely on the amount of work it does. Thus, when it labors 

 the most, its life is the shortest. Hence it comes about that, 

 through the inactivity induced by cold weather, the bee can 

 live during the winter season, or season of rest, from six to 

 eight months. This is proved by changing the queen as before, 

 only it is done this time about the middle of September. 

 Soon after the first of October the last black bee will have 

 emerged from its cell, and on rare occasions I have found 

 black bees in such colonies having changed queens during 

 the fore part of June. Also, when spring opens or about 

 the first of April, there will be very few of the yellow bees 

 in the hive, which shows that very little brood is reared 

 frorn October until April, as well as telling us that more bees 

 die in two months in the spring than during six months of 

 wmter, providing the bees winter well. This also shows us 

 that all possible precautions should be taken to preserve the 

 life of these old bees during the spring, so that they do not 

 die off too suddenly, or have what is known as "spring 

 dwindling," before the brood has emerged from the cells 

 in sufficient numbers to keep the colony in a prosperous con- 

 dition. 



The life of the drone is regulated very largely by the 

 workers, for drones are usually killed or driven oflf by the 

 workers long before they would die a natural death by old 

 age. Any sudden cessation in the flow of honey from the 

 fields is often considered sufiicient reason for their being 

 driven off or the killing of them by stinging, if they are 

 persistent in staying in the hive; so it is hard to tell just 

 to what age they might attain were they allowed to live to 

 the good old age allotted to them when not persecuted by 

 the workers. Most apiarists think that the drones would 

 live a little longer than the workers: but from close obser- 

 vation with those which I have tried to preserve in queen- 

 less colonies for the late fertilization of queens during the 

 fall months, I am of the opinion that they are of a little 

 shorter life. It is a rare thing that I have found any out 



of a certain "hatch" to be alive after forty days from the time 

 the last one emerged from the cell. 



The average life of the queen, under normal conditions, 

 is about three years, although some have been known to live 

 more than five years. At a bee-keepers' convention a few 

 years ago a man told me that he had one queen that he had 

 purchased, to live to be nearly five and one-half years old, 

 and I had one that I purchased, to live to be five years 

 and four months old, she doing good work up to the last 

 months she lived. Queens live also in proportion to the work 

 they do, or according to the number of eggs they lay, as 

 egg-laying is the only work they perform. 



Under our present system of management, most bee- 

 keepers coax the queen to lay as many eggs in two years 

 as she usually would were she in an old tree or box-hive in 

 three years, and from this reason most apiarists think that 

 queens should be replaced after the second year with those 

 which have just commenced to lay. There is no question 

 but that a queen reared during July, .August or September 

 of any year will do as good work the following summer as 

 she ever will ; but it is a question whether it will be a pay- 

 ing undertaking to remove the queens throughout the whole 

 apiary at the end of their second summer's work, and then 

 replace them with young queens. 



I have experimented along this line to a considerable ex- 

 tent, and the result is that I do not now make it a practice 

 to supersede my queens every two years, for I find that the 

 bees are quick to understand when their mother is failing, 

 and will supersede their own queen when she gets to be 

 too old to be of service to them. So I now trust the matter 

 to the bees, believing that they know what is best for them 

 in this respect better than I do. And what is best for them, 

 as a rule, is certain to be the best thing for their keeper. 



Onondaga Co., N. Y. 



" The Quality of Glucose "—A Correction. 



BY PROF. B. N. EATON, 

 State Analyst for thf JUi7iois Food Coininission. 



I can not see any valid reason why bee-keepers should 

 object to the circulation of the " Wiley lie " when they 

 countenance and spread such articles as that copied on page 

 698 from Gleanings in Bee-Culture, attributed to W. K. 

 Morrison. Knowing the editors of the above publications, 

 I would not accuse them of intentionally circulating false 

 statements, but attribute them rather to ignorance or over- 

 sight. 



As regards the article, there is not a single truthful 

 statement of fact from the first to last sentence, nor in the 

 introductory paragraph. To itemize : 



Pure glucose is sold for 10 cents per pound, and less. 

 Chemists do refer to this article when they speak of the 

 wholesomeness of glucose. The article referred to at 50 

 cents per pound is probably chemically pure dextrose 

 quoted by Merck at $2.00 per pound, or chemically pure dex- 

 trin at $1.00 per pound — the chief constituents of commer- 

 cial glucose. 



Glucose is noi a particularly disagreeable article. The 

 poisoning cases in Manchester, England, were from beer 

 made largely from glucose instead of containing minute 

 quantities thereof. The glucose was 7iot used for color or 

 body, but to furnish sugar to make alcohol, thus making a 

 cheaper beer than by the use of grain. The discovery was 

 not made by chance, but by tracing the poisoning to the 

 beer, and by chemical analyses thereof by public analysts. 



Use of glucose in beer is not the principal use to which 

 glucose is put, its principal uses being in syrups, candy, 

 artificial jellies and jams, and preserves. Good beer is free 

 from glucose, and the glucose variety, if not an actual 

 adulterated article, should be sold && glucose beer. 1 | 



Finally, the poisoning in the English beer was not due 

 to' glucose per se, but to an accidental impurity in the glu- 

 cose — arsenic — which was due to some highly contaminated 



