189(3 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



53 



is, that, to reduce the fee to so low a figure, 

 would rather tend to diminish than increase 

 the number of members by making a mean, 

 beggarly afJair of it. People would naturally 

 reason that it can not be worth much if it is 

 rated at so small a price. I should not care to 

 be even an honorary member of a twenty-five- 

 cent organization. I do not believe in the 

 '■ cheap John "' style of doing business. I think 

 a fair price must be paid for any thing really 

 worth having. 

 Guelph, Ont., Nov. 29. 



BEE KEEPERS AT FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 



AN INTERESTING TALK FOR 15EGINNERS. 



By H. R. Boardman. 



The farmers' institute has from time to time 

 been mentioned as a very proper place and op- 

 portunity for the live bee-keeper to entertain 

 and enlighten his neighbors with bee-talk. I 

 was placed upon the program at our institute 

 meeting here last winter for such a talk. Now, 

 to talk to an audience of bee-keepers is one 

 thing, and to an audience like that of the in- 

 stitute meeting, where the interest is centered 

 upon any thing and every thing excepting bees, 

 about which they know nothing, is quite an- 

 other. It is to the speaker something like talk- 

 ing to a class of children. I was severely puz- 

 zled to decide what I should say in order to 

 secure the attention of my audience. 



This is about what I said: 



The bee-hive, to the masses of mankind, is a deep 

 mystery, a sealed book; and tiiere are clinging- 

 about it the cobwebs of superstition that the lig-ht 

 of civilization has not yet cleared away. But it is 

 «ncourasring- to know tliat the wheels of progress 

 are moving' rapidly forward, and the mysteiies and 

 superstitions of darkness are being- dispelled by the 

 lig-ht of intelligence and reason. 



There are from 15,000 to 40,000 bees in a colony, 

 varying with the season of the year. There are 

 three kinds of bees in each colon y~t lie workers, the 

 drones, and the queens. The workers do all of the 

 work in the hive, gather tiie lioney and pollen, sup- 

 ply the hive with water, elaborate the wax. build 

 the combs, prepare the food, feed and care for the 

 young bees, do the general housework, attend to 

 polities, declare war, defend the hive against in- 

 trusion or invasion, ventilate the liive, evaporate 

 the honey, guard and protect the queen, etc. They 

 are active, industrious, energetic, untiring hustlers, 

 Jealous of their riffhts, and are easily offended. In 

 defense of their hives they exhibit a patriotism un- 

 paralleled in the world. They will, on the slightest 

 provocation, sacrifice their lives without the slight- 

 est hesitation. They all bear arms, and carry their 

 weapons concealed. The motto of their govern- 

 ment is, "The greatest good to the greatest num- 

 ber." They have no hospitals for the sick or maim- 

 ed. When they have outlived their usefulness they 

 are dragged out of the hive, without waste of sym- 

 pathv or sentiment. 



Bobbing and freebooting are common among 

 them, and carried on with a persistence worthy of a 

 nobler cause. 



In sex the workers are females undeveloped, and 

 •sometimes called neuters. 



In their work they are divided into classes accord- 

 ing to the capability of age. The young bees are 

 nurses, and do the general housework, remaining 

 in the hive until they are 10 to 14 days old, when 

 they are graduated to fleld-laboiers, and other duties 

 in regular order of their age. The old bees will act 

 :as nurses and housekeepers, only in absence of 



young bees in the hive. " Old bees for counsel, and 

 young bees for war," is a maxim they haven't 

 cauglit on to. The age of the workers is from 35 

 days, during the activity of summer, to 6 montiis or 

 moie during the fall and winter, when they remain 

 in an inactive dormant condition, sometimes called 

 their winter sleep. 



THE DRONES. 



The drones are tlie males. They do no work. 

 Some think tliat they were created expressly for an 

 object-lesson to caricature certain members of the 

 human family wlio spend the sunshine of life wait- 

 ing for "something to tuiii up." 1 consider this a 

 l)ase libel (on the bees). Since I have come to know 

 these clumsy, good-natured, harmless fellows, my 

 sympathies have been enlisted in their belialf. 

 Nature did not intend tnat they should take part in 

 the work of the hive. They were not provided with 

 a honey-sac for carrying honey, nor a tongue for 

 gathering- it. They have no wax-pockets nor pollen- 

 baskets, and they are not allowed to carry weapons, 

 even in self-defense; so they very prudently keep 

 out of the way, and let the women-folks do the work 

 and defend the hive. They appear in a normal col- 

 ony only during its prosperity in the summer sea- 

 son. Their presence in the hive denotes prepara- 

 tions for swarming. They are mercilessly slausrhter- 

 ed or driven from home by the workers at any time 

 when the honey-yield becomes meager, simply as a 

 measure of economy, or at the close of the season 

 when they have outlived their usefulness. It is 

 difficult to dermine how long they might live if 

 their lives were not beset with so many uncertain- 

 ties—probably about as long as the workers. 



THE QUEEN. 



The queen is the mother of the entire colony, and 

 is the only perfect female among its teeming thou- 

 sands. She has no royal prerogative, as usually 

 attributed to her. She does not sit upon a throne, 

 nor does she rule or govern in any sense. She does 

 i.ot lead out the swarms when they issue; on the 

 contrary, the swarms invariably lead her. Mother 

 is her prerogative in the hive, rather tlian queen. 

 Her importance in the hive is recognized by the 

 workers, and she is carefully fed and watched and 

 guarded in all her movements. 



Queens vary as much as as do hens in their laying 

 proclivities; and the prosperity of the colony de- 

 pends very much upon the queen in this respect. 

 A poor queen will surely result in an unprofitable 

 or worthless colony; and the bee-keeper who is 

 looking after li1s best interests will supersede such 

 queens with 'ho'.;e more valuable. A good queen 

 may lay 2000 lo 30UO eggs daily; and there is some 

 very aood authority for a larger number at times. 

 But this is not much of an egg-record either. The 

 queen of the termites, or white ants, comes forward 

 with a record of 80,000 as a day's work, and vouched 

 for by good authority. But she devotes her entire 

 attention to the egg-business. 



The queen is provided with a sting, which she uses 

 only to destroy rival queens. 



The eggs laid in the combs by the motlier-bee are 

 hatched into a wormlike larva, in three days. It 

 feeds voraciously, and grows rapidly upon pabulum 

 furnished by the nurse bees, composed of honey 

 and pollen. After feeding 5 days if a worker, or O'/^ 

 if%, drone, the cells are sealed over; the embryo 

 bee spins a silken cocoon about itself with ingenui- 

 ty that surpasses human conception, and subsides 

 into a dormant state which is called the pupa or 

 imago state. This is followed by the translorma- 

 tion to the perfect state, which requires 21 days 

 from the egg for workers, 24 for the drones, and 16 

 for the queens. 



When the queen is nbout six days old she will 

 come out of the hive and take a flight, attended by 

 a retinue of drones. This is the occasion of her 

 wedding-tour. In two or three days she will com- 

 mence laying, and never leave the hive afterward 

 except to accompany a swarm. Her fertility lasts 

 to the end of life, which is usually three or four 

 years. Virgin queens sometimes lay eggs, and they 

 will hatch, but produce only drones. Drones are 

 all produced from unfertilized eggs. This is one of 

 the wonders of nature, and may be somewhat 

 astonishing to some, but it is nevertheless true. If 

 from any cause the queen is lost from the colony 

 the bees' set about rearing another, which they do 

 from a common worker-egg or larva, by building 

 around it a large thick cell, and feeding a super- 

 abundance of the same kind of pabulum, apparent- 

 ly, as that fed in smaller quantities to the other 



