480 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July 



against this theory. These colonies have no brood, 

 but have pollen in abundance, so the drones are 

 the sole consumers of all the larval food instinct- 

 ively produced by the bees. 



But we can learn something more by these exper- 

 iments. A food necessary for drones will be just 

 as necessary for workers. Worker-bees, it is true, 

 are much more hardy. Without any food, Jrones 

 starve in six or eight hours; but workers stand 

 this treatment for 48 hours. Nevertheless we can 

 see that the worker-bees, too, need some nitroge- 

 nous food to preserve their vitality; i. e., they need 

 some pollen. Every bee examined in the first 

 months of the winter, when no brood at all is in 

 the hive, will show many pollen-shells in the ali- 

 mentary canal. If the bees have no pollen in the 

 cells they find some in old combs, and the experi- 

 ments made with sugar syrup are no proof that the 

 bees can live without any nitrogenous food, we will 

 say, during the winter, because the sugar is not 

 quite without nitrog'enous matter. Some pollen in 

 winter is not only without dang-er, but it is neces- 

 sary. I may add to this, that the so-called "pollen 

 theory " may be explained in another way. In 

 some localities the bees may bring in so much pol- 

 len that a great part of the cells are full of pol- 

 len covered with some honey. Hereby the bees 

 not only starve, but they will get too cold in winter 

 time. The cluster of the bees is always on empty 

 combs, and in every cell inside of the cluster is a 

 bee, so long as the cluster is compact. If the most 

 of these cells are filled with pollen, the cluster is 

 too much expanded, and the bees have to eat more 

 to keep it warm. In this way an abundance of pol- 

 len in the brood-nest may be dangerous in winter 

 indirectly. 



Some beekeepers doubt that the bees go inside 

 the cells inside of the winter cluster; but if we take 

 into consideration the fact that the comb is about 

 one inch wide, while the space between the combs 

 is hardly half an inch, we see that, inside of the 

 cells, is room enough for double the number of 

 bees in the space between the combs. If these 

 combs would be empty in the cluster, it would be 

 hardly possible for the bees to keep up the high 

 temperature, while outside we have some degrees 

 below zero. The cluster would by no means be a 

 compact one. But it is hardly necessary to talk 

 about, if we take into consideration to what small a 

 cluster a colony is contracted in cold weather, 

 which colony, a short time before, covered the 

 spaces of eight or ten frames. 



Selma, Texas, April, 1890. L. Stachelhadsen. 



On receipt of the above we forwarded the 

 same to Prof. Cook for his opinion and ex- 

 perience on the matter, and he replies as 

 follows : 



Mr. Stachelhausen's article is certainly very in- 

 teresting. I believe he is largely, if not wholly, 

 correct in the matter of drones. I think the drones 

 get their albuminous food from the workers. 

 They, the drones, work hard functionally, ard so 

 need much of t-his food, and soon die without it. 



I do not think the workers need as much nitrog- 

 enous food as Mr. S. thinks. They must have, it is 

 true, albuminous food, but there is enough in the 

 blood and tissues to last them for days, and weeks 

 even, when they are not active. Cage bees, or let 

 them be in the quiescent condition of winter, and 

 they gather nothing, and feed no brood— are, in 

 short, nearly idle. Thus they survive and do well 



on honey or syrup alone— just as we maybe eick, 

 and live for days, perhaps weeks, without any food 

 other than water and air. 1 am very certain that 

 our friends in Germany, or some of them, magnify 

 the importance of this food in winter. I do not be- 

 lieve the queen gets any, and I doubt whether the 

 workers do for weeks together. Of course, as soon 

 as the queen commences to lay, then the bees eat 

 pollen, and feed the digested food to the queen. 

 As soon as I can get time, I shall write up my ex- 

 periments, made last winter, in keeping bees with- 

 out pollen. I think these experiments will sustain 

 the position I have taken. A. J. Cook. 



Agricultural College, Mich., June 11. 



It seems to me that friend S. has given 

 us some suggestions that have never before 

 been brought forward, and some that are 

 most undoubtedly true. It never before oc- 

 curred to me, the injurious effect a large 

 quantity of pollen might have in breaking 

 up the compact cluster, so necessary to suc- 

 cessful wintering. But since he mentions 

 it, I do believe that the presence of so much 

 pollen in the brood-nest is often detrimen- 

 tal in just this way. 



RAISING QUEEN-CELLS WITH A 

 CAGED QUEEN, 



CAGED QUEENS OR REMOVED QUEENS— DIFFERENT 

 BEHAVIOR. 



I THINK I have seen it stated that bees with a 

 caged queen will raise queen-cells just as readily 

 as if the queen were removed. In nearly every 

 case, before this year, I have had queen-cells start- 

 ed when a queen was caged, but not in such l^rge 

 numbers as when a queen was removed. The bees 

 seem to think their queen, though present, is fail- 

 ing, and act as in the usual case of superseding an 

 old queen. There is one marked difference in the 

 conduct of the bees between caging and removing. 

 When a queen is caged, all the eggs in the hive are 

 hatched, and the brood reared; whereas, in the 

 case of removal, the bees destroy, as a general rule, 

 if not always, all the eggs. I think I have never 

 seen this mentioned, and it seems strange that, at a 

 time when one might think every egg would be 

 cherished, they are all destroyed. I don't know 

 what the bees do with them. I have read about 

 bees eating eggs, but I am a little skeptical; for, 

 if I mistake not, I have seen eggs left in a hive aft- 

 er a colony had starved in it. As I have said, the 

 caging of a queen starts bees to rearing a queen 

 or queens as in superseding. Toward the last of 

 May, this year, I caged a number of queens on pur- 

 pose to have queen-cells started. To my surprise, 

 most of the colonies did not start a cell. I suspect 

 it was because the bees were very short of stores, 

 for I have been obliged to keep close watch to keep 

 the bees from starving, the weather having b -en so 

 bad that I think there was not over two days' work 

 on fruit-bloom. June 3, with plenty of clover 

 bloom in sight, but hardly old enough for bees to 

 work on, many hives had not a cubic inch of honey 

 in sight. Frames of brood, put in an upper story 

 over an excluder, shared the same fate; in most 

 cases not a cell was started. Probably if I had fed 

 a little each day, the result would have been differ- 

 ent. In making the above experiments I was sur- 

 prised to find 



