210 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



Comments on a Beginner's Day Book. 

 No. -8. 



E. E. HASTY. 



T THE beginning of August my bee- 

 botany bump was quite prominent. 

 The condition of the honey produc- 

 ing flowers is given the first day, comprising 

 white and red clover, buckwheat, basil, but- 

 ton bush, boneset, meadow-sweet, golden 

 rod, horsemint and sumach. 



"August 3rd. 1880. Cool and some cloud. 

 Thermometer .54° 69" 5,5° . Eon 1 oz. Loss by 

 night 5 oz. First sale of my own crop of honey. 

 Took a walk P. M. to see where the bees worked. 

 Saw a bee at ironweed. Veronica seems an ex- 

 cellent honey plant — pollen light brown. Also 

 saw many bees at Eupatorium tistulosum. The 

 other plants on which I saw bees are old stand- 

 bys." 



Probably I was too green to consider that 

 a cool day, w ith very little honey flow was 

 hardly the time for such an expedition. 

 There was this advantage however, I could 

 see what flowers were giving some honey 

 when others were giving none. Little by 

 little we nearly all of us seem to be giving 

 up our expectations of realizing anything by 

 botanical efforts of any kind. I spent quite 

 a bit of effort and time at cultivating 

 veronica; but nothing is likely to come of it. 

 One can, to be sure, feather his nest a little 

 by starting sweet clover by the roadsides; but 

 if you do that you are likely to be more un- 

 popular among your neighbors than was 

 Saxe's man who invented early rising. I 

 don't blame people for not wanting their 

 roadsides and fence corners turned into im- 

 passable cane brakes by sweet clover, even 

 if it is fragrant and cleanly. As a juryman 

 I don't know but I would award damages 

 against the culprit, if the legal road were 

 clear. But if the ironweeds already by the 

 roadsides oould be persuaded to follow the 

 good example of this one, no one need cry. 



"August 4th. Cold morn; pleasant day. Ther- 

 mometer 49° 80° 61° . Runl2oz Loss by night 

 2oz. Colony 1 — 4 gave a fair sized swarm with 

 fertile queen. (Italians.) This is a repeated re- 

 peat—third time the same queen has led out the 

 same colony this season — the dates being May 

 12th. June 22nd. and August 4th. " 



We have talked enough of excessive swarm- 

 ing already, but just silently look at this 

 business once. As to weather and honey 

 flow, this record shows.a cold night does not 

 prevent a run of honey if the mid-day tem- 

 perature is hot enough. 



" August 7th. Trial of my new portable liouse- 

 tent. Awkward and hot, which 1 expected ; but 

 bees did not, as I feared, get furious flying inside 

 of it. On the whole it is a success, although it 

 is some trouble to get the bees out of the top of 

 it." 



Yes, a good tent to open hives under dur- 

 ing robbing times can be made a success; bat 

 in the course #of years we catch on to a more 

 successful success by avoiding all that kind 

 of work. The framework of this tent long 

 ago rotted down unused, and one of Root's 

 folding tents has been in the lumber-room 

 so many years that I cannot at this moment 

 tell whether it is serviceable or not. My de- 

 vice was a large light frame of strips with a 

 muslin cover that was to be pulled off and 

 kept in the dry when not in use. The bot- 

 tom hem was full of pebbles to make it hug 

 the ground close, and the frame had hooks 

 and a comb-holder attached inside as work- 

 ing conveniences. There was no door to it, 

 entrance being had by lifting up the cloth. 

 It is one of the curious things of our craft 

 how civil bees will be when they find them- 

 selves shut into an inclosure with their keep- 

 ers. Very little smoke is needed; and you 

 ean take off your veil, which will partly com- 

 pensate the increased heat. Outsiders nat- 

 urally think it a sort of man-in-the-lion's- 

 den wonder. In public shows of bee-ma- 

 nipulation the thing comes in as a sort of 

 trick. The audience do not dream else than 

 that the hero is exposing himself to extra 

 dangers under the wire cloth solely to keep 

 the bees from stinging the beholders. 



"August 10th. Found at 12— 4 immense num- 

 bers of eggs in drone cells — fertile workers or 

 drone laying queen. Many cells had seven eggs 

 in them, and some as many as ten. Adjacent 

 worker cells had mostly only one or two eggs 

 each. Tlie eggs seemed to vary greatly in size. 

 Tried to cure the very bad case by carrying all the 

 bees away, and making them fly home. Fear I 

 saw a fertile worker enter the hive, while 1 vain- 

 ly tried to kill her. " 



We used to be given directions in those 

 days to detect fertile workers. Ordinary 

 worker carries wings snug, to get through 

 the crowd easily; fertile worker carries wings 

 spread out by the kneading of the bees, and 

 because accustomed to have the crowd make 

 way for her pseudo-majesty. The fertile 

 worker was supposed to have a peculiar 

 shape of abdomen also. It all may be; but I 

 think few bee-keepers of ten years standing 

 would undertake to pick you out a fertile 

 worker. The whole subject of fertile work- 

 ers will bear more investigation, but prob- 

 ably in cases like this many bees lay a few 

 eggs each— hence the different sizes — and 

 not being skilled in the art of backing into 

 the cells they mostly choose the biggest cells 

 for the practice. It was alleged that fer- 

 tile workers would stay in the hive where 

 put, like queens, while the ordinary workers 



