310 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



September 



in our country at the end of July. 

 The bees c?n no longer find much in 

 the fields, the brood is reduced and 

 the colony seemingly grows old. In 

 the same manner that an old man 

 becomes avaricious, in the old colony 

 awakens the greed of property. And 

 with this greed, this desire for the 

 liquid gold, the honey, many bees ac- 

 quire an ugly quality, the only vice 

 of these virtuous citizens, the desire 

 to secure wealth by all means — rob- 

 bery. Generally those bees who cling 

 to this disdainful trade, this qualified 

 trick, are old bees. Hasty and rest- 

 less, they fly about strange homes, 

 where they scent coveted treasures, 

 to enter them and steal the honey. 

 But the vigilant amazons are on the 

 watch and recognize the strangers, 

 and grasp the impudent ones who 

 dare to alight. Fierce struggles 

 arise and many an enemy may perish. 

 One may see couples of bees in dead- 

 ly embrace, the sting of each fixed in 

 the body of the adversary. Many a 

 bee loses its life in such struggles. 



Other bees, seemingly more honest, 

 seek sweets which are not to be found 

 in flowers, but abroad in honey- 

 rooms, in sugar factories, in confec- 

 tioneries and, especially in autumn, 

 in wine or cider press rooms. Thou- 

 sands of the poor insects are there 

 drowned, falling into the liquid or 

 filling themselves till no longer able 

 to crawl. 



After the bee-autumn, when the 

 prudent inhabitants of the hive have 

 sealed every crack with resin, when 

 they have stored their provisions in 

 fittest places, the bee-winter comes. 

 This is the time of rest for the indus- 

 trious insects. They remain quiet 

 and take flight only when the weath- 

 er is warm enough, to satisfy their 

 need of emptying themselves. Peace- 

 ably and economically they live upon 

 their provisions, to keep warm their 

 little home, that their mother may 

 not become chilled. The colder it is 

 out-of-doors, the closer they cluster 

 about the warm center. They form 

 a spherical cluster, interrupted only 

 by the thin wax wall of the empty 

 cells. The bees nearest the food 

 take it and pass it to the others. Af- 

 ter filling their sacs some crawl into 



the empty cells, sleeping there till 

 hunger compels them to give the 

 room to others. If any of the old 

 bees seek to leave the cluster they 

 may chill and fall to the bottorn- 

 board. When a warm day comes, it 

 is one of the first tasks of the healthy 

 ones to carry out the corpses of their 

 dead sisters. 



These are the ordinary kinds of 

 deaths of the bees of a healthy colo- 

 ny in ordinary conditions. Without 

 going into details, I may say that quite 

 a number perish by different enemies, 

 spiders, wasps, hornets and a num- 

 ber of birds. But more important 

 are the minute enemies, the bac- 

 teria" which kill partly grown insects 

 as well as the full grown bees and so 

 are sometimes able to destroy entire 

 colonies. 



One of the worst enemies, which 

 destroys many colonies, especially in 

 winter, is "hunger," caused generally 

 by a niggardly or unmerciful owner. 

 When the provisions are exhausted 

 the poor creatures can no longer pro- 

 duce warmth, since their fuel — honey 

 . — is spent. The temperature sinks 

 until all the bees, with the queen, are 

 frozen and die without a complaint. 

 If we examine such a dead colony we 

 find the little lifeless bodies crowded 

 closely around their dead queen and 

 the empty cells filled with dead 

 workers. The artistic wax cells 

 whose wonderful construction fill us 

 with admiration and which serve as 

 storerooms for the honey and as cra- 

 dles for the brood, have now become 

 the coffins of the inhabitants. 



I said that the greatest enemy of 

 bees is man. The killing of the in- 

 dustrious honey-gatherers with poi- 

 sonous vapors of sulphur is no longer 

 practiced in German or French Swit- 

 zerland. But in Tessin and Valais 

 they still kill the bees in autumn, se- 

 lecting the lightest and the heaviest 

 hives to secure honey and wax. The 

 remaining colonies are permitted to 

 live and swarm the following sum- 

 mer. So the game begins again. 



The drones, the poor, abused, 

 calumniated drones, die mostly of 

 hunger. When the question of 

 progeny is settled and the ill-fated 

 males are deemed superfluous, the 



bees simply drive them away from 

 the food. They may be driven to a 

 dry corner of the hive, or to seek 

 death out-of-doors. If they will not 

 go deliberately, the pitiless old 

 maids drive them forcibly. I have 

 never seen a bee use its sting upon a 

 drone, it being evidently unnecessary 

 against the weaponless strong sex. 

 The much celebrated drone slaughter 

 is only the harsh throwing out of the 

 poor fellows by the workers, who 

 pinch them in the legs, wings, anten- 

 na, or ride on them, till the torment- 

 ed ones escape through the entrance. 



Only an infinitesimal number of 

 drones die in full vigor, those who 

 have the good luck to mate with a 

 virgin, and who expire spasmodically 

 to afford life for the hundreds of 

 thousands of their progeny, the 

 workers of the future. 



What about the chief of the colony, 

 the queen? Nearly every mother 

 who has given life to hundreds of 

 thousands and has been fondled by 

 them during her entire life of three 

 or four years, dies of decrepitude. 

 Previous to her death she lays both 

 drone eggs and female eggs in the 

 proper kinds of cells. The workers 

 evidently understand the necessity, 

 smce they feed these larvae in a dif- 

 ferent manner. The first born queen 

 kills her sisters still in the cell. She 

 soon becomes fertile and begins her 

 life's function. By her side her 

 mother may remain a while, some- 

 times for months, and when death 

 approaches she may seek to leave the 

 hive, if death does not reach her be- 

 fore. 



Unfertile queens often die in a duel 

 with a rival, when more than one 

 emerges at the same time. Furiously 

 they rush upon each other and try to 

 drive their sting into the adversary's 

 body. The poison of the queen seems 

 to act speedily, for a queen stung by 

 another will die at once, while a 

 queen stung by a workerbee may live 

 for a long time, sometimes for years. 

 It would require too much space to 

 go into the detail of the death of the 

 queens, though this is also an inter- 

 esting question, 



Switzerland. 



NO, 1. 'IHE HIVE IS PLACED ON A BOTTOM-BO.\RD WHICH I.S ij TO <i LARGER 

 THAN THE STANDARD 10-FRAME HIVE. THIS SPACE ALLOWS FOR 3 OR MORE 

 WRANPPINGS OF SLATER'S FELT, OR CAN BE USED AS AIR SPACE. FELT IS 

 VERY SUCCESSFUL. 



An Outer Case Plan 



By H. M. Leach. 



I MAKE my hive stands like the 

 ones on the market, except they 

 are one-half inch larger all around i 

 than a 10-frame hive. This allows 

 for the three or four plys of slaters' 

 felt I use around the body. 



After the hive is set on the stand I 

 wrap the slaters' felt around hive 

 body and fasten ends with 4-oz. tacks. 

 I now have an 8-inch rim the same 

 size as the stand, one-half inch larger 

 than the ten-frame hive, which I slip 

 over the hive thus prepared, and it 

 fits the hive stand perfectly. 



I make my cover same size as rim, 

 etc., 6 inches deep, and use it for 

 summer and winter and cover it with 

 red asphalt roofing. 



This covers the entire hive and 

 leaves room for a cover or mat from 

 two inches to four inches thick for 

 top cover over frame. I have used 



