252 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUKE. 



July 



HONEY BEES OF SOI TH AFRICA. 



tfp^OME months ago, the editor of Gleanings 

 l\^)l spoke of Stanley's men bringing in honey 

 comb, and wished they had mentioned how 

 much honey was in it, &c. A cousin, A. S. Peabody, 

 now at Laramie City, Wyoming, visited me last 

 summer, and I remembered hearing him say that 

 frees in Cape Town, where he spent 14 years, 

 did not store any honey; that they only gathered 

 each day enough for their own use. So 1 wrote him 

 for information on the subject, and give you his 

 reply as follows: 



1 believe it is a fact th;it the bees at the Cape lay 

 up very little extra honey. Mine did not; my six 

 hives not giving- me enough for my own use. I 

 complained of this to the old beeologist, who made 

 hives for a living-, and bees a study. He told me 

 that was the habit of bees in that country; they 

 found flowers in abundance the year round, and 

 they became lazy and did not lay up much. I re- 

 member he had a glass hive on his parlor table, 

 which was near a window, with an entrance running 

 under the sill, and there he would sit by the hour, 

 when he had nothing- else to do, and study the habits 

 of those bees. He could give a world of information 

 on the subject of bees, for he is intelligent, and an 

 enthusiast on bees. I showed him a bee journal 

 which I suppose you gave father, and he went wild 

 over it. If anyone writes him, have them send a 

 journal or two. The postage on letters is 15cts.; on 

 papers, 4cts. Address Mr. Corliss, Bee Master, Cape 

 Town, C. G. H. [Africa. Ed.] 



I don't understand why bees did better on the 

 east coast of Africa and in Madagascar (that is where 

 the Cape supply came from), unless because the 

 bees there are pure natives, whereas, at the Cape, 

 they are of Italian stock, and perhaps of brig-hter 

 comprehension. I doubt if new stock is ever taken 

 there from Europe nowadays. I never heard of any. 



The natives in Cape Town are just like the bees, 

 lies ays, if you wish to hire one to do a small job of 

 work, they will say, "Oh, I have 75c," or "I have rice 

 enough for a few days or a week; 1 won't work un- 

 til that is gone." 



J. L. Peabodv. 



Denver, Col., May 17, 1879. 



DIAL ROYALTY. 



f|OR some years, I have known that two queens 

 would occupy the same colony, under pecu- 

 liar circumstances; for instance, in a very 

 long box hive with contracted centre, or a two story 

 movable frame hive, or a hive with honey boxes on 

 top, or a natural gum with two enlarged cavities, &c. ; 

 but I always thought the bees were on the eve of 

 superceding an old or diseased queen, and such 

 cases which have been reported seemed to confirm 

 the supposition. 1 now know, however, that, with 

 the above named conditions of a hive, two, young, 

 fertile, and laying queens do sometimes live in the 

 same colony. In March, a choice colony of mine 

 sent forth a swarm, which I secured, queen and all. 

 I knew the queen by her physical aspect. In a few 

 days, I went through the old queenless hive, and 

 cut out all the queen cells but three, intending one 

 queen to succeed the old queen, and the other two 

 for two hybrid stocks. 



Other business matters detained me from home, 

 until the second swarm had issued just before my 

 return. I proceeded to overhaul the old colony, 

 and, on the second frame, I found a beautiful young 

 queen, and all three of the cells had hatched. Sup- 

 posing that two of the queens had gone with the 

 second swarm, I did not examine any farther, and 

 put on a top story with sections and comb for guides. 

 In ten days, I went through the hive again, to see if 

 the young queen was a success and laying. I took 



off the upper story, and examined the combs in the 

 lower story. I soon found the queen greatly enlarg- 

 ed, and the combs full of young brood and eggs. I 

 closed the hive, and, before replacing the upper 

 story, concluded to look after the progress in the 

 sections. The very first one I opened presented to 

 me another beautiful queen, a type of the one in 

 the lower story. I at once suspected her to be the 

 same, thinking she might have escaped from her 

 combs and got into these. However, I caged her, 

 and after inspection found eggs in the sections. I 

 immediately gave her to a queenless colony, and 

 after 13 hours released her; on examination, six 

 hours later, I found she had filled two sides of two 

 combs with eggs. Now, to establish the fact of there 

 being two, young, fertile queens in one hive, I went 

 again through the old colony and found the queen 

 laying eggs, which she continued to do after I had 

 raised the comb out of the hive. These queens 

 must have occupied the hive together,— one, the 

 upper, and the other, the lower story. As the tops 

 of the frames made a sort of separation, they did 

 not intrude on each other's dominions, just as two 

 swarms may occupy a large goods box, at the same 

 time, without mingling. 



How did they pass, after being fertilized, is the 

 question? But, in the face of this clear case of 

 "dual royalty," I do not believe two, young, fertile 

 queens will ever occupy the same apartment, if it is 

 of ordinary size and regular shape, in peace and 

 harmony, but will swarm out or destroy each other. 

 The case described above is the exception and not 

 the rule. Geo. B. Peters. 



Council Bend, Ark., June 11, 1S79. 



WINTERING, CHAFF HIVES, OLI> BEES, 

 VENTILATION, ETC. 



fjlO our great surprise, we had a splendid natural 

 swarm of Italians issue last Saturday, May 

 31st, which is the earliest we have ever had in 

 our bee-keeping experience of 20 years. Last Sep- 

 tember, we noticed that brood rearing had been 

 suspended in most of the 17 colonies on hand. Es- 

 timating the average life of workers at 6 months, 

 those hatched by Sept. 1st, would end their days by 

 March 1st; and as, at that time of year in this lati- 

 tude, it is often so cold that brood can not be raised, 

 we concluded that, in order to insure a supply of 

 workers until May in case of bad weather, new 

 brood would have to be raised. 



Accordingly we stimulated by nightly feeding 

 one-half pint of syrup made of two-thirds grape 

 sugar and one-third California strained honey which 

 we bought for 5 cts. per pound, being an old lot left 

 at one of our grocery stores. The effect was satis- 

 factory; brood rearing was resumed at once, while 

 the sealed stores were left intact, and came in very 

 good play during the severe winter. The result 

 was still more satisfactory; 8 new swarms in chaff 

 hives, and 10 old and new swarms in the old L. 

 hives, entirely unprotected except by chaff cush- 

 ions over the enameled cloth, all left on their sum- 

 mer stands, came out without loss of a queen or 

 swarm. 



Particular care was taken, in the autumn when 

 the cushions were placed on the enameled cloth, 

 that there should be some top ventilation; for, 

 whatever others' experience may be, we are con- 

 vinced that they must have at least a little top 

 ventilation, and yet we would not dispense with 

 chaff cushions. 



