1901 



GLEANINGvS IN BEE CULTURE. 



899 



food, and that it is vitally' important to their 

 development. But, on the other hand, so 

 careful a breeder as Mr. Alle_y keeps virt^in 

 queens in cagTs for a short time, and pre- 

 sumablj' with no ill efi'ects, or he would dis- 

 continue the practice. The nuclei from 

 which his queens are fertilized, and in which 

 they usually remain until shipped, contiiin 

 five frames, live inches square. You can 

 see that there is little chance for full rate of 

 egg"-production. Mr. Alley, I believe, very 

 seldom has reports of his queens "going- 

 bad'' after shipment. 



Isn't the foregoing evidence of sufficient 

 weight to warrant a pretty positive asser- 

 tion? But I will amplify and elucidate: If 

 a queen taken from a full colony in the 

 height of her activitj' has caged with her, 

 sav' twelve attendants which happen to have 

 their stomachs charged with a full supply 

 of pollen and honey, there is a fair chance 

 of her receiving sufticient nutriment to take 

 the place of the waste of tissue caused by 

 egg--development. But if such queen has as 

 attendants twelve bees, only a few of which 

 are so supplied, how and from whence is 

 she to get the needed food? And that she 

 does need such food I believe is indisputa- 

 ble. 



I think you gave in the ABC the advice 

 to pick for escort bees those with their heads 

 in a cell, getting^ honey. Such bees are 

 usually the field bees, and are very seldom 

 the "nurse" bees with a full supply of 

 chj'le. Cage such a queen alone and put 

 the cage in a full colony, and she is little, 

 if an3^ better off than in the shipping-cage 

 with the attendants; worse off, unless she 

 is near unsealed bi'ood. To appreciate this, 

 please note that, except in the exercise of 

 the latent "mother instinct" in feeding lar- 

 vae, a worker-bee never voluntarily gives 

 food to any other bee, either queen, drone, 

 or worker. Food always has to be aslicd 

 for — sometimes apparently taken by force. 

 Under such conditions, what hope has the 

 caged queen of getting needed nourishment? 

 She has to depend on the chance of a prop- 

 erly supplied worker coming within asking 

 distance, and then risk g^'etting her to give 

 up some of her supply. If her cage is near 

 unsealed brood the nurse-bees are numer- 

 ous ; but if she is in an upper stOry, do 

 you wonder that she suffers for want of ni- 

 trogenous food? 



A bee wanting food (other than honey or 

 when honey is not accessible) "holds up" 

 all comers until one is found with a supply. 

 As soon as the latter can be persuaded to 

 give, she opens her mouth and the hinigry 

 bee puts its tongue well into it. The giv- 

 ing bee at the same time generally curves 

 and contracts its abdomen, much as if to 

 sting, which is probablj^ necessary to en- 

 able it to disgorge the food when the stom- 

 ach is not full. The curving of the abdo- 

 men is not always done. The tongue of the 

 giving bee during the operation is curved 

 back under her "chin" nearly as close as 

 it is normally carried when not in use. 

 The abdomen of the taking bee palpitates 



just as when taking nectar from the flowers 

 or honey from a cell. I have often seen a 

 drone seize the worker by the "cheeks," 

 tip up the worker's face to a convenient an- 

 gle, and hang on until either it had no more 

 to give or he had gotten his fill. The sud- 

 den show of tongues when a queen or other 

 bee is getting food thus is purely a case of 

 trying to get dainties, and is not an offering 

 of food to their rov^ll mother or distressed sis- 

 ter. 



Remember that a queen in the full exer- 

 cise of her functions is developing'- two and 

 a half times her own weight of eggs every 

 24 hours. It is not the sudden taking of 

 the queen from a place in which to deposit 

 her eggs that injures ( for she can and will 

 continue to extrude them as they develop), 

 but it is the lack of sufficient projier food to 

 restore the drain on her system. If such 

 food is not available in sufficient quantity, 

 she starves, and on the duration of such 

 starvation depends the extent of injury 

 to her vitality. Knowing these things, and 

 knowing- that a queen free in her hive can 

 ask and obtain food from thousands of bees, 

 is it irrational to believe and assert that she 

 must suffer when compelled to depend on 

 tivclvc bees, only a few of which may be 

 able to supply her needs? These statements 

 may be readily verified by any one who 

 cares to take the necessary pains. 



Mr. Editor, have I made my case good? 



Providence, R. I., Oct. 22. 



[You have presented some facts that seem 

 to point in one direction; but so far, if I am 

 any judge of evidence, not enough has yet 

 been offered to warrant a positive asser- 

 tion one way or the other. True science 

 would demand more and better proof than 

 an opinion based on certain phenomena that 

 might take place from a combination or a 

 variety of causes. Too many times have 

 we sent queens in the height of their &^^- 

 lav'ing, from strong colonies, without any 

 bad results, and the escorts were those hav- 

 ing- their heads in honey, for I have put them 

 up m_vself. You may be aware that the 

 Root Co. has probably had as extensive an 

 experience in queen-rearing as anybody in 

 the United States. Queens "go bad " for all 

 the breeders, and even for Mr. Alley. While 

 he does produce some very fine queens, some 

 of them, as I have known, have gone very 

 bad. 



Now, having said this much, I do not wish 

 to appear set in my way. I am open to con- 

 viction; and to show 5'ou that I am anxious 

 for the truth I present a letter that seems to 

 support your views. Mr. H. G. Quirin, one 

 of the largest queen-breeders in the United 

 States, writes: 



Mr. ^'70// — When first engaging in the queen-traffic 

 we used and adopted the two-frame ful'.-sized frame. 

 I,, size; but it soon occurred to us that it took too 

 many bees to stock (iOO or 800 of these boxes, so we 

 gradually changed to a smaller frame, just a trifle less 

 than half the I<. size By having a division in our old 

 nucleus-boxes we can have two nuclei where we former- 

 ly had but one. Of course, these small nuclei can not 

 .stand the extremes that a larger one will; but by giving 

 them the proper attention, just as many queens can 



