148 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



crease. If one yard is earning nolhiiig' and 

 doing nothing he moves it lo anotlier place 

 where there is something doing. He said 

 that there is quite a difference in various 

 portions of Florida within twenty or even 

 only ten miles of each other. At Pompano, 

 for example, the bees would breed every 

 month in the year. This was one of his 

 favorite breeding-places. Here he built his 

 colonies up and then moved to other loca- 

 tions on the Keys, and further down where 

 honey was coming in. 



I told our friend that the Long Idea hive 

 was being revived in certain quarters. Two 

 or three people in Massachusetts, and our 

 old friend J. E. Hand, have been using a 

 isixteen-frame Long Idea hive. " These 

 people are making a mistake," said Mr. 

 Poppleton. " They are not going far 

 enoufjli. The sixteen-frame hive is too big 

 to be handled by one man, and not large 

 enough to be handled by two. Sixteen 

 frames will not hold our best colonies. Mr. 

 Hand's scheme of converting this hive into 

 a double-walled eight-frame hive for win- 

 ter," said our friend, " is very old," and he 

 would refer us to the back volumes of the 

 bee-journals. 



I • then asked him whether it would be 

 practicable to make a twenty-four frame 

 liive on Lang-stroth dimensions. If he Avere 

 going to start again, rather than take Lang- 

 stroth frames he would adopt a Jumbo just 

 two inches deeper, and make a hive to hold 

 twenty-five such frames. 



In the matter of breeding, Mr. Poppleton 

 says there is no particular advantage in the 

 horizontal Long Idea hive over the vertical 



system except in the matter of convenience 

 to the operator or owner. For old people, 

 women, or any other who lack suttieient 

 .strength to lift upper stories, the single- 

 brood-chamber principle seems to have some 

 advantage. Jf it were not for the fact that 

 it is more expensive, and that it is not 

 adapted to the i^roduction of comb honey, 

 it might, perhaps, receive more favorable 

 consideration than it does. If one were to 

 start Avith a hundred of these big hives to 

 accommodate a hundred colonies he might 

 be scared out of the business before begin- 

 ning. These big hives would cost consider- 

 ably more than the same capacity on the 

 veitical principle. The tiering-ui) hive per- 

 mits the use of narrow and short pieces of 

 lumber in a way that would not be feasible 

 with the Poppleton hive. Large boards of 

 clear or sound-knot stock ai-e expensive as 

 compared with small pieces that have been 

 cut out of cheap lumber, cutting around the 

 knots. 



Mr. Poppleton has carried as many as 80 

 Long Idea hives at a single time in his boat 

 shown in Fig. 4, taking along in addition 

 extracting-outfits, bedding, etc. But that 

 was when he towed the boat with another 

 one. When he put in an engine he could 

 carry fifty at a time with the necessary 

 extracting-outfits and bedding. While he 

 sometimes extracted inside of the boat it 

 was his practice to have a small building at 

 each yard. This structure is of cheap 

 lumber, and of sufficient size to answer as 

 a workshop, extracting-building, and for 

 storage puriTosps also. 



To he continiK <l 



THE ORIGIN OF THE HONEYBEE 



BY X. N. ALLIXG 



One often reads that the honeybee was 

 made to fertilize the flowers or simply to 

 furnish man with honey and wax. People 

 could not think that it is living for its own 

 sake like any thing else, and had adapted 

 itself from remote ages to the work it is 

 now performing, and thereby secured itself 

 an existence. Plants at the same time have 

 adapted themselves to attract the bee by 

 shaping their flowers and secreting sweet 

 juices so the bee would carry pollen from 

 one blossom to another. 



People in general think the way the world 

 is now is as it always has been, but this is 

 not so. In the coal period there was not a 

 single flower on any plant, although there 

 w^ere plenty ot insects related to bees. It 

 is natural to think that the bees' ancestors 



in the coal period lived more like ants, eat- 

 ing what honey-dew they could find on 

 plants and trees. The bee had no use for 

 pollen-baskets, honey-sac, or wax-pocket. It 

 might not have lived in colonies, as the 

 temperature was high in those days, and 

 there Avas no need for a winter cluster. 



While the Avorkers are undeveloped fe- 

 males noAV, they might all have been fully 

 developed then. Perhaps the sting was an 

 ovipositor, and the mothers placed the eggs 

 in any crack or liole to hatdi by natui-al 

 heat, leaA'ing the larva3 to take care of IIumi- 

 selves as do caterjiillars noAV. 



Only sloAvly. very slowly, did tlie plants 

 take other shapes through the next forma- 

 tions or periods Avhile the bees kept pace 

 with the plants for their mutual benefit. 



