le (§ee-)\eepeps' |\eviecL 



A MONTHLY JOURNAL 

 Devoted to tl^e Iqterests of HoqeLj Producers. 



$L00 A YEAR. 

 W. Z. HUTCHINSON, Editor and Proprietor. 



VOL VIIL FLINT, MICHIGAN, AUG. 10. 1895. NO. 8. 



Work at ]V[icliigan.'s 



Experimental 



^piarv. 



B. li. TAYLOR, APIARIST. 

 THK ECONOMY OF THE HIVE. 



rnHE great ma- 

 l' jority of bee- 

 keepers to whom 

 this bulletin will 

 f;o have little 

 knowledge of the 

 internal workings 

 of the hive, if I 

 may judge from 

 the numerous 

 questions put to 

 me on this point, 

 and the intelli- 

 gent and successful management of bees 

 depends so much upon a thorough knowl- 

 edge of this that a few words upon it, which 

 may serve to stimulate inquiry on the part 

 of the novice, thougli they may disclose 

 nothing new to the skilled bee-keeper, will 

 be a fitting close to this annual report. 



In a normal colony are three kinds of 

 bees : the queen or mother bee which pro- 

 duces all the eggs from which all the others, 

 at least all the workers, originate ; the work- 

 ers which are partially developed females, 

 and the drones or the male bees which some- 

 times originate from the eggs of what are 

 called laying workers. Each of these three 



kinds requires for its proper development to 

 be reared in a different sized cell from the 

 others. The drone and the worker are rear- 

 ed in the cells of ordinary comb, but the 

 cells required for the former are about one- 

 fourth inch in diameter while those for the 

 latter are about one-fifth of an inch. For 

 the production of a queen, on the other 

 hand, a special cell is required and such are 

 seldom seen in the hive except when there is 

 a desire on the part of the bees to produce 

 queens either for the purpose of swarming 

 or to replace and old. Injured or failing one. 

 These cells first appear in the shape of a 

 small acron cup, on the lower edge or side 

 of comb where there is an inch more or less 

 of vacant space below, with the opening 

 downwards. These incipient cells may of- 

 ten be seen when there is no present inten- 

 tion on the part of the bees to make use of 

 them. When queens are desired, the queen, 

 if she is not entirely disabled, deposits an 

 egg, the proper one for the purpose in each 

 of several cups generally from three to 

 twenty, if for the purpose of superseding the 

 present (lueen a small number, and if to pro- 

 vide for swarming a larger number. In 

 about three days the egg hatches and the re- 

 sult is a tiny larva just visible to the naked 

 eye in a good light. So far the egg and 

 larva are just such as, if placed in a worker 

 cell, would produce a worker bee. The dif- 

 fence in the final results is produced by the 

 larger cell and an abundance of food. At 

 once upon the hatching of the egg the work- 

 ers begin to store the cup with food, a milk- 



