1908 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



749 



on a limb long enough to send out scouts, these 

 same scouts mnrk their location from where the 

 swarm is, and forget all about their old "parent- 

 al roof." Very many times I have hung the clip- 

 ped caged queen, witii a swarm of bees, when I 

 was not just ready to care for them as soon as 

 they were clustered; and if thus left for an hour 

 or more, there would be from ten to one hundred 

 bees hanging around the place where the swarm 

 had clustered, within an hour after it was cared 

 for. The bees would stay there all the rest of 

 the day, flying about in a lost condition, and oc- 

 casionally rest on the limbs and leaves near by, 

 clear up to nightfall, and in a very few instances 

 I have known of a few of them being there dur- 

 ing the next day, when the night was very warm. 



Here is something about the swarming of bees 

 that I have never seen in print, even if it has ever 

 been noticed before by any one. Why any bee 

 should entirely lose the location of the old home, 

 when being sent out as a scout, is something 

 which I can not understand; but I am quite sure 

 that they do, for I have found them lifeless the 

 next morning on the leaves and limbs where the 

 swarm clustered, after a cool or cold night. 

 Another thing pointing to such a conclusion is 

 this: One day, just after a swarm had clustered, 

 an urgent call came for me to go away for a little 

 time. I hung the caged queen with the cluster 

 and left them. I was obliged to stay till into the 

 afternoon. On arriving home I prepared a hive 

 and was about going to take the bees when they 

 began to break cluster for leaving, and all went 

 off out of sight, leaving the caged queen hanging 

 there. As I always let three or four bees run 

 with the queen into the cage when I am caging 

 her, to care for her should any unforeseen thing 

 happen, I knew she was all safe, so I did not dis- 

 turb things at all, only to see that every single 

 bee of the swarm not in the cage had gone. I was 

 all interest to know just how this thing would 

 come out, as it was something that had never oc- 

 curred before in all of my bee-keeping life. The 

 seconds passed into minutes, till ten, fifteen, 

 eighteen, and twenty of them had passed, and I 

 had almost come to the conclusion that I was out 

 that swarm all but the queen, when I heard them 

 coming back. I was now more curious than 

 ever to know where they would go; whether to 

 the limb from whence they went, or back to their 

 old home; so I went to the hive, expecting to see 

 a part of them, at least, return home. But, no, 

 sir; not a single bee went back to the hive; but 

 they clustered on that limb the quickest I ever 

 knew of a swarm clustering in the world. 



Now I am sure that swarms send out scouts 

 while they hang on the limb, from the number 

 of bees hanging about the clustering-place after a 

 swarm has hung some time; for if the swarm is 

 taken care of just as soon as the bees are cluster- 

 ed, or if the queen is held from them so that they 

 return to their old home after clustering, none of 

 these scout bees will be seen hovering around all 

 day. The queen must be with the swarm, and 

 the swarm hang some time, else the scouts will 

 not be sent out. I have dwelt on this part of the 

 matter more at length than I otherwise would be- 

 cause of this sentence from Dr. Miller: "I am 

 strongly of the opinion, buttressed by much ob- 

 servation, that bees generally send out scouts be- 

 fore rather than after swarming. " And I also am 



equally sure that they send out scouts before 

 swarming, and, as Dr. Miller says, "for several 

 days;" and if he had put it several weeks I would 

 not object. I will give only two of my many 

 observations. The first was like this: 



I put a hive in a tree at the side of the apiary 

 for some squirrels to nest in, which came down 

 from the woods near by. They built a nest and 

 stayed till spring. One day during the swarming 

 season I happened to look up at this hive when I 

 saw bees going in and out at the hole I had bored 

 for the squirrels, which led me to believe that a 

 small swarm had taken possession of this hive. 

 A neighbor had requested a small swarm for his 

 boy, and so I told him I had it for him if he would 

 get the hive from the tree the next morning. He 

 came early, got the hive down carefully, so as 

 not to disturb the bees, when to my chagrin, 

 there was nothing but the squirrels' nest in the 

 hive. At my request he put the hive back, and 

 by ten o'clock that day the bees were going in 

 and out at the squirrel-hole as thick as ever; and 

 by careful watching I could detect now and then 

 a shred of the nest taken off by some of the bees 

 flying out from che hole. This was kept up for 

 three days more, when we had two or three days 

 of bad weather, during which I saw no bees at 

 the squirrel-hive. Two or three days later it 

 came off fair again, and the work went on at the 

 squirrel-hive, and, one day later, a swarm com- 

 menced to issue from a nearby hive, and, to my 

 surprise, they went right out from their entrance 

 into the hole in this squirrel-hive, scarcely cir- 

 cling about at all. 



The second, and the most exasperating of any 

 of the very many scout cases which have come 

 under my observation, was like this: An old bee- 

 hunter came to me one day the latter part of June 

 and said he had found a bee-tree, and wanted me 

 to help him cut it in the fall so we could save the 

 bees. He told me it was a big hard maple with 

 a hole in the side of it forty feet from the ground. 

 Passing that way two days later I looked at the 

 hole and saw many bees going in and out of the 

 same, so I took it for granted that he had track- 

 ed bees to the tree. One wet afternoon in Sep- 

 tember he came with a dull saw and ax for me to 

 go with him to cut the tree. We took all that 

 was necessary to get the bees and honey. To 

 make a long story short, it was after four o'clock 

 when the tree come down, and my hands were so 

 blistered that I could hardly work the smoker, 

 which we had going for an hour or more. Rush- 

 ing up to the hole with the smoker to keep the 

 bees from pouring out, not a bee was seen, and, 

 what was more, not a bee could be heard. Ten 

 minutes sufficed to "slab" off the side above the 

 hole, when we found a cavity all nicely cleaned, 

 but not a single bee, either dead or alive. Upon 

 questioning the man closely he said he went by 

 the tree two days before he told me of it, saw the 

 bees going in and out, the same as I did, and 

 was sure he had a bee-tree. 



Are Bees Refle.x Machines.? in the Italian 

 language is now being published serially by 

 Apicultore of Milan. The translation is from 

 the English edition now appearing in Glean- 

 ings. The translator is V. Asprea, of Calabria^ 

 Italy. 



