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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



425 



CONVERSATIONS WITH 



DOOLITTLE 



AT Borodino, New York. 



BEES go from one FLOWER TO ANOTHER. 

 Ill u'aUierintr honey, bees do not visit different kinds 

 of flowers in one trip, but trather from one kind of 

 flowers only. This is ritrht, is it not? Please tell us 

 in Gleanings. Two subscribers to that paper do not 

 atrree in this matter. 



Now, if this correspondent had merely said 

 that bees gather pollen of one color on one 

 trip I should have agreed with him, for I 

 never saw a bee with mixed colors of pollen 

 in the pollen-baskets, although I have many 

 times seen different-colored pollen put into 

 one cell. But when we come to honey, I 

 have repeatedly seen bees fly from a currant 

 to a gooseberry bush, and from raspberry 

 bloom to clover, and vice versa. I have also 

 seen bees gathering nectar from red, white, 

 and alsike clover at the same time. I have 

 seen them go from the red variety of rasp- 

 berry to the black, where the different kinds 

 of bushes were planted side by side, and 

 from catnip flowers to the bloom on mother- 

 wort, where these grew near together. 



CELL-CAPPINGS. 

 What is the significance of finding in the morning', 

 say from twenty to one hundred little round caps of 

 wax near the entrance to some hives, while others do 

 not have any? 



So far as my observation goes, such caps 

 signify that drones are emerging from their 

 cells; for if one will take the time to examine 

 he will find that the drone, in emerging from 

 the cell, bites the cover to the cell entirely 

 off by a smooth cut, while the workers leave 

 only fragments of the cappings of their cell- 

 coverings in gnawing out when emerging. 

 The queen cuts off tne capping to her cell 

 the same as does the drone, except, as a rule, 

 a little piece on one side is left which acts 

 like the hinge to a door, the door often being 

 pushed shut, or closing after the queen has 

 gone out. If it is thus closed, the bees often 

 make it fast, so that the bee-keeper is often 

 deceived into thinking that the queen has 

 not emerged. I have many times used such 

 in my earlier years of bee-keeping, giving 

 them to (jueenless colonies Then it often 

 happens that, as soon as the queen has emerg- 

 ed from her cell, a worker goes into the cell 

 to partake of the royal jelly or queen-food 

 left in the cell, after which the cell-cover 

 flies back or is pushed shut by some bee in 

 passing, when this worker is a prisoner. 

 This has caused many to think that the in- 

 mate of the cell was not a queen but a work- 

 er; and for this reason, as they had cut all 

 cells but the one, they called their colony 

 queenless, and sent off for a queen, or wrote 

 to some of the bee-papers about the strange 

 phenomenon. Occasionally some bee-keep- 

 er supposes that the round caps spoken of 

 by the correspondent indicate that cells of 

 honey are being uncapped preparatory to 

 the carrying of tne honey from the outside 

 to the center of the hive, as is done in the 

 fall of the year when a colony is preparing 

 for winter^ and at other times when a scarcity 



of honey occurs. But this is a mistake, as 

 the cappings to the honey-cells are gnawed 

 off in little fragments, and not in the round 

 form spoken of. 



PART OF SWARM RETURNING TO OLD HIVE. 



A swarm came out the fore part of July, clustered, 

 and was hived. In the evening, or near sunset, most 

 of the bees returned home, leaving about a pint in the 

 new hive. These remained six days, when they swarm- 

 ed out and clustered on a limb. I found the queen 

 with them. What made so many of the bees leave their 

 (jueen and return to the old hive whence they came? 



This correspondent touches on something 

 which rarely if ever finds a place in print, 

 notwithstanding it is a most perplexing thing, 

 and one that occasionally happens in the 

 best-reo'ulated apiary where natural swarm- 

 ing is allowed. The general cause is, that a 

 few (or perhaps many) strange bees from 

 another swarm, or elsewhere, alight with the 

 cluster; and, after the swarm is hived, any- 

 where from fifteen minutes to six or eight 

 hours, some of these strange bees come in 

 contact with the queen, and her own bees, 

 fearing she will be harmed, ball her, or, in 

 other words, cluster around her for safe 

 keeping or for some other purpose — just 

 what, I never knew. When the queen of a 

 newly hived swarm is thus balled, the ma- 

 jority of the bees seem to think that they 

 have lost their queen, and so return to their 

 old hive, just as they would go back after 

 clustering on a limb for a while in case the 

 queen is kept back on account of a clipped 

 wing, etc. However, in such a case as this 

 the bees in the ball, and those immediately 

 surrounding it, realize that their mother is 

 in the ball, and, therefore, do not return. If 

 the apiarist sees that the bees from the hived 

 swarm are returning, and tries to stop this 

 matter by covering their old hive, they will 

 try to go into other hives rather than go 

 back to where the balled queen is, which al- 

 most always results in a general row, to the 

 disgust and perplexity of the one who is try- 

 ing to keep them where they belong. 



In my earlier years, when swarming ^yas 

 allowed for increase, I had a large proportion 

 of swarms killed in this way by their trying 

 to go into other hives, or else I had to let 

 them go back until I learned how to keep 

 them where they were, even if they did ball 

 their queen. At first I hunted out the queen 

 by smoking the ball of bees till they released 

 her, when she was caged and placed between 

 the frames of comb, or hung down from the 

 top-bars of the frames where no combs were 

 used. In about half of these cases this seem- 

 ed to satisfy them, while at other times they 

 would ball the cage so it did no good. I next 

 got the queen as before; but instead of using 

 a common cage I made a large flat one to 

 reach clear across the frames, when the bees 

 could smell and get at her through the wire 

 cloth between every two frames in the hive. 

 This always satisfied them, so that I had no 

 further trouble, except that of hunting out 

 the queen and caging her. The next morn- 

 ing I could let her loose and remove the cage, 

 and all would be well; for by this time the 

 bees would have the same scent, and would 

 acknowledge her as their own queen. 



