U>U'.t 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



573 



despuiriiiy others in order to force them to 

 feed on royal jelly, and that two were stunj^' 

 to death inside the cell. 



Again do we wonder what "spirit of the 

 hive " moved the bees to act unanimously in 

 this particular way. 



Quecnless bees seem sometimes not to 

 await patiently the proper hatchino- of the 

 queen. 1 have on several occasions, upon 

 opening a nucleus hive just shortly after tlie 

 queen had hatched, found the cell torn open 

 at the side near the top instead of the lid be- 

 ing lifted in the ordinary way. There was 

 no other queen-cell present in the hive, and 

 the newly hatched queen was there all right. 



The only explanation I can give is that the 

 bees, having received a grafted cell, did not 

 know when to cut down the top of it for the 

 easy lifting of the lid by the queen, and, con- 

 sequently, hurried to her assistance from the 

 flanks as soon as they heard her calling in- 

 side. 



Harmonv, Pretoria, Transvaal, South Afri- 

 ca, March,' 1909. 



[In a queen-rearing yard it is not uncom- 

 mon to find a worker-bee, either dead or 

 alive, imprisoned in a cell from which the 

 young queen has recently emerged. Very 

 often there is a sort of cap left hanging to 

 the cell, like the cover to a coffee-pot, and a 

 bee in a tour of investigation crawls under 

 this cap into the cell. The cap drops down, 

 when it is subsequently sealed down by oth- 

 er bees. We do not think there is any de- 

 sign or purpose on the part of the individual 

 bees or of the colony. It is simply an acci- 

 dent when one or more workers happen to 

 get inside of a cell and are imprisoned. 



Occasionally in a queen-rearing yard also 

 we find where a cell has been opened at the 

 side, as you describe, releasing the young 

 queen just ready to hatch. Apparently the 

 purpose of the bees is to tear down the cell; 

 but discovering a nice young lady, ready to 

 make her bow to society, change their pur- 

 pose, and allow her to live among them. — 



FREEZING DOES NOT KILL BEES. 



Will Bees, Like Ants, Stand any Amount 

 of Cold? 



BY H. D. TENNENT. 



Will some one tell us whether a frozen bee 

 is or is not a dead bee? At the present rate 

 some fellow will be throwing his bees away 

 in the fall, and expecting them to come back 

 readv for business in the spring. The books 

 speak of bees freezing off the cluster in win- 

 ter; but they also tell us that most cases of 

 winter-killing are the results of starvation 

 and not of cold. One says that a tempera- 

 ture of 40^ Fahrenheit will so benumb a bee 

 as to deprive it of the power of flight, and 

 that it will soon perish unless restored to a 

 warmer atmosphere. But the same book al- 

 so says that tiiey stand the winter in very 

 cold places, such as Russia, with very poor 



protection, ^and may even be frozen into a 

 solid lump of ice without being killed, and 

 that the degree of cold which they can stand 

 has not been ascertained. 



The poor hives in which bees will some- 

 times winter would certainly lead one to 

 think that they could stand almost any thing. 

 I have brought bees to life which had lain 

 out in cold damp weather, but not actually 

 frozen, for as much as five days; but dry 

 weather would surely shorten the time. 



For experiment I once put half a dozen 

 bees on a piece of comb under a tumbler on 

 a metal-roofed hive, on a cold evening. In 

 the morning thin ice had frozen in both top 

 and bottom of a tin cup of water left beside 

 them. The bees had fallen off the comb, but 

 the moisture on the sides of the tumbler had 

 not yet frozen, showing that they must have 

 given off a great amount of heat before giv- 

 ing up. Wnen warmed up they were as 

 lively as ever. The experiment was repeat- 

 ed the next night, which was slightly colder, 

 but not a bee revived. The tumbler was 

 propped up a little both times to give them 

 air. I also put a dozen bees in a 4-oz. wide- 

 mouth bottle, chilled them on ice until mo- 

 tionless, and then corked them up and kept 

 in ice water for one week, at the end of which 

 time they were decidedly dead, perhaps from 

 lack of air this time, as water in tissues, as 

 of insects and plants, must get some colder 

 than ice water to freeze. 



Any one who has split wood in winter has 

 probably noticed how ants will revive after 

 being frozen almost any amount; but that 

 bees can stand as much is hard to believe. 

 Perhaps they are like some plants which will 

 be killed by a slight freeze if warmed up too 

 (juickly, but will come out all right if allow- 

 ed to thaw out slowly in a damp place. 



There would seem to be room for some 

 careful experimenting here unless some one 

 knows more than he has told us so far. 



By the way, has the microbe of spring 

 dwindling been discovered yet, or do the 

 doctors still disagree about the exact cause 

 of it? 



McConnelsville, O., May 21. 



[Bees can not stand freezing like ants, fish, 

 and some reptiles; but they can remain in a 

 chilled condition for a week or ten days — 

 how much longer we do not know, but prob- 

 ably not much longer. We once tried the 

 experiment of subjecting bees to a zero tem- 

 perature, and found that two or three minutes 

 was enough to kill them stone dead. Whether 

 they would have died if they had been brought 

 to tnat condition more gradually we can not 

 say. But they may be subjected to 33 or 34° 

 for about a week provided they are not thaw- 

 ed out too quickly. 



It is interesting to note in this connection 

 that a piece of concrete work just made and 

 frozen solid may not be injured at all if it is 

 thawed out very slowly; but if it is warmed 

 up too quickly the whole work will probably 

 be spoiled. The same rule seems to apply 

 to fish, frogs, and some insects that can stand 

 freezing. 



