818 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



read Mr. A. C Miller's article, page 80, was 

 interested, and soon had twelve colonies 

 feeding from the Miller-Fnller candy. Yes- 

 terday was warm, and I investigated far 

 enough to learn that the bees fonnd it 0. K. 

 Now if I lie awake nights it will not be 

 because I am afraid my bees will starve. 

 Some may think that a candy which is 14 

 per cent glucose is not safe for a winter 

 feed; but bees do not often need extra feed 

 •till late in winter, and I think all will admit 

 that it is all right in February when they 

 are sure of a flight soon. On the evidence 

 Mr. Miller gives I believe it is all right for 

 any time in the winter. 1 think that I shall 

 try one or two colonies, taking away the 

 honey next fall. 



It was a new idea to me that a thermom- 

 eter would tell when evaporation had gone 

 just far enough. Two hundred and thirty- 

 two degrees seems to be just right for cold 

 weather. If for use in warmer weather 

 after brood-rearing is started, probably it 

 should boil until the thermometer indicates 

 three or four degrees higher. 



Any small shallow box is all right for a 

 feeder, turned over on the brood-frames. 

 After putting on the ijacking the bees are 

 all right till the candy is consumed. 



Two or three years ago I tried to feed 

 coffee A sugar and also loaf sugar. It was 

 not satisfactory. The sugar remained so 

 dry that very little was consumed of either 

 kind. 



Winsted, Conn., Feb. 22, 1913. 



LAYING WORKERS CAUGHT IN THE ACT 



BY JUAN CHRISTENSEN 



I am having some experience with laying- 

 workers w^hich may be of interest to bee- 

 men. I may mention that I have 16 colo- 

 nies of bees about 20 miles away, and sel- 

 dom see them. I have already secured 700 

 kilos (1540 lbs.) of surplus since October, 

 and expect to get 300 more by the end of 

 March. I have a lad to look after them. 



About tw^o months ago I brought some 

 bees with a Cjueen, and put them in a ten- 

 frame hive across the way in this city. The 

 bees are supposed to be Italians, but are 

 more likely hybrids. They are two and three 

 banded. The queen was laying, and there 

 Avas a good deal of brood. 



I had not been able to look into the hive 

 for over three weeks; and when I opened it 

 there was no brood of any sort, capped or 

 uncapped, and no queen to be found. I got 

 two capped queen-cells and pinned each to 

 a different frame. A few days after, both 

 queens had left their cells; but I could find 

 only one, a fine-looking queen. By this time 



laying workers had got started and were 

 laying with great enthusiasm, as every emp- 

 ty cell had eggs, from three to eight. On 

 the second, third, and fourth day the queen 

 was t];ere all right. 



By this time some of the laying-worker 

 eggs had hatched. Now, I thought that, 

 wh.en the queen becomes fertilized (there 

 were a few drones in the hive), she would 

 rot I'.ave a cell to lay in. I might have 

 stancd tlie brood. Chilling was out of the 

 question, as the temperature at this season 

 is seldom under 35 degrees centigrade (95 

 Fahr.) day or night, but most of the cells 

 were full of eggs. In order to experiment I 

 took a fiame, shook and brushed the bees 

 off, and set the frame near some red ants. 

 In three or four hours they had carried off 

 all the eggs and a lot of the brood, and what 

 liad not been carried off yet were dead — kill- 

 ed by the ants. As this seemed to work 

 fairly well, I had all the frames out, two 

 or three at a time, until I had eight frames 

 clear of egg's and brood. 



Two or three daj-s after, I found that 

 every cell again contained several eggs. 

 While looking for the queen I found a 

 worker with her abdomen well down in a 

 cell, and her wing-s flat against the combs. 

 After sitting quite philosophically for a 

 good while, over twenty seconds, she got 

 out and went down head first into another 

 cell, and then quite deliberately put her 

 posterior part down into the cell and re- 

 mained sitting with her wings spread over 

 the cells as before. I kept my eye on her; 

 and when she next put her head into a cell 

 I laid a pocket-knife over her and went over 

 the way to get a pair of pincers. With this 

 I caught the bee by the wing and was about 

 to put her into a pen-box ; but before I got 

 this done the wing broke and she escaped. 



I continued searching for the queen, and 

 found another bee under suspicious circum- 

 stances — that is, in the position of the pre- 

 vious one. I caught this one and put her 

 into a pen-box. I continued looking for the 

 queen, and stumbled on another worker lay- 

 ing. This one I lost, as she went to the 

 other side of the frame and I could not 

 recognize her with certainty again. Shortly 

 after, I found the fourth worker laying, and 

 put this one into a match-box. All four 

 were on the same frame. It seemed to me 

 that a large propoiiion of the bees looked 

 longer than usual; but the ones I caught 

 did not seem as long as the others, but they 

 did seem younger. The queen was nowhere 

 to be found, and I am certain that she must 

 have been killed. I have gone carefully 

 over every frame several times, and there 

 is no queen to be seen ; but I found another 

 worker laying yesterday. 



