July 19, 1900. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



451 



energy, and determination to get honey under adverse con- 

 ditions. 



Another point in favor of these bees, altho only a cross 

 between superior stock and my own, was that they run very 

 evenly ; /. e., what seemed to be true of one seemed to be 

 true of all ; showing that the queen I had purchast had 

 come from stock bred for productiveness for many genera- 

 tions ; and was capable of transmitting her good qualities 

 in a very markt degree. 



To accomplish such improvements in bees as I have 

 outlined, the honey-producer should be able to rear all of 

 his queens from the most productive colonies in his own 

 yard, or from the best queens to be purchast ; and this in- 

 volves the necessary intelligence and skill for rearing arti- 

 ficially, with ease and rapidity, all his young queens from 

 year to year. 



In closing, let me say that however it may be with 

 others, I am satisfied that, for myself, there is no direction 

 in which I can make such decided and paying improvements 

 in the production of honey as in the rearing of all my 

 queens from the best and most productive stock to be found 

 in my own apiaries, or that can be purchast for a reasonable 

 sum of money. 



To this end I shall devote ray energies as never before, 

 that the present season may show a large advance over the 

 past in improving ray bees. — Bee-Keepers' Review. 



From the Freshly Laid Egg to the Fully Developt 

 Queen. 



BY DR. C. C. MILLER. 



ON page 199, Vol. I., of the American Bee Journal, the 

 Baron of Berlepsch gives details of an experiment he 

 made, in which queen-cells were sealed nearly ten days 

 after the eggs were laid, and the queen emerged from the 

 cell fully 18 days after the laying of the egg. In another 

 experiment the time was 17 daj's. "These experiments," 

 he saj's, " show that the opinion generally entertained, that 

 the queens emerge between the 17th and 18th day after the 

 eggs are laid, is correct." This was 40 years ago. Later, 

 16 daj's came to be accepted as the orthodox length of time 

 for a queen, and still later some have called the time 15 

 days. T. W. Cowan says that queens mature "in from 14 

 to 17 days from the day the egg is laid." In a table of 

 "Metamorphoses of Bees," British Bee-Keepers' Guide- 

 Book, page 10, he gives what is probably meant to be the 

 average, as follows : 



1. Time of incubation of egg 3 days. 



2. Time of feeding the larvse 5 " 



3. Spinning cocoon by larvae 1 " 



4. Period of rest 2 " 



5. Transformation of larva; into nymphs. .. .1 " 



6. Tirae in nymph state 3 " 



Total 15 " 



It is probable that a principal reason for the formerly 

 accepted longer time, and for the considerable variation 

 allowed by so good an authority as Mr. Cowan, comes from 

 the fact that nuclei instead of full colonies were used in 

 some of the cases for observation. Berlepsch used " a small 

 forced swarm '' in the experiment which gave him 18 daj-s. 

 Possibly if observations were alwaj'S made with full colo- 

 nies under favora.ble conditions, Mr. Cowan's IS days might 

 never be exceeded. It will be noted that Mr. Cowan has 

 the larva fed 5 days, and Berlepsch nearly 7, Cowan's queen 

 being sealed when 8 days old, and Berlepsch's when nearly 

 10, counting from the laying of the egg. 



Incidentally, I made some observations last summer as 

 to dates of sealing and hatching, while experimenting as 

 related on page 834 of Gleanings in Bee-Culture for' last 

 year. It may be remembered that the five combs, a, b, c, d, 

 e, were given in succession to the same queen to be laid in, 

 so that every egg in any comb was older than all the eggs of 

 any comb coming later in the list. I rather expected to 

 find that the cells, both worker and queen, would be sealed 

 in the order of their ages, all the cells of a being sealed be- 

 fore any cells in b, and so on. Such was not the case, for 

 July 7 I found six worker-cells sealed in b while some cells 

 were still unsealed in a. It might be supposed that the 

 position might have something to do with it, the bees being 

 more slow to seal cells in the outside comb, a. But this 

 argument could not apply at the other side of the brood- 

 nest, for July 12 I found 4 worker-cells sealed in e, while 



there were cells still unsealed in </. It seems clear that in 

 this case cells were not sealed strictly in the order of ages. 



July 6 I found about 10 square inches of sealed worker- 

 brood in a when the oldest larva was less than 8 days and 

 30 minutes old (I count always from the laying of the egg). 

 This agrees with Cowan's table, "time of feeding the 

 larva-, 5 days." As some little time should probably be al- 

 lowed for the sealing of 10 square inches, it is likely that 

 some of the cells were sealed when the inmates were less 

 than 8 days old. Next day at 4 p.m. some cells were still 

 unsealed when all had past the age of S days 4 hours. 



Comb b gave much the same testimony : Six worker- 

 cells were sealed when none had past the age of 8 days 4 

 hours (they might have been considerably short of that), 

 and a few cells were left unsealed when all had past the 

 age of 8 days 2 hours. 



On comb e four worker-cells were sealed when the oldest 

 lackt 45 minutes or more of being 8 days old. On this same 

 comb the la.st queen-cell started (with too old larva) was 

 not sealed till it was 9 days 3 hours old or older. 



July 5 I started an experiment for the sole purpose of 

 deciding something about the times and seasons of develop- 

 ment. At noon I gave to No. 84 an empty comb for the 

 queen to lay in, and took it away 4 hours later, with about 

 80 eggs in it, putting it over an excluder on 51. This upper 

 story was strong in bees, and it was no doubt well cared 

 for. July 8, 4 p.m., only 5 eggs were hatcht. At this tirae 

 all the eggs were at least three days old, showing- that most 

 of them did not hatch till after 3 days old. I tliink others 

 have reported considerably less than this, showing that the 

 bees are not uniform in their proceedings, but verj' likely 

 Mr. Cowan is right in giving 3 days as the time for eggs to 

 hatch. 



At this time, July 8, 4 p.m., the comb was given to No. 

 18, its queen, all its brood, and some of its bees being taken 

 away at this time, leaving it a fair colonj', but not strong. 

 July 10, 6 a.m., larva? were lavishly fed, several slightly en- 

 larged as for queen-cells, and one hooded. One or several 

 observations were made daily, but it is not necessary to re- 

 cite all. 



July 13, 6 a.m.. one queen-cell sealed and one worker- 

 cell. These were somewhere from 7 days 14 hours to 7 days 

 18 hours old. At 9 a.m. no change. At noon a few more 

 worker-cells sealed. At 6:15 p.m. another queen-cell sealed. 

 This cell must have been sealed when not more than 4 hours 

 under 8 days old, and not more than 6 hours IS minutes over 

 8 days old. These were perhaps the only queen-cells started 

 with larvffi of proper age, for the age limit was reacht July 

 11, 4 p.m. But the bees continued to start queen-cells, and 

 seemed especially desperate in the matter when the age 

 limit had been past some two days, for 16 fresh queen-cells 

 were started between July 13, 6:1S p.m., and 4:30 the next 

 morning. It should be remarkt, however, that 4 other cells 

 had been started soon after the age limit was past. 



It would seem as if the attempt to make queens of too 

 old larvai had the effect to prolong the time of sealing be- 

 yond what it would have been if the larva? had been treated 

 thruout as workers. Notice what follows, and j'ou will see 

 that this is so. When the 8 days from the laying of the last 

 egg had been past 12 hours 30 minutes, there were 16 queen- 

 cells unsealed. At 17 hours past the 8 days, 9 were still un- 

 sealed. At 21 hours past the 8 days, 3 were still unsealed. 

 At 25 hours past the 8 days, 2 were still unsealed. I am 

 sorry to say there is no note when these last were sealed. 



July 20, 6 a.m., no queen had yet emerged. At 10:25 

 a.m. one was out of the cell and was removed. This queen 

 emerged from the cell in not less than 14 days and 14 hours, 

 and not more than 14 days 22 hours 25 minutes after the 

 laying of the egg. 



There seems nothing in these observations to throw 

 discredit on the table of Mr. Cowan, and it may not be an 

 unfair inference that he drew his conclusions from colonies 

 of fair strength while others used nuclei. 



A practical consideration is that those who count upon 

 16 days from the laying of the egg to the emerging of the 

 queen may have a fine batch of queen-cells destroj'ed bj' a 

 • queen emerging inside of 15 days. 



It appears quite plain that bees are not uniform in their 

 performances, and it would be nothing strange that the 

 next experiment should give different results. 



I am quite strongly of the opinion that there is much 

 more variation as to the time of sealing queen-cells than 

 there is in the time of sealing worker-cells. I have been 

 surprised, sometimes, upon opening a sealed queen-cell, to 

 find it occupied by so small a larva, and this -with every- 

 thing in prosperous condition. The bees can afl^ord to vary 

 no little with queen-cells, while such variation with worker 



