THE AMERICAN BEE-KEJEPEB. 



91 



origin in the apiary or by direct con- 

 tact with the principle involved. 



New York justly claims the largest 

 interest in our list, of any one state, 

 and should, therefore, by reason of 

 their greater numbers and incidental 

 greater interest and increased contri- 

 butions, receive proportionately great- 

 er representation. But there can be no 

 effect without a cause, and in this case 

 the cause is controlled by the bee-keep- 

 ers. 



Let our bee-keeping friends of the 

 Empire state shed their veil of reti- 

 cence — let each one trim his apicultural 

 lamp and hold it aloft, and The Bee- 

 Keeper will become a dazzling beacon. 

 Its apicultural light would descend 

 from the sound to Jamestown, as the 

 electric rays fall upon Bedloe's Island. 



OLD COMBS FOR BROOD. 



R. C. Akin, in Gleanings, cites an in- 

 stance corroborative of Mr. Dugdale's 

 experience, as reported several years 

 ago in some of the journals, that he 

 had witnessed the act of bees tearing 

 down and rebuilding old brood combs. 

 Mr. Akin thinks the bees can be 

 depended on to reconstruct the 

 combs when they have become too 

 small by accumulated cocoons for 

 breeding. This would seem to be the 

 rule; yet we are convinced that full 

 development of the larval bee is some- 

 times prevented by cells thus con- 

 tracted. 



A very marked difference in the size 

 of one queen's progeny, several years 

 ago, led to an investigation of the 

 cause, with the result that all the bees 

 emerging from a certain old comb were 

 found to be very much under size, while 

 those hatching from all others were 

 normal. According to our recollection 

 of the circumstances, this comb had 

 been in use about twenty years, and we 

 were disposed to accept the instance as 

 strong evidence in favor of renewing 

 about every ten years. Yet, having 

 never observed a similar effect upon 

 other colonies, an air of uncertainty 



would occasionally pervade our con- 

 clusions. 



Some years later we were engaged to 

 transfer a number of box-hive colonies 

 for a farmer bee-keeper. Among the lot 

 was an antique relic of the builder's 

 architectural skill, reduced almost to 

 ruins by the ravages of time, which, 

 the owner informed us, was established 

 upon the homestead during the occu- 

 pancy of his grandfather, and that it 

 had served continuously as the bees' 

 abode for sixty years. 



Here, indeed, was a rare opportunity 

 to observe the effect of old combs upon 

 the development of their brood; and 

 the crumbling walls of the erstwhile 

 palatial hive were removed with curi- 

 ous interest. The lower edge of the 

 combs, of irregular formation and black 

 with age, contained a preponderance of 

 wax. In some instances the septum 

 being fully one-quarter inch in thick- 

 ness. The cappings of the honey, as 

 dark and rough as the bark of an oak 

 tree, defied chronology, though suggest- 

 ing a period antedating American rail- 

 roads and Jackson's administration. 

 Yet the bees were not in the least di- 

 minished in size; showing conclusively 

 that in this instance, at least, the 

 combs had been remodeled, or the co- 

 coons removed in some way by the 

 bees. 



The former instance (in which the 

 development of the bee was undoubt- 

 edly hampered by cocoons) was, then, 

 evidently the "exception," which, it is 

 said, there are to all rules. 



Various methods are being recom- 

 mended to assist in finding the queen 

 in very strong colonies. If someone 

 would devise a practical method of 

 readily locating the queen in weak col- 

 onies, in which the bees are always 

 more unsteady and the queen dodging 

 out of sight around the ends and bot- 

 tom of the combs, a greater service 

 would be rendered. We would much 

 prefer to undertake finding the queen 

 in a strong colony than in one less 

 populous. 



