136 



THE AMERICAi^ BEE JOURNAL. 



one of the most severe winters for 

 bees that I have ever known. 



I never saw any dampness among 

 the bees in tliese wintering boxes, but 

 sometimes the chaff cusliions which 

 are used on top of the frames would 

 be very wet on the upper sides. If 

 all that dampness had been confined 

 among the combs, I am sure that 

 there would have been only empty 

 combs left in the spring, where, as it 

 was, there w-ere live bees. 



Chaff hives are too large and cum- 

 bersome to handle bees in in the sum- 

 mer ; it is too expensive to keep both 

 winter and suuimer hives, and the 

 shifting from one to the other in the 

 spring and in the fall is vexatious 

 work. Kext spring 1 intend to start 

 anew in the bee-business, and I shall 

 use a common-sense bee-hive of my 

 own construction — one which admits 

 of chaff cushions being placed all 

 around the bees easily and quickly, 

 and it also admits of the use of any 

 number of frames, from 1 to 10, with- 

 out division-boards or "dummies, "and 

 the frames are reversible without any 

 complicated devices, being reversed 

 by simply turning them over and put- 

 ting them back. No honey-board is 

 needed when using the surplus ar- 

 rangements, for what I deem correct 

 bee-spaces are kept by the construc- 

 tion of the surplus arrangements and 

 the hive, viz : 3-16 of an inch, when- 

 ever bee-spaces are needed. 



Glenwood,pMich. 



For the American Bee JoumaL 



Pollen and Newly Hatched Bees. 



M. MAHIN, D. D. 



With the discussion of the pollen 

 theory, so far as it is a controversy be- 

 tween Mr. Doolittle and Mr. Ileddon, 

 I do not wish to take any part ; and 

 perhaps if I were to express my views 

 fully, I might not agree with either of 

 them in all things. But there are 

 statements in Mr. Doolittle's article 

 on page 5, to which I wish to take ex- 

 ception. He says : " The first fact to 

 which I wish to call the reader's at- 

 tention is, that the intestines of the 

 newly-hatched bee are filled with pol- 

 len when it emerges from the cell ; in 

 fact, this pollen is easily seen with the 

 naked eye, in the larva, before it is 

 sealed over in the cell." Mr. Doolittle 

 is certainly mistaken in his supposed 

 facts. The evidence is very clear to 

 me, and I think that it will be to any 

 one who will investigate the matter, 

 that the nurse bees do not feed undi- 

 gested pollen to the larvic in even the 

 smallest quantities. The food w^iich 

 they furnish is easily examined in the 

 creamy-looking substance that is sup- 

 plied to worker-larva>, and in what is 

 called queen-jelly, which I hold to be 

 identical with the food of worker- 

 Ijrood. except in quantity, and in con- 

 sistency, which latter is due entirely 

 to evaporation, No pollen gi'ains are 

 ever found in this food. 



liut what of the statement that pol- 

 len may be seen in the unsealed larva? 

 That is a case of mistaken identity. 

 Mr. Doolittle has mistaken the browii- 

 ish-colored, gummy substance which 



is converted into the cocoon that the 

 larva always spins, for pollen. This 

 substance is much more abundant in 

 young queens than in young workers, 

 and I have often had occasion to no- 

 tice it when destroying immature 

 queen-cells. 



It is also a mistake to say that the 

 intestines of the young bee are filled 

 with pollen when it emerges from the 

 cell. They are not filled with any- 

 thing. The abdomen is quite small. 

 I have never seen an exception, and I 

 presume Mr. Doolittle has not. I have 

 never dissected a bee just out of the 

 cell, to see whether there was any pol- 

 len in its intestines, but I feel very 

 sure that a microscope could not re- 

 veal a particle of it. When young 

 bees emerge from the cells, they are 

 quite small. They look as if they were 

 almost starved, and doubtless they 

 are ; for the first thing they do is to 

 hunt for something to eat. And now 

 is the time when they get full of pol- 

 len. The newly hatched bee has an 

 appetite for that substance, and will 

 eat it if it can be found. I suppose 

 that it is necessary to build up its im- 

 mature system ; for there is always an 

 increase in size after it comes out of 

 the cell. 



With the general conclusions of Mr. 

 D.'s article, I have no controversy, 

 and yet there is one other point on 

 which I wish to express dissent. He 

 says': " I can see no other 'prime 

 cause' for this state of affairs, but con- 

 finement; for where bees can fly every 

 two or three days, no such thing can 

 exist." Now, I have all the evidence 

 that such a case admits of, that bees 

 may have diarrhea and die when they 

 can fly every day. Last spring, during 

 the last week in April and the first in 

 May, when the weather w^as warm, 

 and my bees were gathering honey 

 and pollen freely, most of the colonies 

 were affected with this troublesome 

 disease. They had all come through 

 the winter in prime condition, and 

 were healthy in the early spring ; and 

 it seemed strange that they should be 

 diseased at that time. The grass in 

 and about the apiary was full of dead 

 and dying bees. Hundreds, not to say 

 thousands, of young bees that had 

 never been on the wing, would come 

 out so distended with fecal matter, 

 that they could not fly, and they 

 would crawl away in the grass and 

 die. Others would foul the alighting- 

 board, or the front of the hive, and, 

 probably, recover. I had seen a few 

 bees affected in that way in former 

 years, but never to the same extent. 

 When the apple trees came into bloom, 

 the disease disappeared. I did not 

 lose any whole colonies, but several 

 were sensibly weakened by the dis- 

 ease. In this case confinement had 

 nothing to do with producing it; but, 

 of course, a few days of confinement; 

 would have produced wholesale de- 

 struction. The cause of tlie disease 

 must have been in the honey, or in the 

 pollen, or both. The bees were work- 

 ing at the time on the flowers of wil- 

 lows, hard maples and plum-trees, the 

 larger part of the forage coming from 

 willows. 



As a rule, bees will not have the 

 diarrhea when they can fly every few 



days, but the rule is not without ex- 

 ceptions. And I know from extensive 

 observation that if bees have much 

 brood when cold weather sets in, and 

 the cold is of long continuance, they 

 are sure to perish with disease. I 

 have proved that to my cost. 

 New Castle,i>Ind. 



For tbe American Bee Journal. 



Experience in Keeping Bees. 



A. C. FASSETT. 



I obtained my first 2 colonies of bees 

 in the spring of 18S0, in the Clarke, 

 straw-lined hive. During that season 

 I divided them into 5 colonies and 

 secured a little honey. During the 

 next winter I left them on the sum- 

 mer stands, and the next spring there 

 was not a live bee left. I think that 

 they froze to death, I had already 

 made up my mind to keep some bees 

 anyway, sol bought '2 new colonies ; 

 I had lio loss during the next winter, 

 and in the spring of 1882 I again made 

 •5 colonies from the 2, obtained about 

 150 lbs. of honey, and wintered them 

 with no loss during the next winter. 

 In the spring of 1SS3, Mr. T. F. Bing- 

 ham gave me a copy of the Bee 

 Journal, and I read something 

 about comb foundation and the bene- 

 fits to be derived from its use. So I 

 procured a smoker and some founda- 

 tion, and sent for the Bee Journal 

 and Cook's Manual. During the sea- 

 son of 1883 I increased my 5 colonies 

 to 19 and got about 250 lbs. of comb 

 honey. In the fall I put 9 colonies in 

 the cellar and packed 10 outside. I 

 lost 2 in wintering — one starved out- 

 doors and the mice destroyed one in 

 the cellar ; 14 came through in good 

 condition, and 3 were weak, so that it 

 took all summer to build them up. 



Last season I discarded m^ old hive 

 for a new kind, used foundation start- 

 ers in the brood-frames and sections, 

 and took over 1 ,000 pounds of comb 

 honey, nearly all of it being in one- 

 pound sections. At present, I have 

 55 colonies in winter quarters, and 

 sold 3. The increase was made by 

 natural swarming. All seem to be in 

 good condition at present. I fed about 

 l75 lbs. of granulated sugar. I would 

 feed all that was required, at one time 

 in the fall, in a dripping pan put 

 under the frames, with a perforated 

 wooden float over the syrup. I have 

 15 colonies packed outside, and 40 in 

 the cellar. My cellar has a pipe con- 

 nected with the pipe of the stove in 

 the room above. It seems to be a 

 good ventilator. I keep my bees in a 

 yard about 60 feet square with a tight 

 board fence around it 7 feet high. My 

 bees are nearly all Italians. I expect 

 to have them all Italianized next sea- 

 son. . 



My hive is something like Mr. 

 Doolittle's— simply a box 10>4 inches 

 high and 14J4xl8 inches, inside meas- 

 ure, and holding 10 frames with %- 

 inch space at the bottom and top of 

 the frames, under the section-rack. 

 It has' a ?s-inch rabbet cut at the top 

 and bottom, so that I can tier them 

 up if I wish to do so. The hive has 

 a %-inch groove cut out on the inside 



