ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 313 



but should try all the experiments within 

 their power to perfect the method for the 

 benefit of apiarians generally. 



BEE MILLER, to Destroy.— To a quart 

 cf water, sweetened with honey or sugar, 

 add a gill of vinegar, and set in an open 

 vessel on the top or by the side of the 

 hive. When the miller comes in the 

 night he will fly into the mixture and be 

 drowned. 



BEES, Different Kinds of.— There are 

 three kinds of bees in every hive — viz., 

 the queen, the drones, and the workers. 



The queen bee is the mother of all the 

 bees in the hive, and is the only perfect 

 female, and is readily distinguished from 

 all the others by her long body, short 

 wings, and yellow abdomen. There is 

 but one queen bee in a hive, and in case 

 she is lost, the industry of the hive is 

 stopped until preparations are completed 

 for hatching another. The queen leaves 

 .the hive when she is seven or eight days 

 old, for the purpose of meeting the male 

 bee, is impregnated, and then never leaves 

 the hive again, except with a swarm. 

 Queens are the only bees that live more 

 than one season, and they sometimes live 

 three years, and they have been known to 

 exist for five years. They are, if supplied 

 with good cells, capable of laying over one 

 hundred thousand eggs in a season. The 

 •queen always goes out with a swarm, and 

 if by accident she becomes lost, the bees 

 immediately return to the hive which 

 they left. 



Drones are male bees. Large numbers 

 are reared in each hive, but are destroyed 

 after the honey season is over, and the 

 young queens have been impregnated. 

 They are the consumers, not the pro- 

 ducers — they do not labor, but are 

 4rones. They are somewhat larger and 

 more clumsy than the workers, and some- 

 times number as high as several thousand 

 to a hive. 



The workers are the bees who do the 

 work of the colony. For two weeks after 

 they are hatched they work inside the hive; 

 •after that they go out to gather honey. 

 During the working season, a bee of this 

 class seldom lives over two months, so 

 that during a season a colony is several 

 times, with the exception of the queen, 

 changed. A good swarm should number 

 from twenty-five to thirty thousand bees, 

 and previous to swarming they often num- 



ber from forty to fifty thousand. This 

 bee has a poisonous sting, which in self- 

 defence they will use, but if carefully 

 handled they will not sting. The work- 

 ers, when absent from their hives, will 

 not use their sting unless they cannot 

 escape without it, and especially when 

 swarming, they can be even brushed, 

 handled, shaken, and, unless likely to be 

 crushed, is this the case. When filled 

 with honey at any time they will not 

 sting, even in defence of their hives and 

 treasures. They are smaller than the 

 drone, and have a little sac for storing 

 honey, and little baskets on their legs for 

 pollen. 



BEES, Wintering. — Bees require so little 

 care and attention at the very time other 

 stock require the most, that they are very 

 apt to be entirely neglected ; but we know 

 of no stock so much benefited by a little 

 labor rightly directed as bees. It is gen- 

 erally supposed that twenty-five pounds 

 of honey, after the first of November, is 

 sufficient to winter a hive of bees in this 

 latitude in the open air ; if the spring is 

 late and wet, thirty pounds is barely 

 enough. But our most successful apiari- 

 ans find that it pays to build a house for 

 wintering bees, or to partition off a room 

 in the cellar. We have a room eight by 

 ten feet, ceiled perfectly tight, with floor 

 cemented. Two ventilating tubes, one 

 from the bottom at one corner, the other 

 from the opposite corner at the top ; both 

 opening out doors with slides to regulate 

 ventilation. A thermometer hung to a 

 slide running through the door so as to 

 to be drawn out and examined without 

 opening the door, gives us the tempera- 

 ture without disturbing the bees ; we have 

 four tiers of shelves. The hives are taken 

 from their bottom boards, caps or boxes 

 taken off, and placed upon strips of laths 

 to raise them from the shelves so as to 

 give ventilation ; the holes in the top for 

 honey boxes are left open. The shelves 

 are movable so as to be taken down or 

 put up to facilitate operations. We win- 

 tered ninety-two hives in this room last 

 winter without the loss of one. 



BEE, Hat. — This hat, which is very 

 useful to keepers of bees, is made by sew- 

 ing a strip of cloth to the edge of a com- 

 mon stiff brim hat, sufficiently long to 

 button under the coat. Over the face 

 sew in the cloth a piece of wire gauze. 



