1895. 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



211 



(From the American Bee Journal.) 



BEES BUILDING ILL-SHAPEfir 

 OOMBS, ETC. 



BY (4. M. DOOLITTLE, 



A correspondent writes me this : 

 " I have a colony of bees which built 

 nice, thinly-drawn, beautiful combs in 

 the middle sections of the supers, while 

 the outside sections contained some 

 of the heaviest and most ill-shapen 

 combs I ever saw. Can you tell me 

 why this is so ? Please answer through 

 the American Bee Journal, as I take 

 that paper." 



Something of this kind has been 

 spoken of before in our bee-papers, 

 and some seem to think that such a 

 state of affairs comes about by the 

 changes in the weather, the thicker 

 combs being built while the weather 

 was cool, and the thinner when the 

 weather was warm. Others account 

 for it in a similar but somcAvhat differ- 

 ent way, which is that as the thin 

 combs were built in the center, there- 

 fore this shows that there is greater 

 heat over the center of the cluster of 

 bees than elsewhere, as would be nat- 

 ural, while the heat not being so great 

 on the outside, made the wax less pli- 

 able, hence the thicker and irregular 

 combs. But I do not agree with 

 either of these, for, as far as my know- 

 ledge goes, bees do not attempt to 

 work wax unless the temperature is 

 right for the successful working of the 

 same, and bees are capable of making 

 a right temperature just when and 

 where they please, as I have often 



proven with my self-registering ther- 

 mometer. A small cluster of bees can 

 easily keep a temperature of from 93° 

 to 95° during a cold, frosty night, as 

 many night experiments testify, and 

 that is plenty warm enough for wax- 

 making. 



From past experience I should ac- 

 count for the state of affairs spoken 

 of by the correspondent, as being the 

 loss of the queen in that particular 

 hive, and especially as he does not 

 speak of noticing any other colonies 

 building such peculiar comb. If cold 

 had been the cause of the trouble, all 

 of the colonies would have built thick, 

 irregular combs as well ; but as it was 

 one particular colony that did so, we 

 must look for further trouble at this 

 point. 



Several years ago I had a colony of 

 bees that were nicely at work in the 

 sections, having a part of them filled 

 with comb, when one day, in handling 

 the frames below, I lost the queen by 

 her falling off the comb, as I supposed, 

 and from that date until they got a 

 laying queen they built the poorest 

 and thickest combs that I had ever 

 seen at that time. Many of the sec- 

 tions had the comb in them "stubbed" 

 off at the sides and bottoms ; some 

 were not built more than half down 

 when the cells were lengthened out, 

 tilled with honey and sealed over, so 

 that very much of the honey was un- 

 salable. Since then, in trying to con- 

 trol swarming by caging the queen, I 

 have had the same state of affairs, so 

 that I am very positive that loss of 

 queen was the cause of the whole 

 trouble. In fact, I am often made to 

 understand when a colony has lost its 

 queen by the looks of the comb which 

 they are building in the sections, thus 



