THE AMERICAN APIGULTURIST. 



95 



bee. This is natural. The queen seems 

 to know that if she enters the wrong 

 hive that her chance of escape from 

 death is very small, unless by chance 

 she enters a queenless colony, when, of 

 course, she will be well treated. If she 

 happens to enter a colony having a fer- 

 tile queen she would be pretty sure to 

 be killed, not by the queen in the hive 

 which she entered by mistake, but by 

 the bees, as they would at once seize 

 and ball her until she is dead when the 

 bees would unceremoniously eject her 

 from the hive. 



I have seen queens return from the 

 mating flight and fly about the entrance 

 of their hive nearly five minutes before 

 they dared to enter. The queen would 

 go very near the entrance, and then re- 

 cede several feet and then go near the 

 hive again. Bees or queens seldom make 

 mistake in locating the right hive. 



I sometimes have thought that when 

 watching the movement of a queen fly- 

 ing about the front of a hive she would 

 venture near the entrance for the pur- 

 pose of getting a sniff of the odor of the 

 interior of the hive, in order to make 

 sure of the right one. 



During the honey flow it makes but 

 little difference which hive in the apiary 

 the worker bees enter when loaded with 

 honey or pollen. The guard bees seem 

 too busy to notice whether it is a friend or 

 foe that is entering their home. 



"Where bees carry pollen and propolis. 



Here let me say to the novice, old 

 farmer and the box-hive beekeeper that 

 bees carry pollen and propolis on its 

 legs and not wax or honey as some sup- 

 pose. A sack holding al30ut one drop 

 of honey is located in the abdomen of 

 the bee and is used for the transportation 

 of honey and water. So far as is known 

 the nectar is not in the least changed 

 for having been through the honey sack. 

 Bees do not jiiake honey, they simply 

 gather it and place it in the cells of the 

 hive. The nectar is then changed 

 slighdy by having the water evaporated 

 from it and by the high and even tem- 

 perature of the hive. 



Nature has provided the bee with a 

 way of ejecting the nectar from the hon- 

 ey sack. I have watched the bees fill 

 a cell that was made against glass. They 

 seemed to put the honey in the cells 

 exactly as a painter puts paint upon 

 wood. The tongue is used like a brush 

 to paste the honey in the cell. 



The cell is kept fullest against the 

 walls to prevent any honey from run- 

 ning out ; that is, the honey is put in the 

 cells on the concave principle. 



[To be continued. 1 



JToreign ^otcs. 



L. Stachelhausen. 



SoMK beekeepers believe that bees 

 transfer eggs from worker-cells to 

 queen-cells. A new observation of 

 Mr. Vogel in Germany shows that this 

 is very improbable, at least. Mr. Vo- 

 gel had a queen with one hind leg want- 

 ing to the trochanter. When and 

 how this leg was lost Mr. Vogel did 

 not know. In the spring of 1889 the 

 colony was populous, but got very 

 weak in summer. He found many 

 eggs laid, but not on the bottom of 

 the cells, but about four to Ave milli- 

 meters from the edge of the cell. By 

 lepeated examinations he found no 

 larvae but eggs only. The eggs were 

 always removed by the workers. 



Now, jNIr. Vogel set one of the combs 

 containing these eggs in a queenless 

 nucleus. One day all the eggs were re- 

 moved. The nucleus was queenless 

 some eight days and if the bees ever 

 transferred any eggs, they would have 

 done it in this case, so says Mr. 

 Vogel. 



In nearly all our American bee-pa- 

 pers and in the British Bee Journal 

 we found, lately reproduced, a Ger- 

 man law on l)eekeeping. This law 

 has not passed, as yet, any legisla- 

 tion in Germany. The bill was in- 

 troduced in the Eeichstag. There it 

 was dropped ; the matter belonging 

 to the resort of the police authorities. 



