PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY THE W. T FALCONER MANFG CO 



VOL. VI, 



SEPTEMBER, 1896. 



NO. 9. 



At What Age do Bees Gather 

 Honey ? 



BY G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



A correspondent writes thus : " 1 

 see it asserted in one of my papers the 

 other day, that bees go to the fields to 

 get honey when from two to five days 

 old. Is this a fact? I had not sup- 

 posed that bees so young entered the 

 field as honey-gatherers." 



To the ordinary observer this ques- 

 tion, asked by our correspondent, 

 seems to be of little consequence, but 

 such is not the case, as it has much to 

 do with the surplus honey we obtain. 

 Many seem to think that the bee is 

 capable of going to the fields to gather 

 honey when but two or three days old, 

 as our correspoudent says he read, but 

 some facts prove that they do not do 

 so. Bees may he forced to go into the 

 fields for pollen and honey at the age 

 of five or six days, the truth of which 

 all will admit who have taken very 

 young bees and placed them by them- 

 selves, but when the colony is in a 

 normal condition, as it always should 

 be to store honey to the best advant- 

 age, and as all colonies are when not 

 molested by man, the bee is sixteen 

 days old before it gathers honey. If 



we take combs of bees just hatched 

 and place them in a hive without any 

 hatched bees, as is frequently done to 

 introduce a valuable queen, we will 

 see young bees not over five or six 

 days old go to the fields, being com- 

 pelled to do so for water, pollen, etc., 

 because there are none older to go ; 

 but this does not prove that bees of 

 that age usually do so any more than 

 the experiment of feeding twenty 

 pounds of honey to bees confined to 

 the hive before one pound of wax is 

 produced, proves that it always takes 

 twenty pounds of honey to produce 

 one pound of comb. In our talk along 

 these lines we should always dwell on 

 the practical side of honey production, 

 by way of practically preparing the 

 colony therefor, and not about colonies 

 which are not suitable to give a sur- 

 plus of honey in any event. I have 

 conducted several experiments in the 

 27 years I have kept bees to ascertain 

 the age at which bees gather the first 

 honey, and as each proved the same 

 I believe sixteen days to be the time 

 when the bee brings her first load of 

 honey, if the colony is not seriously in- 

 terfered with. One of the experiments 

 was as follows : A black queen was 

 removed from a colony and an Italian 



