1901 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 



149 



seeming indiflferoncc invite -'stranger" 

 bees into the hive to despoil or carry off 

 the honey. These are not necessarily 

 queenless colonies or colonies having 

 virgin queens. A colony in the best 

 condition may, at certain times, have a 

 portion of its honey spirited away. 

 Thieving bees ply their trade best when 

 honey is plentiful, and those colonies 

 that are the best gatherers ol honey 

 suffer the most; for when flushed with 

 honey, the regular inmates of the hive 

 pay but little attention to a stranger. 

 When this state of things is extended to 

 the gorging of the honey-sac, the bee 

 becomes exceedingly lethargic, and for 

 the time being will offer no effectual re- 

 sistance. I cannot now give any solu- 

 tion of the problem for preventing this 

 pillaging among the bees of an apiary. 

 I would not have the conditions removed 

 I that favor it — a good flow of honey. 

 Contracting the entrance to the hive will 

 never do, for the bees at that time must 

 have air in abundance. Sprinkling the 

 bees with some highly scented mixture I 

 have never found to be worth the trouble; 

 and I might add, incidentally, that the 

 scent of a stranger bee has but little to 

 do with barring her from companionship 

 with any colony if she comes to them 

 full-handed, deporting herself as becomes 

 an honest bee. 



The only effectual remedy for a case 

 of robbing by bees is in the prompt re- 

 moval of all honey accessible to them. 

 This is imperative if order is to be re- 

 stored among the colonies in the apiary 

 and with every living thing near the 

 apiary. Should the colony or colonies 

 being robbed still offer resistance, con- 

 tract the entrance to the hive, but don't 

 close the hive. Go to the colonies mak- 

 ing the attack and close their respective 

 hives for a few hours. This procedure 

 will have the desired effect; thencefor- 

 ward don't be guilty of provoking your 

 bees to rob by leaving sweets where they 

 can get at them. 



A hive full of honey with a dispropor- 

 tionately large entrance to the bees that 



guard it differs only in degree with the 

 act of putting honey outside the hive; 

 and as soon as there is a scarcity of 

 honey from natural sources, strong colo- 

 nies will ferret it out, when trouble is 

 sure then to follow. 



But what I wish to speak uf advisedly 

 is that since the attention of the queen- 

 bee fancier is being directed to those colo- 

 nies that store the greatest number of 

 pounds of honey, I would say, look well 

 to this pillaging feature in the disposi- 

 tion of the bee, lest we play the part of 

 the man in the fable who killed the goose 

 thai laid the golden egg. 



THE DOOLITTLE QUEEN-CELL CUPS. 



We of the bee-keeping fraternity who 

 have not, should give Mr. Doolittle a 

 great big vote of thanks for his method 

 of queen-rearing. But my observations 

 along this line teach me that to get a 

 really good queen-bee, the first larva 

 transferred to the cell-cup should be ex- 

 changed in about twenty-four hours for 

 another ; for it does not stand to reason 

 that the early treatment of the first 

 larva used could possibly admit of a per- 

 fect development. In a state of nature 

 it is no uncommon thing for a queen-cell 

 cup containing an egg to be provisioned 

 with a visible drop of liquid food ; I say 

 I have witnessed this time and again, 

 and no doubt many others have seen the 

 same. Now, when a larva is transferred 

 to the cup it does not matter how much 

 royal food is given at the time, the bees 

 always remove this. And upon investi- 

 gating in a few hours, the cups are not 

 only empty but they appear to be per- 

 fectly dry. 



We are told that all worker-larvae 

 would develop into queen-bees, were 

 they fed bountifully till the cell was 

 capped by the bees. So, then, I think, it 

 will be safe to say that during the first 

 ten hours of the larva's existence in the 

 prepared cell-cup, it does not develop 

 toward or as a queen should, but as a 

 worker-bee. Taking for granted that no 

 larv« are used which are over thirty-six 

 hours old for queens, it becomes appa- 



