iKICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



EDITED AND PUBLISHED BY SAMUEL WAGNEK, WASHINGTON, D. C. 



AT TWO DOLLARS PER ANNUM, PAYABLE IN ADVANCE. 



Vol. VII. 



JXJIVE, IST'J 



No. 12. 



Letters of F. Huber, Oontiaued. 



Ought, November 8, 1800. 



I tliaiik you, sir, for the many kind expressions 

 contained in your letter. I feel fully tlie worth 

 of your confidence and hope to merit it, but in 

 matters of rural economy, as well as in others, 

 we must Tely upon experience, and therefore 1 

 spoke to you of Mv. Gelien, for whose character 

 and knowledgij I have a profound respect, and 

 who has not been so devoted as I have to the 

 theory. But since you are determined to have 

 my opinions I will talk to you about bees as 

 much as you wish, on condition only that you 

 attach no more value to what I say than J do. 



Most of the questions you ask me are yet to 

 be solved : AVe will give them attention in or- 

 der, and I will give you my ideas (if any occur 

 to me), on the means to be employed to solve 

 them. 



I am highly pleased, sir, to learn that you do 

 not entrust the care of your bees to others. The 

 experiments you have made prove tliat you are 

 fully qualified to handle them with impunity. 

 You are the first to confirm what I have stated. 

 That the only requisite is gentleness, and the 

 firm conviction that the sting is only a formida- 

 ble weapon to those who treat them roughly, and 

 who make awkward blunders through fear. It 

 also gives me great pleasure to learn that you 

 are prosecuting investigations that I have not 

 been able to pur.sue. I will assuredly contribute 

 to your success by evei"y means in my power. 



The fact that you have noticed is very extra- 

 ordinary ; that queen found dying near your 

 hives and not recognized by any of your bees, 

 might she not have been a stranger queen aban- 

 doned, and who came to seek the shelter and the 

 subjects she had lo.st? 



Queens cease laying when they approach the 

 end of tlieir lives ; tlieir hive decreases in popu- 

 lation dail}', and the colony reduced at last to a 

 very small luunber,* leaves the queen, and never 

 returns to the natal hive ; the wokers attracted 



* Huber is speakinir of black bees. In my experi- 

 ence the Italiaus almost ahvaj's Fiipersede their queen, 

 when her fertility becomes seriously impaired, by 

 rearing another from her worker brood. 



L. L. L, 



to happier homes, enter, and are sometimes well 

 received ; but the fate of the queen is very dif- 

 ferent. The bees of the hive she attempts to 

 enter envelope her as you have seen, liug her in 

 their midst, and exhaust her and cast her on tlie 

 ground, when hunger or the hugging she has re- 

 ceived renders her incaijable of renewing the 

 attempt. 



The beginning of this account is only conjec- 

 tural. I have never been so fortunate as to be 

 able to follow a queen from her birth to her 

 natural death ; neither do I yet know what is the 

 length of the life of a queen.* Probably, you, 

 sir, will be able to tell us that. 



This inquiry is useful as well as curious, and I 

 commend it to you. If I have not seen queens 

 die of old age in my own hives, I have often been 

 visited by strange ones that came from I know 

 not where, either alone or poorly accomijanied, 

 at the beginning or end of autumn ; most fre- 

 quently these old queens have been found dead 

 at the foot of my hives ; at other times I have 

 found them alive on some neighboring stake, 

 having about them fifty or more of their workers. 

 I iiave seen them pass several days in the open 

 air, and as they also remained there during the 

 night, I may conclude they had no home, and 

 that this small number of workers were all that 

 remained of the family they had presided over. 



Only once have we seen the attempt of an 

 aged queen to enter one of my hives succeed. 

 She at first offered herself to others who gave 

 her a poor reception, because they had a queen ; 

 but she entered without any difficulty a hive that 

 had lost their queen. Her dark color and the 

 slenderness of her body indicated old age, of 

 which her sterility was a still surer indication. 

 She did not lay an ego; in the hive that adopted 

 her at the latter part of autumn, and she died at 

 the end of winter without having laid a single 

 e^g, and as queens begin laying the latter part 

 of January, the old age of this one was proven 

 by her sterility. I am more disposed to believe 

 that the queen found at the foot of your hives 

 was a stranger to tliem, than that she went away 

 from one of those you oijei-ated upon October 

 14th ; which even if wounded or dying would 

 not have been unrecognized. 



* Hulier's fidelity to truth is everywhere apparent. 

 He is uever ashamed to confess his iiinorance. 



L. L. L. 



