846 



Oct. 4, 1906 



American Dee Journal 



commenced to lay the same day. That was 

 Tuesday, aDd when I opened the hive the 

 following Saturday I was surprised to find so 

 many eggs. There were about 5 combs filled 

 with eggs— as full as we usually find them— 

 and in the central combs the eggs had already 

 hatched, showing patches larger than a silver 

 dollar with this milky-looking food in the 

 bottom of the cells. In due time the bees be- 

 gan to hatch. About two-thirds show the 

 markings of Italian bees, and the remainder 

 are black. Later, when I opened the hive 

 again, I found a large number of undersized 

 drones reared in worker-cells, marked like 

 the workers, but the blacks are in the ma- 

 iority But the strangest part about it is, I 

 find the cappings of the sealed brood all flat, 

 not raised or rounded like drone-brood, and I 

 can't tell anv difference between drone and 

 worker brood until they hatch. 



1 Can such drones fertilize queens? 



•2 How can such drones be kept from fly- 

 ing' because they can go through the queen- 

 excluding zinc the same as workers? 



3 Is this common with Caucasian bees? 



4' What would you do with such bees? 



Iowa. 



Answers. -1. It is claimed that such 

 drones are virile, but I'd rather have drones 

 from eggs laid in drone-cells. 



2. I don't know of any way. 



3. I think not. . 



4. I think I'd be likely to pinch her head 



° In spite of your saying the queen was well 

 received, it looks at least a little as if laying 

 workers were present. In order to be sure of 

 no mistake about drones emerging from cells 

 sealed flat, you should be able to see the 

 drones emerge from them. If the queen laid 

 the eggs from these drones, even if she began 

 laying the day you introduced her, Aug. 1, 

 which is not so very likely, especially eggs in 

 such large quantity, the first of the drones 

 could not have emerged before Aug. 31, and 

 some things in your letter, dated Sept i, 

 sound a little as if there were drones before 

 that time. If laying workers were present, 

 and if the queen is still there, it is just pos- 

 sible that she is laying all right now. If she 

 is rearing mostly drones, she is no good. 



Do Bees Carry Water at Night ? 



Please tell us what you think about that 

 night shift of bees carrying water, as given 

 by D. J. Pawletta, on page 723. Ohio. 



Answer —There have been reports of bees 

 staying out over night, and possibly of their 

 working on bright moonlight nights on bass- 

 wood, and I don't know just how correct they 

 were but I don't remember hearing before of 

 their' carrying water at night. Of course it is 

 not entirely safe to say a thing is impossible 

 iust because it has never come within ones 

 knowledge, but one may at least be excused 

 for being a little inquisitive as to each bee 

 starting the very second her predecessor sets 

 foot on the alighting-board, and never more 

 than one going at a time. Might not more 

 than one bee happen to be on the lookout for 

 the returning bee, and then might not more 

 than one start at a time? and how can one be 

 sure that there is never more than one? 



Absconding Swarm 



I have kept bees for about 30 years, have 

 read some bee-literature, such as books and 

 the American Bee Journal, for nearly a year, 

 and so have had a little experience with bees, 

 but I have never before met with an incident 

 like I had this summer. 



My neighbor caught a runaway swarm of 

 bees which bad clustered on the limb of an 

 aoDle-tree. He hived it in a Langstroth hive, 

 and it seemed to do all right for about 5 or 6 

 days The 7th day he thought that one of 

 his other colonies was swarming, but finally 

 discovered that it was the runaway swarm 

 which took its flight to the woods. The next 

 day he saw that the runaway swarm was still 



at work, but very slowly. He did not pay 

 much attention to this curious actioo, and 

 never opened the hive until 1 happened to be 

 there about 3 weeks after the occurrence. He 

 asked me to open the hive and examine the 

 bees. On so doing, I found about a pint of 

 bees, no queeii, no brood nor eggs, but found 

 a capped queen cell. 



Where did the bees get the egg in the 

 queen-cell, or do bees ever cap empty queen- 

 cells without eggs in them? or did the queen 

 lay the egg and then fly away to the woods 

 with part of the colony ! Illinois. 



Answer.— The unusual part in the case 

 comes only at the last. The swarm ab- 

 sconded, leaving some bees, and these few 

 bees remained and did the best they could. 

 You say you made an examination " 3 weeks 

 after the occurrence " If that means 3 weeks 

 after he hived the swarm, then there is noth- 

 ing particularly unusual in the whole case. I 

 suppose, however, that you mean 3 weeks 

 after the swarm absconded, during which 3 

 weeks there was, presumably, no queen in the 

 hive. Here, then, was a sealed queen-cell 21 

 days after the departure of the queen, and 

 any well-conducted virgin should emerge 

 from a queen-cell within 15 or 16 days after 

 the laying of the egg. You ask whether bees 

 ever cap a queen-cell with no occupant. I 

 never heard of such a thing, but why in the 

 world didn't you open the cell and see what 

 was in it? It is practically certain that the 

 cell was occupied. A laying worker may have 

 laid the egg before her departure. Dzierzon 

 reports a case in which the bees held eggs a 

 week or so without hatching, and I have seen 

 unsealed brood in a hive more than the nor- 

 mal 8 or 9 days after the removal of the 

 queen. Another solution of the problem is to 

 say that the queen-cell was started in the 

 ordinary way, and the larva died in it after 

 the sealing. So there are 3 different ways in 

 which it might happen that you found a 

 sealed queen-cell 3 weeks after the queen had 

 left. , , - , , 



Removing Supers in the Fall 



I am 25 years old and have been keeping 

 bees for 6 or 7 years. My father is a farmer. 

 This is not a very good country for bees. I 

 don't think they did very well la6t year, and 

 this year they are no good. They had more 

 honey in June than they have now. Some 

 have honey in the super, but the brood-cham- 

 ber is dry comb with brood. But I will try to 

 feed them up heavily this fall. I would like to 

 take off all the supers now and let them work 

 only in the brood-chamber. If I do take them 

 off, must I watch for the moth-worms, or 

 don't they work in September? I have been 

 bothered with them this summer. 



Missouri. 



Answer. — There is not very much danger 

 of trouble from bee-moth in supers taken 

 away in September, in your part of the coun- 

 try, especially the latter part of September; 

 but it is well to look over the combs perhaps 

 2 weeks after they are taken off, and if you 

 find the worms at work, to fumigate them 

 with bisulphide of carbon, or sulphur. This 

 is on the supposition that your supers con- 

 tain extracting-combs. There is less danger 

 if the supers contain sections, but even then 

 it will be well to take the same course. 



dwindled down to a few bees. There are eggs 

 in the hive at present, but no brood. I've 

 been taught that a queen's eggs will batch 

 drones whether she is fertilized or not. This 

 queen's eggs don't seem to hatch at all. 

 What's the trouble? 



1. Is it possible for a queen to lay eggs that 

 will hatch neither workers nor drones? 



2. Have the bees been destroying the egg6 

 as fast as they hatch? 



3. Is the queen worthless, or will she turn 

 out all right later on >. Ohio. 



Answers.— 1. Yes, the case you mention 

 is one, and I had another case. Other cases 

 have also been reported. But you're not 

 likely to meet another of the kind if you die 

 within a reasonable time. The case that 

 came under my observation is the only one I 

 ever met in 45 years' experience. 



2. No, the workers are probably not in the 

 least to blame. I don't know what the 

 trouble is, but there is some defect about the 

 queen that prevents even drones being reared 

 from her eggs. 



3. Worse than worthless. Please send her to 

 Dr. E. F. Phillips, Departmentof Agriculture, 

 Bureau of Entomology, Washington, D. C. 

 Possibly he might give us some light on the 

 subject. 



Queen's Eggs that Pail to Hatch 



On June 9, after destroying the old queen 

 in a strong colony of bees, I gave them a ripe 

 queen-cell enclosed in a cell-protector. I ex- 

 amined them 12 days later, and found the 

 young queen laying nicely. Three weeks 

 later I examined them, expecting to find brood 

 hatching and in all stages of development. 

 Imagine my surprise when I found nothing 

 but eggs, which were laid regularly and only 

 one in a cell. The queen was a nice yellow 

 one, good size, and with perfect wings. I 

 have examined them at intervals of 2 and 3 

 weeks since then, and have found nothing but 

 eggs and no brood at any time. They have 



Non Swarming Methods and Bees 



1. In the 1895 April Bee-Keepers' Quarterly, 

 Mr. Heddon says that out of 600 of his colo- 

 nies only 15 or 16 percent swarmed, as by his 

 hive and methods he weeded out the swarm- 

 ing impulse. Would not such methods be 

 advisable for comb-honey producers in North- 

 ern Michigan? 



2. One of my neighbors, by cutting out 

 queen-cells every 8 days in the Heddon hives, 

 in Hoffman frames, got as high as 250 pounds 

 of comb honey per colony. As inverting the 

 Heddon hive is claimed will cause the bees to 

 destroy queen-cells, would not the use of such 

 a hive be less labor for the practical comb- 

 honey producer? Will interchanging such 

 hives cause bees to destroy queencell6? 



3. As Mr. McGuire, of North Carolina, 

 claims black bee6 there will swarm hardly 

 any, would not the introduction of such a 

 race early in the spring solve the nonswarm- 

 ing problem in the Northern Michigan rasp- 

 berry regions, and be a boon to comb-honey 

 producers there? With such a strain I could, 

 in a good season, obtain 100 pounds of comb 

 honey per colony without Mr. Davenport's 

 splendid method. 



4. What makes the bees up here swarm so 

 much that Carniolans can't excel them? Tney 

 are Italian-hybrids in Hoffman frames, in 

 double-walled homemade hives, twice the 

 thickness of the fine factory hives. The bees 

 increased rapidly in the spring, but blasted 

 our hopes of a honey crop by persistent 

 swarming. Would not pure Italian or pure 

 German bees be a better non-swarming strain? 



5. Am 1 not correct in believing that more 

 comb honey can be gotten from the brown 

 German strain here than from the Italians or 

 hybrids? 



6. Are bees in the Michigan raspberry re- 

 gions more prone to swarm than in more 

 southern cultivated regions. 



Northern Michigan. 

 Answers.— 1. Any method that would weed 

 out the swarming impulse would be exceed- 

 ingly desirable in Northern Michigan, or any- 

 where else for producers of comb honey, or 

 indeed for producers of any kind of honey. 

 So long a6 there is variation in the matter of 

 swarming, some bees being much more in- 

 clined to it than others, it does seem an,im- 

 possible thing to produce bees that would be 

 practically non-swarmers. At least, it ought 

 to be possible to come as near to non-swarmers 

 among bees as to non-sitters among poultry. 

 It is not likely that the hive would make 

 much difference, any farther than to give 

 plenty of room and ventilation. The chief 

 thin"' to do is to breed constantly from stock 

 that shows the least inclination toward 

 swarming, at the same time keeping in view 

 the avoidance of the things well known to 



