106 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



nave swarmed is not nearly so large as that of 

 my Ligurian stock. The latter also seem to 

 carry into the hive tAvice the quantity of farina 

 on their legs as compared with the other sort — 

 a sure sign of extensive breeding. 



Allow me to add that, as a whole, I consider 

 this season to have been a bad one for honey. 

 Our main resource here is the Limes, which, 

 although well flowered, soon withered, owing 

 to the excessive heat of the direct rays of the 

 t^un. The Avhite clover is now their last 

 resource, but it is not so abundant as last year. 



'—A BLACKHEATn'AN. 



For tho American Bee Jcurnal. 



What Is It? 



In stopping with a friend of mine, living in 

 an adjoining county, (Moultrie,) I found a 

 malady which proved fatal to his and his neigh- 

 bor's bees, and which I never heard or read of 

 before. He said that two years ago, at about 

 the middle of October, his bees were attacked 

 by what he called the " Bee Cholera" for the 

 want of a better name. Out of forty-two stocks 

 he onljr saved two. All the bees in the neigh- 

 borhood fared about the same way. All the 

 bees died on the stands in about two days after 

 they were first taken with the disease. The 

 honey stored in the boxes was said to be bitter 

 in taste, and it made those sick who ate it. But, 

 after leaving the honey-stand over winter, it 

 was used the next spring; it was then as good 

 as any honey. One man says the same disease 

 has attacked his bee.s this fall. Some think the 

 disease is the result of a peculiar honey-dew; 

 but this is only a surmise. Some Pennsylva- 

 nians residing in the neighborhood say they 

 saw the same disease prevailing in the mountain 

 regions of their native State. What is this dis- 

 ease, and what are the remedies ? 



J. B. R. Sherrick. 



Decatur, III., Oct. 23, 1866. 



Prop. Gerstaker, of Berlin, Prussia, thus de- 

 scribes the Egyptian bee : 



" Tlie Egyptian bee {Apis fasciata L.) is 

 nearly one -third smaller than the common bee, 

 or the Italian. Her abdomen resembles that 

 of the latter, but her corslet or shild is yellow. 

 The downy hairs of the thorax and abdomen 

 are whitish." 



"Her native home," he adds, "is Egypt, Ara- 

 bia, and Syria; and she is found also, with 

 slight variations, on the northern declevity of 

 the Himalaya mountains, and in China. She 

 was successfully introduced into Germany in 

 1863 by the Berlin Acclimatization Society, and 

 carried thence to England in the summer of 

 186—." 



The laying of worker eggs by the queen bee 

 commences usually in February; sometimes as 

 early as January, especially if it be an Italian 

 queen. 



[Prom the Bienenzeitung.] 



After-swarming. 



Drones take their flights only in fine 

 weather, during the warmest part of tlie dny. 



In most treatises on bee-culture, after-sM'arm- 

 ing is spoken of as highly disadvantageous, if 

 not positively ruinous, and various modes of 

 preventing it have been proposed. For myself, 

 I have no objection to second swarms, but am 

 pleased to see them, as they enable me to form 

 valuable store stocks, because such swarms have 

 young queens sure to prove prolific for several 

 years. They also enable me to save and re- 

 invigorate queenless stocks, if I happen to have 

 any such, or to build up rapidly some weak 

 colony that has from any cause become reduced. 

 It has frequently been objected that by yielding 

 one or more afterswarms, the parent stock loses 

 much of its store honey and the mass of its 

 population, and is in danger of perishing, hav- 

 ing literally " swarmed itself to death." Now 

 this ruin of the stock results either from the 

 loss of the last hatched young queen, or from a 

 deficiency of honey stores. But these are mis- 

 haps or disasters to which every other stock in 

 an apiary is exposed, even if it have not swarmed 

 at all. The old queen may perish from age or 

 accident, and the bees may fail to raise another; 

 or if one has been raised, she maybe lost on one 

 of her excursions, or may prove to be a drone 

 breeder, so that sooner or later the stock 

 perishes. In like manner, any other colony 

 may, from causes known or unknown, fail to 

 collect adequate supplies for the winter, and 

 die from starvation, if its destitute condition is 

 not seasonably discovered and remedied. 



Swarming in general, and not afterswarming 

 alone, may certainly prove to be highly dele- 

 terious, as, for example, if it occur when the 

 bees have just begun to build combs in tho 

 spring, and have gathered only a small supply 

 of honey, which is frequently the case with what 

 are known as singing swarms. The small num- 

 ber of bees remaining in the hive after such 

 swarming are unable to prosecute brooding 

 largely, and at the .same time to gather sufficient 

 stores from fields presenting ample but transient 

 pasturage. 



Under such circumstances brooding is com- 

 monly neglected to some extent, for a while, in 

 an unavailing effort to gather stores; and when 

 it is subsequently recommenced, and the colony 

 increases in numbers, a large part of their 

 surplus has been consumed, and liberal feeding 

 is required to fit them to survive the winter, 

 unless they be among the fortunate few that 

 have the advantage of late fall pasturage. But 

 when one of my stocks has gathered plentifully 

 from the early spring pasturage, and has become 

 so heavy that it may scarce be lifted, I am well 

 content to have it yield one or two afterswarms. 

 The parent stock will still have bees and brood 

 enough, and if the young queen is not so un- 

 fortunate as to be lost, she will ere autumn have 

 produced such a mass of workers that the hive 

 will certainly be among the most populous in 

 the apiary next spring. When afterswarms 

 leave, all the brood in the parent hive is already 

 capped, needs no further attention from the 

 workers, and will not therefore perish from 

 neglect. As soon as the young queen becomes 



