290 



THE AMERICAN BEE KEEPER. 



October 



for a big yield than the spring of '97, 

 but cold rains and cold nights brought 

 us the end of the season with but a 

 fair crop of comb honey. I only ex- 

 tract my seconds and broken boxes, 

 and sell all honey in home market at 

 15c per box or 7 lbs. for $1.00. Yet 

 notwithstanding the cold nights and 

 cold rains '97 has been the best honey 

 season for years, and from ajjpear- 

 ances now the bees are going into 

 winter quarters with plenty of stores 

 to begin business in '98. I do not 

 know of any pure Italian bees for 

 miles, except my home yard, into 

 which I introduced Italians this sum- 

 mer after the honey flow was over, 

 and from the way they are working 

 and the blacks loafiug at present time 

 I do not think I shall own a black bee 

 this time in '98. 

 Woodstown, N. J. 



How Long do Bees Live ? 



BY G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



A correspondent wishes me to tell 

 the readers of the American Bee 

 Keeper how long bees live, as he has 

 a friend who says they live to be 

 one or two years old, and he does not 

 believe it. He is quite right in not 

 believing that bees live for years, 

 and almost any one can prove that 

 such is not the case in less than two 

 two months during the summer season. 

 I have several times conducted experi- 

 ments along this line to see if I could 

 arrive at the truth in the matter. Be- 

 fore any of the yellow races of bees 

 came to our shores this was a matter 

 hard to determine, but with their 

 advent, all became plain, for we now 

 had a chance to determine which 

 were the old bees, and which were 

 young, by their color. The expri- 



meuts which I have tried were as fol- 

 lows: Take a black colony of bees, 

 and about the first to tenth of June, 

 or when honey comes in freely, intro- 

 duce an Italian queen into it. In 

 twenty-one days the last black bee 

 will have hatched and the first Ital- 

 ian put in an appearance, providing 

 the Italian queen commences to lay 

 as soon as she is put in the hive, as 

 she will do if she is introduced by 

 some plan of direct introduction. 

 Now mark this date on the hive and 

 it will be found that on the forty- 

 sixth day from that time, nothing 

 but Italian bees can be found 

 in the hive. At forty days a goodly 

 number or black bees will be seen 

 going in and out at the entrance, but 

 on the lorty -fourth day only now and 

 then one can be seen, so that we may 

 safely say that forty-five days is the 

 length of a bee's life in the working 

 season. Bees wear out, or die of old 

 age, just in proportion to the labor 

 they perform, and so it happens that 

 what holds good with them in the 

 busy season does not apply at all in 

 the fall and winter months when they 

 go into a state of repose or partial 

 hibernation, such as the apiarist 

 calls a " quiescent" state. We now 

 find that a bee lives from fall to 

 spring, or to be more exact, if we in- 

 croduce an Italian queen into a col- 

 ony of black bees during the forepart 

 of September we shall find some black 

 bees in this hive on the first of the 

 next June, if the colony winters well, 

 thus showing that during the winter 

 season bees live eight months. Be- 

 cause, bees swarm in June or July, 

 many seem to think that this comes 

 on account of the ol4 bees having 

 lived to this time, to which is added 



