1897. 



THE AMERICAN BEE KEEPER. 



291 



the numerous hatchiog young bees of 

 this season of the year. This is a 

 njistake for the bees which have been 

 wintered over are now dying faster 

 than any other time, if they are not 

 already all dead. Swarming comes 

 from the reason that the queen can, 

 and does, lay many times more eggs 

 at one season of the year than she 

 does at another. In May she begins 

 to lay prolificly, so that by June first 

 she is laying from two to three thous- 

 and eggs every twenty-four hours- 

 These eggs stay in this form for 

 three days when they hatch out into 

 little larva, which are now abundant- 

 ' ly fed so that in six days they fill the 

 cell, when they are sealed over and 

 hid from view for the next twelve 

 days, when the now perfect bee bites 

 its way out of the cell. This bee is 

 scarcely out of its cell before the bees 

 clean the cell out so it is ready for 

 the queen to lay in again, which she 

 immediately does. Thus we see that it 

 takes only twenty-one days for the 

 queen to get one generation of bees 

 on the stge of action, while they are 

 forty-five days in dying off. This 

 gives us two and one-seventh genera- 

 tions reared to where one dies off, con- 

 sequently the hive becomes so pop- 

 ulous when the queen does her best, 

 that swarming is the result. As fall 

 comes on, the queen ceases her egg 

 laying to an extent only sufficient to 

 keep the population of the hive good, 

 hence there are no more bees therein 

 than is necessary for the welfare of 

 the colony during the winter. One 

 other item of interest right here, 

 which is, that if we watch this hive 

 in which we were testing the age of 

 bees in June, we will find that the 

 first yellow bee which we see at the 



entrance will take its flight on the 

 afternoon of the sixth day after it was 

 hatched, if the weather is plesaut, 

 thus showing that all of the bees are 

 hatched stay in the hive till they are 

 six days old when they are in a nor- 

 mal condition. If we continue to 

 watch we shall find that the next day 

 there are more of these yellow bees 

 sporting in front of the hive at this 

 time of day, which number increases 

 until the sixteenth day, yet on no day 

 so far have we saeu any of these yel- 

 low bees leaving the hive and return- 

 ing in the early part of the day or 

 later in the afternoon, while the black 

 laborers are as busy then as at any 

 other time of the day. This shows, 

 that unless forced to do so by some 

 interference of man, that no bee is a 

 gatherer of honey till sixteen days 

 old, for the flights which we have 

 seen these yellow bees enjoying in 

 the afternoon are what the apiarist 

 calls " the young bees out for a play- 

 spell, and to mark their location." 

 On the forenoon of the sixteenth day 

 the first yellow bee is loaded, which 

 shows us that if we would receive the 

 most profit from our bees we must 

 have eggs for those bees laid at least 

 thirty-seven days before the honey 

 harvest. Again, if we watch the 

 morning of the fourteenth or fifteenth 

 day, we shall see only black bees go- 

 ing in and out of the entrance, yet if 

 we remove the cover and look in the 

 surplus arrangement, we shall see on- 

 ly yellow bees or mostly bees of that 

 color at work there. This shows 

 that the young bees are the inside 

 workers of the hive, which build the 

 comb, store the honey, etc. This also 

 shows that the bees which collect the 

 honey do not deposit the same in the 



