1894 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



839 



■cipleforthe last threp years. I am sure that 

 the foot lever and spring will greatly increase 

 the effectiveness of the machine. It is so sim- 

 ple that almost any one can work it. — Ed.] 



DO FIELD VFORKER-BEKS TRANSFER HONEY TO 

 YOUNG BEES? 



On page 731 of Gleanings for September 15th 

 I find two questions referred to and asked of 

 Doolittle; and, with the permission of the edi- 

 tor, I will answer them In this department, 

 instead of using questions sent in, for this num- 

 iDer of Gleanings. 



The first is the one referred to me, instead of 

 the editor's answering Mr. Churchill. Mr. C. 

 says, "Some time ago I read how bees gave 

 honey to the young ones that were too young 

 to fly." I hardly think Mr. C. read accurately 

 enough, for I have never known of any one who 

 believed that bees too young to fly were of any 

 service in the hive, unless straightening out 

 -and taking honey to help them do so could be 

 called service. A bee can fly when from 13 to 

 *20 hours old; and if a bee under this age ever 

 enters into any of the work of the hive, I have 

 never discovered it. The claim put forth, and 

 the one to which Mr. C. alludes, I presume, is 

 this: Except in times of abundant yields of 

 honey, the field-bee, on arriving inside the 

 hive, gives its load of nectar to some nurse-bee, 

 rather than disposing of this load by depositing 

 it directly in the cells of the comb. That this 

 claim is correct, I have verified time and time 

 again by laying beside a single-comb observa- 

 tory hive, hours enough, when put together, 

 to make days. If I mistake not, Elisha Gallup 

 was the one who put forth or discovered this 

 fact first, and the same can be found in the 

 early volumes of the American Bee Journal. 

 As I have told all of the minutiae of this matter 

 several times in the bee-papers, I will not go 

 into them here, except to say that, as soon as a 

 loaded bee enters the hive from the Held, it 

 hunts around among the nurse-bees to find one 

 which will take its load, putting out its tongue 

 with nectar upon it to determine who will take 

 it. If the nurse-bee who is thus approached 

 does not have its honey-sac full already, we 

 immediately see the nectar passing from the 

 field-bee to the nurse-bee by way of the tongues 

 of both. After a little resting, the field-bee 

 goes forth to the field again, never as much as 

 putting its head into or near a cell of the comb 

 all the while it was in the hive. This nurse- 

 bee may be anywhere from two to sixteen days 

 old; and while of this age it is termed a young 

 bee, although I have the impression, from my 

 many observations, that the bees which do the 



most of the evaporating of nectar are from six 

 to fifteen days old. 



Again, Mr. Churchill errs, or is not accurate 

 enough, when he assumes that a new swarm is 

 composed of old bees; for the truth is. bees of 

 all ages go out to make up the swarm, as is very 

 easily ascertained by any one who will use his 

 eyes with the view of finding out about this 

 matter. I have seen the ground in front of a 

 hive that was casting a prime swarm, covered 

 with hundreds of bees under 12 hours old, which 

 tried to accompany the swarm, but were not 

 able to fly, so they ran out on foot; and on hiv- 

 ing tlie swarm, a little inspection showed that 

 it was composed of bees of all ages, from those 

 30 hours old, or the bees just barely able to fly, 

 to those with ragged wings, just ready to die of 

 old age. In this, as in all nature. God made no 

 mistake when he showed bees how those of all 

 ages should accompany the swarm when they 

 heeded the mandate, "Go forth, multiply, and 

 replenish the earth." 



Once more: Mr. C. says, "I have always 

 noticed, as I remove quilts from sections or 

 extracting-combs, that almost every bee is an 

 old one." I should like to know how he knows 

 they are "old ones." If he will try the experi- 

 ment of changing a black queen for an Italian 

 about the 20th of June some year, noting the 

 time the first Italian bee hatches, and on the 

 forenoon of the 14th day from that time looking 

 at the entrance of the hive, he will find none 

 but black bees issuing from the entrance; while 

 if he removes the quilt from the surplus-ar- 

 rangement he will find nearly all the bees there 

 to be Italian. If he does not so find it, his ex- 

 periment will prove different from any I have 

 ever tried, and I have tried such experiments 

 several times. All the experiments which I 

 have tried along these lines have proved Gallup 

 to be correct when he gave this to be the rule 

 in these things: "Three days in the egg form, 

 six days in the larval form, and twelve days in 

 the chrysalis form, making a period of twenty- 

 one days from the egg to the perfect bee. Very 

 warm weather will hasten the matter, while 

 very cool weather will retard. The hatched 

 bee does nothing but feed itself for the first day 

 or two after hatching, when it commences to 

 become a nurse-bee, preparing chyme for the 

 larva?, evaporating nectar, secreting wax, build- 

 ing comb, etc., till it is 14 to 16 days old. With 

 a colony in normal condition, the young bee 

 takes its first flight or playspell, marking its 

 location, voiding its excrement, etc., when six 

 days old, if the weather is favorable, doing this 

 from 13 to 3 p. m., and continues these playspells 

 occasionally till it is from 14 to 16 days old, 

 when it goes out into the fields as a field-worker, 

 does no more of the inside work of the hive 

 after becoming a field-worker, unless forced to 

 by a lack of nurse-bees from some reason, aad 

 dies of old age at from six to eight weeks from 

 time of hatching, very few bees ever seeing 



