316 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



August 



half a ton of fine crab apple and dan- 

 delion honey, something he had never 

 seen before. He was thus ahead of 

 the game by rousing colonies early in 

 the season. 



Further comments on my spring 

 stock will come later. 



Victoria, B. C. 



OLD COMBS 



By Dr. Brunnich 



When a big bumblebee, awakened 

 by the smiles of the vernal sun, flies 

 about from morning till night, seeking 

 honey, and when it then builds its 

 rough little home in any corner, 

 without the help of comrades, it cer- 

 tainly does not imagine that in au- 

 tumn that building will be empty, a 

 prey to mice and other vermin. Next 

 year its daughter does the same, and 

 so it has gone, for centuries, and will 

 probably go on for thousands of 

 years to come. 



Quite another thing it is with its 

 cousin, the honeybee. While the 

 bumblebee's nest resembles the tent 

 of the wandering human nomad, the 

 dwelling of bees may be compared to 

 the proud palaces of the civilized 

 world. Such a palace does not harbor 

 a few generations only; oh no! Per- 

 haps a hundred or more generations 

 may come and go, before the glorious 

 building, whose walls once glittered 

 like gold, harbors the last descend- 

 ants of its first mother queen. But 

 now the walls are dark, though sound 

 as the first day. This glorious 

 "Ilion" will fall to pieces only after 

 the prudent little inhabitants have 

 been stricken by a catastrophe, 

 whether their mother died without 

 leaving a successor or black hunger 

 killed them at the end of winter. And 

 then inexorable fate will destroy the 

 home as well as the people, the bee 

 palace's combs change to dust, de- 

 voured, not by the tooth of time, but 

 by the greedy jaws of the waxmoth 

 worm, which finds in the old mansion 

 a paradise for its development. 



We are told that, with time, the 

 walls of the little bee cabins become 



thicker and thicker, and that the 

 bees reared in them become smaller 

 and smaller, till they are scarcely 

 larger than flies; so thick, in fact, 

 that it becomes impossible for bees to 

 be reared in them. 



To me, this thickening of the cell- 

 walls always seemed a cruel thing, 

 and not very wise, from IVlother Na- 

 ture. Therefore I wished to exam- 

 ine the matter closely. I secured 

 some vei-y old combs from a bee-skep, 

 a straw basket of the kmd that have 

 now become very rare. If we hold 

 such a comb, of 5 or more years, 

 against the light, we will see that the 

 bottoms of the cells are of a shiny 

 brown color, while they are so thick 

 that the light cannot penetrate 

 through. If we cut thi-ough the comb 

 with a hot knife, we find that the cell 

 bottoms are very thick, while the 

 side walls do not differ much from 

 those of young cells. Therefore the 

 diameter of the cells has diminished 

 but little, and by lengthening the 

 depth of the cells, the bees restore 

 their depth. Already, Reidenbach, 

 by filling new and old cells with water 

 and measuring the contents exactly, 

 has found that there was practically 

 no difl'erence. 



By putting the pieces of combs for 

 some hours in benzine, which dissolves 

 the wax, it is easy to tear from the 

 cells one layer after another of the 

 coating of those cells. We find that, 

 at the bottom, the layers are thick, 

 while the sides are exceedingly fine. 

 I found that about 18 layers of the 

 bottom measured one millimeter, 

 while the thickness of the sides is 

 about l-500th of a millimeter. In fig- 

 ure 2, I have reproduced sections 

 through a nearly new worker comb, 

 through an older one and through a 

 drone comb. In a rather intricate 

 manner, I succeeded in making thin 

 microscopic sections across combs, 

 which I have reproduced photograph- 

 ically. Fig. 1 shows a very old 

 worker comb. Fig. 1 especially dem- 

 onstrates nicely the different layers. 

 The black in the middle represents 

 the wax which, by the preparation, 



has been dissolved. The different lit- 

 tle sacks, which, after soaking in ben- 

 zine, may be extracted, are nothing 

 but the fine skins which the larvae 

 have left in the cells when emerging. 

 The dark mass on the bottom is the 

 excrement of the nymphs. 



When I separated some of the lay- 

 ei-s without the -use of benzine, by 

 simply soaking the combs in water, 

 taking care not to remove any part 

 of the wax cells, and dissolved these 

 in benzine, I secured small quantities 

 of wax. This proves that the bees 

 coat the inside of the cell with a very 

 thin layer of wax, after the young 

 bee has left it. They do like our 

 women when they rub a parquet or 

 parlor floor with wax. Careful and 

 proper as our bees are, they thus 

 cover the above mentioned shells and 

 excrements with wax, that these may 

 not offend the fine nose of the queen, 

 who thoroughly inspects every cell 

 before laying an egg in it. So we see 

 that the bottom of an old cell is com- 

 posed of the following layers: 



First, the primary wax skeleton of 

 the new comb, when built; next, a 

 layer of skin and excrements; then a 

 thin wax skin, then excrements, etc. 

 We then understand why we obtain 

 less wax by melting, from an old 

 comb than from a new one, because, 

 in the first, there are, besides the ex- 

 crements, the skins of the larvae 

 which have dwelled in the cells. 



The danger of old combs becoming 

 smaller with age is not so gi-eat as 

 many beekeepers imagine. It is, how- 

 ever, different with drone cells. There 

 we find that the side wall soon be- 

 comes considerably thicker and every 

 versed beeman knows that the size oi 

 drones may differ considerably. For 

 that reason, I renew, by cutting down, 

 the drone combs in my hives each 

 spring, to obtain large drones. If I 

 did not, I would soon have in my 

 hives drones of a miserable size, 

 which would not guarantee a strong 

 progeny for my queens. In hives 

 which are expected to serve as pur- 

 veyors of drones, for a mating sta- 

 tion, I advise the cutting out, in 

 early spring, of all the drone combs, 

 allowing the bees to rebuild them 

 and thus securing giant drones. 



Switzerland. 



fig. 2.— Section through a new worker 



i>nil>, IhroiiBh .Tn old worker comb, and through an 

 drone comb. 



THE NEW BEE PARASITE 



Our readers will remember that in 

 December, page 408, and in January, 

 page 24, we gave quotations from our 

 English correspondents, showing tfiat 

 a new cause of the bee disease was 

 discovered at Aberdeen, in the shape 

 of a very small mite wiiich invades 

 some of the breathing tubes of the bee 

 and is thought to be the cause of 

 Isle-of-Wight disease, since speci- 

 mens of this mite have been found in 

 every colony suffering from the dis- 

 ease. It is also known that the Isler 

 of-Wight disease was first thought to 

 be due to the Nosema. But later in- 

 vestigation showed that the one had 

 nothing to do with the other 



We are interested, in this country, 

 regarding this malady, because it so 

 closely resembles what is generally 

 called bee paralysis, the disappearing 



