u 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jan. 



individuals, when they get a large apiary on 

 their hands, find that it is next to impossible 

 to obtain the same results per colony, even 

 if the locality would give it. I have myself 

 secured over 300 lbs. surplus from a single 

 colony. Now, an apiary of even 2o colonies, 

 each and every one of which was made to do 

 this, would afford a pretty fair income, and 

 the labor to get it from 2-5 hives would be 

 nothing like going over 200 colonies. I be- 

 lieve it would be pretty good advice for all 

 of us to keep our bees in few hives ; keep 

 crowding them back, and discourage in- 

 crease ; and then when winter comes, 

 instead of having 100 hives with bees 

 enough in the whole lot to make only 10 

 good colonies, we should have, say, 25 hives 

 with bees enough in the 25 to make 50 ordi- 

 nary colonies. You know I am one of those 

 who never yet saw too many bees in a hive 

 at any time of the year. 



A HINT ON INTRODUCING. 



UlSTUKBING THK COLONY AFTER HAVING LIBEK- 

 ATED THE QUEEN. 



fHE case of O. p. Phillips (see No. 21, current 

 V^ol. Gleanings), calls to mind my own ex- 

 perience. I have learned that the bees must 

 not be disturbed, neither at the time nor 

 soon after the queen is liberated. Having 

 learneJ this by sad experience I devised a way to 

 do it on the sly. I place the cag-ed queen between 

 the frames, pressing them to it tightly, to hold it in 

 place. To the stopper in one end of the cage I 

 attach a strong string, and pass the end through a 

 small hole made in the end of the hive (I use the 

 Langstroth). After leaving this at least 48 hours I 

 draw the stopper by the string in the night, and do 

 it so quietly the bees will not know any thing- has 

 happened, and all is well. 



It will be seen that this plan is much the same as 

 that given by E. M. Hayhurst, at the late meeting 

 of the Western B. K. Association at Independence, 

 Mo. The reason these precautions are needed is 

 well stated by him (see Gleanings, p. 770): " If the 

 bees are disturbed before the queen begins to 

 lay she will become frightened, running and piping, 

 and the bees will chase and kill her." He says, 

 " Before she begins to lay." I had one balled this 

 summer after she had been laying, because of the 

 bees being distui'bed by my search to s*e if she was 

 all right. I have never failed with the plan I have 

 given. ,]. T. GoDDARU. 



Muscatine, la., Nov. 27, 1885. 

 Friend G., I am well aware that bees oft- 

 en attack the queen, and sometimes kill her, 

 just because the hive is opened, and they are 

 stirred up about the time the queen is liber- 

 ated. But I am also sorry to say, that they 

 often kill queens where the cage is opened 

 by pidling a stiing, or by letting the bees 

 eat out tiie candy, or in other ways where 

 the queen is liberated quietly. We have 

 never found any way to answer so well in 

 the long run, as liberating them by the Peet- 

 cage plan ; but even tlien we always think it 

 best to look the colony over, and see how 

 things are getting along. If the queen is 

 killed we want to take immediate steps to 

 put in another. If she is balled, give the 

 colony a good smoking, and keep it up until 



they behave themselves. If she is all right, 

 just as soon as you discover she is so, close 

 the hive very quickly, and tlien let them 

 alone.— By tlie way, I must say once more 

 that I think the 'metal corners which so 

 many object to, very greatly facilitate open- 

 ing a hive and closing it, without getting 

 the bees stirred up. When we can open a 

 hive so quickly that no bee thinks of stop- 

 ping his work, we certainly are not doing 

 very much harm. 



EGG -LAYING OF QUEENS 



A MATTER OF VOLITION, AND N<n' AUTOMATIC. 



T will be remembered that the greatly lamented 

 " Mr. Samuel Wagner suggested that the queen 

 was merely an automaton as to laying eggs, 

 whether they should be worker or drone eggs. 

 He suggested that the mechanical pressure of 

 the small worker-cells so compressed the sperma- 

 theca that the sperm -cells were forced out, and 

 brought into connection with the germ-cells. On 

 the other hand, the larger drone-cells would not 

 exert such compression, so the spermatoza would 

 not be extruded from the spermatheca, and so the 

 eggs would leave the oviduct unfecundated, and so 

 would develop into drones, or males. We know 

 now that this view is no longer maintained. The 

 muscular arrangement for forcing the germ-cells 

 out of the spermatheca; the fact that worker-eggs 

 are often laid in cells which are hardly more than 

 commenced; the fact that impregnated eggs are 

 laid in the large queen-cells; and the further fact 

 that young queens, when they first commence lay- 

 ing, before they have fairly " learned the ropes," 

 as it were, very frequently lay quite a number of 

 drone-eggs in worker-cells. All this is more than 

 enough to convince us that the adding or withhold- 

 ing the sperm-cells from the eggs is merely a mat- 

 ter of volition with the queen. It is pi-obably true, 

 that young queens desire and mean to lay only 

 worker-eggs in the worker-cells, as they rarely lay 

 any other the first months of their existence; but 

 lack of experience, and awkwardness in managing 

 the delicate muscular apparatus of the spermatheca 

 at first, cause a few slips in the early work of egg- 

 laying; hence the scattering di"Oue-brood, which re- 

 sults from a few of the first-laid eggs of young 

 queens. 



That eminent English statesman and naturalist. 

 Sir John Lubbock, has recently given some facts 

 that have interest in this connection, and can not 

 but interest evei'y reader of Gleanings, as they 

 have me. As is well known, wasps are very closely 

 related to bees in structure, and in their physiologi- 

 cal economy; hence any fact in regard to wasps 

 may be, gJiould be, considered and studied by the 

 bee-keeper as of importance in his work and study 

 of his little servants. 



Sir John finds, that when a wasp provisions her 

 nest with spiders of the same kind she always takes 

 the same number. Wasps of different species take 

 more or less, according to the size; and, strangest 

 of all, the mother-wasp invariably places more in- 

 sects in the cell with an egg that is to produce a 

 female, than in a cell with an egg that is to produce 

 a male. The female wasp is the larger. Here we 

 see that the mother-wasp not only knows the kind 

 of an egg she is to lay, but she provisions the cells 

 with exact reference to the necessities of the case. 



