1888 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



867 



not lay? I believe the explanation lies just in this 

 fact: The workers refuse to feed the queen the 

 proper food, and her eggs are, as a consequence, 

 not developed. Of course, it is just possible that 

 living so long— months— before egg-laying, she may 

 never be a very fertile queen, possibly be wholly 

 Sterile; but I should not expect this. It is a fre- 

 quently observed fact, that, when a queen once 

 stops laying in the fall, at the close of the honey- 

 harvest, feeding ofttimes wholly fails to start egg- 

 laying again. It seems to me quite probable that 

 the cause is the same as before. The worker-bees 

 refuse to f uri.jsh food of the requisite quality. 



Have not some of our extensive queen-breeders 

 like Hutchinson, Alley, Root, etc., observed on this 

 matter of queens before? If so, have they found 

 such queens any less valuable the next year? 1 

 hope our friend who has just sent me the queen for 

 dissection will keep all the other queens, note re- 

 sults carefully next spring, and inform us of the 

 facts. I think the matter an interesting one, and 

 very possibly it has practical significance as well. 



FALL PLANTS. 



Mr. John E. Heard, of Pikesville, Tennessee, 

 sends me five plants from Cumberland Mountain, 

 all of which, to use his words, are rich honey- 

 plants. One is an aster, one a goldenrod; the third 

 the heart'sease, which it seems is not only a well- 

 known honey-plant in Tennessee as well as in Iowa 

 and Illinois, but is also known as heart's-ease. 

 Surely Polygonum Pennsylvanicum is so wiueiy 

 known as heart's-ease that our botanists must be 

 informed of the fact, and also give it this name. 

 Number 4 is beggar-ticks, or bidens. Mr. Heard al- 

 so knows this as Spanish needles. The long seeds 

 have barbed or rough awns, hence the name, bi- 

 dens, two-toothed. The seeds are forked, and look 

 much like a boot-jack. In some species the seeds 

 are very long and slim, and have four teeth, or 

 awns, instead of two. These barbed awns, or 

 teeth, make the seeds stick to the hair or wool of 

 animals, or to our clothing. This is nature's pro- 

 vision to scatter these seeds. No. 5 Mr. Heard calls 

 beggar-lice. The seed is flat, green, and is sure to 

 stick to our clothes if we go among the plants. I 

 have often had hundreds of these flat seeds stick- 

 ing to my clothes after a short walk on low ground. 

 Mr. Heard says he knows this plant as beggar-lice. 

 Our botanists call a plant of the borage family 

 (Echinogpermum Morisona) beggar-lice. The plant 

 Mr. Heard sends is a legumine, and a good honey- 

 plant in Michigan as well as in Tennessee. There 

 are many species in the United States. Our botan- 

 ists know them as tick trefoil. They belong to the 

 genus Desmodium. A. J. Cook. 



Agricultural College. 



The paragraph below seems to have some 

 reference to what friend Cook has been 

 writing about. 



LATE-HATCHED QUEENS. 



In connection with Prof. Cook's report on late- 

 hatched queens I sent him, please add G. M. Doolit- 

 tle's report on the same class of queens; viz.: "My 

 experience is, that four out of five such queens 

 prove to be good layers the next season, and I 

 would keep over what I could of them." It is re- 

 markable that only about one queen in ten hatched 

 after Sept. 16th could be induced to lay by regular 

 feeding. Drones are yet abundant in my apiary, 

 and have been flying almost every day. 



Oxford, Pa., Oct. 31, 1S88. S. W. Morrison. 



In our own experience, we have a good 

 many times had late-hatched queens behave 

 exactly in the way indicated. But as other 

 queens which we knew were fertile also re- 

 fused to lay, under the same circumstances, 

 I felt pretty well satisfied they would lay all 

 right in the spring, and we have several 

 times wintered them over, and the greater 

 part of them have always commenced laying 

 in the spring, and proved to be just as good 

 as any. I think this has been already re- 

 corded in our earlier volumes. 



CAGING QUEENS DURING S"W ARMING 

 TIME, ETC. 



MRS. AXTELL GIVES US SOME ITEMS FROM PER- 

 SONAL EXPERIENCE. 



SNE man advises us to put a queen-cage in the 

 pocket, with the queen in it, until the swarm 

 is brought back. This I should not do, as it 

 is apt to scent the queen, and she may be 

 killed by the bees. I would lay the caged 

 queen in front of the hive, and finish up the work 

 with the hive as quickly as possible, and close up 

 and go away. The bees are a great deal more apt 

 to come back to their home if the queen is left on 

 the alighting-board, and no person stands in front. 

 I would not even fasten up the entrance of the 

 hive, nor set a keg in front for returning bees un- 

 til the swarm starts to come back pretty lively. 

 Then I would slip around the side of the hive, close 

 the entrance with grass, and set a keg over the 

 queen, with one side raised a little. In a large apia- 

 ry it is important to have the bees come back 

 quickly and not cluster before other swarms issue. 

 An air-tight keg, or one nearly so, is hardly safe 

 to use. At one time we lost a tight keg half full of 

 bees. Several swarms had issued so fast that, in 

 the hurr3' to care for them, our helper set the keg 

 down flat on the ground. It happened to set so 

 level that none of the bees could escape. An ex- 

 amination showed that the bees were nearly all 

 dead. 



I would have the queen-cages kept in the top of a 

 hive of bees in swarming time, so that they may be- 

 come bee-scented, and not left piled together in a 

 box, open to the varying conditions of the weather 

 until they become moldy. We did this one season, 

 and wondered why we lost so many queens. After 

 being returned to the bees, I would also have a few 

 queen-cages close up in front of a few hives at the 

 remote corners of a large apiary. If swarms issue 

 in rapid succession, keep one or two cages in the 

 pocket. I would never attempt to let a queen run 

 into a hive with a swarm, for very often she will 

 run anywhere else than into the hive. The bees 

 will often take wing and swarm again. It is more 

 difficult to find the queen the second time, because 

 she and the bees will sometimes run under the 

 hive, where it is quite a task to smoke them out. 

 Sometimes we open the hive and release the queen 

 upon a comb of brood, if we are quite sure the bees 

 will return before they get mixed up with other 

 bees. We think the safest way is to release her aft- 

 er the bees have returned, by putting a chunk of 

 honey pressed over the cage's mouth, and laid in 

 the hive, and let the bees liberate her. Care should 

 be taken to perforate the comb so the bees will re- 

 move the comb rather than seal her in. A record 



