576 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 1. 



honey that I took from her hive last year ; 

 150 of it comb honey all in plain sections. 



Last season I noticed that this queen had 

 but very little brood in the hive at the close 

 of the honey-flow, and I am afraid she will be 

 superseded this coming season (she is clipped, 

 so I shall know). I want to get another 

 batch of queen-cells from her eggs, and then 

 I should like to exchange her with Doolittle 

 or somebody who can use her. I wrote to the 

 man from whom she came, asking if she was 

 a hybrid, or if she was of a pure race and 

 would be suitable to breed from. He answered 

 my letter, but entirely ignored my question. 

 There seems to be a good deal of mystery 

 about this man, and I have no use for these 

 mysterious people with their wonderful secrets. 



I must be wandering from my subject. I 

 was writing about bee-fever, and I guess the 

 thoughts of it brought on an acute form of the 

 trouble. You see I have it pretty bad yet. 

 Just think of it — when my wife wishes to get 

 my attention to tell me something she gener- 

 ally finds it necessary to exclaim "Bees!" 

 Is there no help for me, Uncle Amos ? 



Eden, N. Y. 



L @ «i& 4& «& ^^gOQL^.g» j» Sfr jg> &» J 



BEES — HOW LONG DO THEY LIVE? 



Question. — Picking up a paper recently I 

 noticed an item to the effect that bees were 

 very short-lived insects, and that the average 

 life of the worker during the summer season 

 is but thirty days. Can this be the truth ? I 

 had supposed that workers lived six or eight 

 months, if not a whole year. 



Answer. — It seems to me that no one should 

 be ignorant on this subject when one experi- 

 ment will tell him the truth in the matter, 

 and convince him that the average life of the 

 worker is about 45 days, or one-half more 

 than was given in the item which the ques- 

 tioner alludes to. Take a colony of black or 

 German bees, for instance, and about the 10th 

 of June take the queen away and introduce an 

 Italian queen, keeping record of the date on 

 which this change was made. In 21 days the 

 last black bee will have emerged from its cell ; 

 and if the Italian queen went to laying imme- 

 diately, the first Italian bee will have made its 

 appearance, which fact should be jotted down 

 also. At the end of 45 days from the time 

 the last black bee came out of its cell no black 

 bees can be found in the colony. At 40 days 

 many will be seen ; but they grow less and 

 less each day, so that on the 44th it will be 

 very few indeed that are left. This is for the 

 summer months, but does not apply at all for 

 those of the fall, winter, or spring. The life 

 of the bee seems to depend on the work it 

 does. Thus, when it labors the most its life 

 is the shortest. Hence it comes about that, 

 through the inactivity brought on by the ad- 

 vent of cool and cold weather, the individual 



bee can live from six to eight months. This 

 is proved by changing the queens as before, 

 only it is to be done this time about the middle 

 of September. Soon after the first of October 

 the last black bee will be out of its cell ; but I 

 have often found black bees in such colonies 

 on the 1st of June of the next year, and in one 

 instance there were a few still remaining on 

 the 4th of July ; but that year the bees were 

 kept in their hives on account of bad weather 

 very much of the time previous to this. Also, 

 when spring opens there will be a few Italian 

 bees in the colony so treated, which shows 

 that very little brood is reared from October 

 till April, as well as to tell us that more bees 

 die in two months in the spring than during 

 five or six months of winter. 



The life of the drone is regulated very large- 

 ly by the workers, for they are usually driven 

 off or killed by the workers long before they 

 would die of old age. Any sudden cessation 

 in the flow of honey from the fields is often 

 sufficient reason for their being driven out to 

 die, or the killing of them by stinging, if they 

 are persistent in staying in the hive ; so it is 

 hard to tell just what age they might attain 

 to, were they allowed to live to " a good old 

 age." Most apiarists think that they would 

 live about the same time the workers do ; but 

 I am of the opinion that they are a little 

 shorter-lived. It is a rare thing that any 

 drones are allowed to stay in the hive after 

 the honey-harvest is over for the year ; still, 

 we have a few reports of drones which have 

 wintered over, and I have known of a few 

 doing so, and that in a colony having a fairly 

 good queen. But the hive was crowded to its 

 utmost with honey during the fall. 



The average life of the queen, where a colo- 

 ny is allowed to stay in a normal condition, is 

 about three years, although some have been 

 known to live five years. They live also in 

 proportion to the work they do, or, more 

 properly speaking, in accordance with the 

 number of eggs they lay, as egg-laying is the 

 only work they do. Under our present sys- 

 tem of management the queen is often coaxed 

 to lay as many eggs in one year as she usually 

 would in a tree or box hive in a year and a 

 half or two years ; hence most apiarists think 

 that all queens should be replaced, after the 

 second year, with those which have just com- 

 menced to lay. However, I do not make this 

 a practice : for I find that, as a rule, the bees 

 will supersede their own queen when she gets 

 to be too old to be of service to them ; so I 

 trust the matter to them, believing they are 

 less liable to mistakes along this line than I am. 



YELLOW OR MAROON. 



Having a little space left I wish to say a 

 word regarding the last Straw, and the edi- 

 tor's comments, found on pages 494 and 495 

 of July 1st Gleanings. What I wrote in the 

 American Bee Journal -was for the sole pur- 

 pose of calling out Dr. Miller as to certain 

 points regarding the markings of bees and 

 their purity, which points have been so con- 

 stantly put that queen-breeders have been 

 classed as "frauds;" but the good doctor 

 only helps the fault-finders in their notions 



