1899 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



721 



for instance, and about the 10th of June take 

 their quetn away and introduce an Italian 

 queen, keeping record of the date on which 

 the 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 yellow bee will have made its 

 appearance, the time of the appearance of the 

 first Italian bee being jotted down also. 



At the end of 45 days from the time the last 

 black bee had hatched, no black bees will be 

 found in that colony. At 40 days plenty of 

 black bees can be seen, they becoming fewer 

 and fewer each day, so that on the 44th day 

 there will be very few indeed left. This is for 

 the summer months, and does not apply at all 

 to those of the winter. The life of the bee de- 

 pends upon the work it does. Thus when it 

 labors the most its life is the shortest. Hence 

 it comes about that, through the inactivity in- 

 duced by cold weather, the bee can live from 

 seven to eight months. This is proved by 

 changing the queen as before, only it is done 

 this time about the middle of September. 

 Soon after the first of October the last black 

 bee will have emerged from its cell ; but I have 

 often found a few black bees on June 20 of 

 the following year, in a colony so treated. 

 Also when spring opens, or about the first of 

 April, there will be very few yellow bees in 

 this hive, which shows that but little brood is 

 reared from October until April, as well as 

 telling us that more bees die in two months in 

 the spring than during six months of winter ; 

 hence all possible precautions should be taken 

 to preserve the life of those old bees during 

 the spring, so that they do not die off too sud- 

 denly, or have what is known as spring dwin- 

 dling before the brood has emerged from the 

 cells in sufficient numbers to keep the colony 

 in a prosperous condition. 



The life of the drone is regulated very large- 

 ly by the workers, for drones are usually killed 

 or driven off by the workers long before they 

 would die a natural death from old age. Any 

 sudden cessation in the flow of honey from 

 the fields is often considered sufficient reason 

 for their being driven off, or out of the hive 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 the good old age 

 allotted to them when not persecuted by the 

 workers. Most apiarists think that the drones 

 would live to about the same length of life at- 

 tained by the workers ; but from a close obser- 

 vation with those which I have tried to pre- 

 serve in queenless colonies for the late fertiliz- 

 ation of queens during the fall months, I am 

 of the opinion that they are of a little shorter 

 life. It is a rare thing that I have found any 

 out of a certain " batch " to be alive after 40 

 days from the time the last one emerged from 

 the cell. Unless some precautions are taken 

 it is a rare thing that any drones are allowed 

 to stay in the hive after the honey harvest is 

 over in the fall ; still, we have a few reports 

 where drones have been wintered over, and I 

 have had them flying in mid-winter when the 

 bees were out for a cleansing flight. 



The average life of the queen is about three 



years, although some have been known to live 

 more than five years. A man at the conven- 

 tion of the United States Bee-keepers' Associ- 

 ation, recently held at Philadelphia, told me 

 that a queen he purchased of me lived to be 

 five years and five months old ; and I had 

 one, purchased of Mr. A. I. Root some twenty 

 years ago, live to be five years and four 

 months old, she doing good work up to the 

 last month she lived. Queens live also in 

 proportion to the work they do, or according 

 to the number of eggs which they lay, as egg- 

 laying is the only work queens perform. Un- 

 der our present system of management, most 

 bee-keepers coax the queen to lay as many 

 eggs in one year as she usually would were 

 she in an old tree or box hive in two years ; 

 hence most apiarists think that all queens 

 should be replaced after the second year with 

 those which have just commenced to lay. 

 There is no question but that a queen reared 

 during July, August, or September of any 

 year will do as good work the following sum- 

 mer as she ever will ; but it is a question 

 whether it will be a paying undertaking to re- 

 move the queens in the apiary at the end of 

 their second summer's work, and then re- 

 place them with young queens. I have exper- 

 imented along this line to a considerable ex- 

 tent, and the result is that I do not now make 

 it a practice to supersede my queens every two 

 years, for I find that the bees are quick to un- 

 derstand when their mother is failing, and 

 will supersede their own queen when she gets 

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

 trust the matter to the bees, believing that 

 they know what is best for them in this re- 

 spect better than I do. 



CALIfORNIA ECHOES! 



BY J.H.MARTIN. 



Monterey Co. has produced a little surplus ; 

 San Diego Co. also secured some, but all told 

 there is not enough for the home demand. 



I learn that Prof. Cook has gone east for 

 making a few calls. There is no use for us to 

 ask you to treat him well for we know you will. 



The exports of honey from the San Francis- 

 co markets by sea for the past week have been 

 only eight cases, which at this time of the year 

 is about as light a shipment as was ever made 

 since California became a honey-producing 

 State. 



This, from an interview with Secretary of 

 Agriculture Wilson, who recently visited 

 Southern California, will be of interest to all 

 bee-keepers in arid America : 



Explorers for our department have found in Russia 

 a species of vetch that is to be tried on this coast. 

 Then we have a dry-land alfalfa that we want the 

 farmers to try. This flourishes in Turkestan without 

 irrigation. 



Now, we are wondering if that alfalfa will 

 become a good honey-plant. If there is any 

 seed of that plant to be had we shall try it. 



