882 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec. 1. 



kind Mr. Greiner finds on the pear-trees. 

 Prof. Cook is our best authority on honey- 

 dew in the United States, and possibly in the 

 world, and I know we shall await with inter- 

 est his comment on this.— Ed] 



A HIVE OF BEES AS A SCHOOLROOM TEXT- 

 BOOK. 



Some of the Interesting Lessons that may be 

 Learned ; the Piping and Quahking of Queens; 

 do Bees Sleep? how to Make a Little Ob- 

 servatory Hive without a Box. 



BY PROF. C. F. HODGE. 



S f op and think for a moment what the 

 world really is, and for what purpose we are in 

 it. At bottom, nature is a vast system of tre- 

 mendous forces at work night and day; and 

 from the word go, in the first chapter of Gen- 

 esis, man has been set the delightful, interest- 

 ing, and inspiring task of learning to control 

 all these forces to produce the greatest possi- 

 ble good for the greatest number. Stop and 

 think again how much of the veritable reality 

 of this great plan of nature, and how much 

 of the fundamental purpose of human life, 

 becomes an actual part of our great public- 

 school system. We scoff at "book larnin'," 

 and clearly recognize that learning to repeat 

 words from books can never make men who 

 are able to do any thing worth while in the 

 world. Then stop and think once more : 

 "How much besides book learning do we 

 have in our schools? " 



Our great hope of escape from this bookish 

 talkey-talkey farce of an education lies in the 

 line of modern nature study. Here we may 

 have children learning things instead of words, 

 and things that are worth their while. But, 

 to the point. Let us first consider ways of 

 managing bees in a schoolroom, and then we 

 may indicate a few of the important lessons 

 which they may be used to teach. 



I have tried the ordinary observation hives, 

 both single-frame and full-stand, such as are 

 used at fairs and exhibitions, and also a honey- 

 section covered with a glass box, and a glass 

 hive specially made for the purpose, which I 

 will describe later. 



For an entire season I had a honey-section 

 hive in my study-window, and the whole time 

 it was the most fascinating thing in the room. 

 It was made from an ordinary pound section 

 by driving brads into the corners, letting them 

 stick out half an inch at the bottom for it to 

 stand on, and % inch from the sides and top 

 to insure a bee-space all around. The glass 

 case that fitted over it was made simply by 

 cutting glass the proper size, gluing the cor- 

 ners together with narrow strips of cotton 

 cloth, and carefully searing hot beeswax into 

 the corners on the inside to prevent the mois- 

 ture of the bees from softening the glue. To 

 stock it I put in a handful of bees with an old 

 queen which I wished to supersede. She laid 

 the little hive full of eggs, and then decamp- 

 ed. The bees immediately set to work mak- 

 ing queen-cells; and, happening to be cutting 



out a lot, I put in two large queen-cells — one 

 of them, with malice aforethought, protected 

 with screen wire. 



The queen from the unprotected cell emerg- 

 ed first, and then I had the whole story of 

 "piping" and "quahking" where every 

 movement could be eas'ly observed. At noon 

 of the second day after piping began, the hive 

 cast a swarm, which clustered about the size 

 of a spool of thread, in the snowball bush in 

 front of the window. I hived it back, remov- 

 ing the offending quahker, and the young 

 queen stayed, and laid, and kept up the hive 

 until cold w r eather. I saw her take her nup- 

 tial flight. She was gone about ten minutes, 

 and returned with the organs of the drone. 

 Within fifteen minutes after the bees had re- 

 moved these she flew again, and in five min- 

 utes returned with a second trophy of success. 

 Almost any day I could see a little bee emerge 

 and make its first toilet — a most fascinating 

 performance, and at all times I could observe 

 the bringing-in and disposal of honey and 

 pollen. I painted bees with different colors, 

 and watched them work from daylight to dark 

 — that is, I watched them from daylight to 

 dark ; but no single bee that I watched ever 

 worked more than three and a half hours a 

 day. Then there were all the different divi- 

 sions of labor — the field-bees, the nurse-bees, 

 the wax -producers, the police, the barbers, the 

 drones, and the queen. 



I mention all these things to show how 

 many interesting points in the natural history 

 of the hive can be intelligently observed and 

 studied in so small a device — an old honey- 

 section, a handful of bees, a discarded queen- 

 cell, and a few scraps of broken glass, all of 

 which need not cost a penny. And I will 

 guarantee that it will be worth more to a room- 

 ful of children than $10.00 worth of books 

 about natural history; but, of course, we need 

 some books as well. And with all that has 

 been written, not half the whole story of the 

 hive has ever been told. 



The next season I had in mv window the 

 little hive again, and a hive made to take one 

 of my regular frames. The glass case for this 

 was made in the same way, except that the 

 front glass was left out ; i. e. , the sides, top, 

 and back were glass, fastened together with 

 glue and narrow strips of cloth. This fitted 

 into grooves cut in the bottom-board and in 

 front into the front board, an upright post 

 very securely fastened to the bottom-board. 

 The entrance-hole was made in the bottom of 

 this front board. Sharpened wire nails with 

 the heads cut off, and filed to a sharp edge 

 driven into the bottom and front boards held 

 the single frame securely in position indepen- 

 dently of any support from the glass. Both 

 these hives were covered with thick cotton 

 quilts made with soft black woolen cloth. 

 This hive is naturally more satisfactory in 

 many ways than the lit'le one, since we can 

 observe things on a much larger scale. We 

 need never wait ten minutes to see a young 

 bee gnawing her way out. We may observe a 

 great many more workers about their different 

 vocations, and the queen can very generally 

 be found laying. Still, this outfit will cost, 



