968 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Oct. 15 



vice from a foreign journal to leave queen- 

 cells uncut and return after-swarms as fast 

 as they issue, so that the young queens may 

 fight it out and the fittest survive. He 

 seems surprised that I did not protest against 

 such advice— doesn't believe the best queen 

 in the lot will come out victorious, and says: 

 "In fact, I should think that just the re- 

 verse would be the fact; the best queen 

 would be the one most fully developed as a 

 queen, while the poorest would be the one 

 least developed as a queen, and therefore 

 partaking more of the nature of a worker 

 and having a more fully developed sting, 

 and therefore the more likely to be the vic- 

 tor in a battle royal. ' ' 



Bro. S. E., your reasoning would be all 

 right if some of the queens were not fully 

 de\eloped, and if workers were more power- 

 ful than queens; but I have always supposed 

 that all queens in natural swarming are ful- 

 ly developed, and that a queen is more pow- 

 erful than a worker; so if there should happen 

 such a thing as a battle between a perfect 

 queen and one part worker, I should expect 

 the fittest to survive. It is a common thing 

 for the young damsels to settle their differ- 

 ences by resort to the code duello, and it 

 would have been a serious mistake on the 

 part of Dame Nature to rule that the poor- 

 er should survive. 



A SURE SIGN of lajnng workers is to find a 

 queen-cell with more than one egg in it; at 

 least I never knew but one exception to the 

 rule, and that was a few days ago, when a 

 normal colony with a normal queen had a 

 queen-cell with two eggs in it. But laying 

 workers may have a dozen eggs in a queen- 

 cell. I feel almost sure that laying workers 

 prefer queen-cells to lay in because a queen- 

 cell is a more comfortable place. I once 

 saw a laying worker backed into a worker- 

 cell, and her wings were pushed up about 

 her ears in a manner that must have been 

 very uncomfortable. Next to the queen-cell 

 comes the drone-cell for comfort. I've seen 

 cases where eggs were laid by laying work- 

 ers in worker-cells just as regularly as a 

 good queen would place them, and no mortal 

 could tell by the looks that laying workers 

 were present so long as no brood was sealed; 

 but that was because no larger cells were 

 available. If in doubt in any case, look 

 sharp for a queen-cell cup or a drone-cell. 

 If you find one of these in the brood-nest 

 with more than one egg in it, that settles it 

 —laying workers. But if you find one or 

 more of them in easy reach with nothing in 

 them, while worker-cells are occupied, you 

 may feel easy that a queen has done the 

 work— all of which is easily explainable on 

 the theory that, the larger the ceil, the more 

 comfortable it is for the laying worker. 

 And I may add, by way of postscript, that 

 a queen-cell within reach will have more eggs 

 in it than any other kind of cell. [While I 

 would not argue that there was only one 

 laying worker at a time, would it not seem 

 to indicate that there was only one in the 

 case cited where the eggs were laid as regu- 

 larly as those by a queen? If there were 



more than one, there would have been some 

 patchy work and a plurality of eggs in one 

 cell. -Ed.] 



Mr. Lukomski says in the Bulletin, the or- 

 gan of the Tunisian Bee-keepers' Society, 

 that the poison of bees is capable of coun- 

 teracting the efi^ects of fever even more ef- 

 fectually than quinine, a few stings arrest- 

 ing malaria or intermittent fever of the 

 worst type. Wasps, hornets, bumble-bees, 

 and all the hymenoptera, have the same 

 power. 



Centralblatt, as quoted by the British Bee 

 Journal, says Mr. Zince has succeeded in 

 wintering a colony of bees without combs to 

 cluster on. " The hive was placed in an at- 

 tic above a room that was well heated, and 

 the colony was fed with liquid honey. Up 

 to Mai'ch the bees had not built any combs. 

 It has become a good colony during the sea- 

 son. ' ' 



Mr. Dickel, a well-known German bee- 

 keeper, made the following experiment as 

 reported in the British Bee Journal: 



He cut a hole in one of the combs of a hive and insert- 

 ed a piece of comb with the eggs it contained, taken 

 from a wasps' nest. The experiment was repeated 

 thrice, and every time it produced a curious commotion 

 among the bees. In approaching it the bees stopped 

 dead, as if fascinated by the strange substance. Their 

 antennae were extended forward with feverish move- 

 ments. They then dashed upward and spun around 

 madly. This was soon followed by others who joined in 

 the unrestrained dance. By degrees some of them got 

 over their fear of this strange object, and approached it 

 with their ti'embling antennae extended and flapping 

 their wings, and still continuing their comical dance. 

 At length they decided to risk an attack, and tore the 

 nest into shreds, evidently with repugnance. They 

 were more undecided about touching the eggs, but these 

 they also attacked at last, crushing them with their 

 mandibles. They seemed thoroughly disgusted, and 

 showed it by getting rid of the egg-shell as quickly as 

 possible with their front legs. 



On pfge 793 I made reference to the 

 strong eitort that is now being made in 

 Great Britain to get a foul-brood law passed, 

 similar in nature to what we have in this 

 country. A great deal of correspondence 

 has reached us relative to the struggle, 

 which I can not explain here; but it seems 

 the trouble in the way is not so much the 

 objection on the part of the government as 

 it is on the part of some bee-keepers who 

 would willingly sufi:"er the loss of all they 

 have rather than help their neighbors and be 

 well paid for it. I take the following ex- 

 tract from the Irish Bee Journal, the editor 

 of which seems to be doing all he can to se- 

 cure so wise a measure. As an example of 

 selfishness it is quite unique : 



