OCTOBER 15, 1914 



797 



CON¥EM§ATION§ WITH BOOLITTLE 



At BorodiiTKn), New York. 



" Do bees on one trip visit different kinds 

 of flowers in gathering honey, or do they go 

 to those of one species only? If one species 

 only, how comes it that we get mixed honey 

 in the same comb? " 



1 have repeatedly seen bees at work on 

 both the gooseberry and the currant, where 

 the bushes were side by side in rows, al- 

 though the gooseberry seemed to yield the 

 more nectar, or, at least, the bees spent 

 much more time on each blossom of the 

 gooseberrj' than on the currant. I have also 

 seen them go from the black variety of rasp- 

 berry to that of the red, and vice versa, 

 (hough the red variety seems much pre- 

 ferred. Then I have seen a single bee visit 

 (he blossoms of red, white, and alsike clover, 

 spending more time on each little floweret 

 of the red than on the others. But this 

 cannot be taken as conclusive proof that 

 bees gather honey or nectar promiscuously, 

 for I do not believe they do. It will be 

 observed that all of the above were of the 

 same species of plants, or very nearly so. 

 Teasel and basswood are in bloom at the 

 same time in this locality, but never, in all 

 of my observation, did I ever see a single 

 bee go from teasel to basswood, or from 

 basswood to the teasel when they were gath- 

 ering nectar. Since the nectar from bass- 

 wood needed very little evaporation to make 

 it the consistency of honey, while the nectar 

 from teasel is always very thin, I supposed 

 that bees would naturally desert the teasel 

 flowers for the basswood, but I did not see 

 them doing this, even where limbs of the 

 basswood hung down with their flowers al- 

 most touching the tops of the teasel-plants. 

 In one instance a field Avas sown to buck- 

 wheat very early, so that the bloom came in 

 before the teasel was out of bloom, yet never 

 a bee went from one to the other, so far as 

 I could discover, though a portion of these 

 fields lay side by side. 



But about the mixing of the different 

 honey in the combs : Bees do not seem to be 

 as careful in this matter as we are, for often 

 when one bee comes in from the basswood 

 or teasel field she deposits her load in a cell, 

 to be followed a little later by her sister, 

 who is working on buckwheat, and who does 

 not seem to realize that all honey from 

 white blossoms should not go in the same 

 cell. Even though the color, taste, or smell 

 be not the same " it's honey all'e samee." In 

 this locality we often have our prospects of 

 the best price for a nice white teasel or 

 basswood liDuey knocked down to a second 

 or third place by some farmer putting in a 



field of buckwheat the middle of June in- 

 stead of the 10th of July. 



" On going to the beeyard one morning in 

 early August I found several hundred little 

 round caps of wax on the alighting-board 

 near the entrance of a hive. I called the 

 attention of an old beekeeper to these a little 

 later, and he said it was a case of robbing. 

 Do you agree 1 " 



I do not agree. Some suppose that such 

 round caps indicate the uncapping of cells 

 of honey, either by robbers or preparatory 

 to the carrying of the honey from one posi- 

 tion in the hive to the other; but this is a 

 mistake, as the cai^pings of the honey-cells 

 are gnawed off in little fragments, and not 

 in the round form spoken of. So far as my 

 observation goes, and I have discovered 

 these round caps several times, the finding 

 of such caps signifies that drones are hatch- 

 ing out, as any one can prove by taking the 

 pains and time to examine, for he will find 

 that the drone, before emerging from his 

 cell, bites the cover of the cell entirely off 

 by a smooth cut, while the workers leave 

 only fragments of the cappings of their 

 cell-coverings when emerging. The queen 

 cuts off the capping of her cell the same as 

 does the drone, except, as a rule, a little 

 piece on one side is left, which often acts 

 like the hinge to a door, this door often 

 being closed after the queen has gone out, 

 through some careless worker rubbing up 

 against it. Where no such hinge is left, 

 then the caps to the queen-cells are tumbled 

 out of the hive the same as are the drone 

 cappings; but in no ease, probably, would 

 there be as many caps from queen-cells as 

 our correspondent mentions. 



If the little door closes as mentioned 

 above, the bees often make it fast by waxing 

 or using propolis, so that the inexperienced 

 beekeeper is often deceived into thinking 

 that the queen has not yet emerged from 

 her cell, as I was once when I cut out three 

 such cells from a parent colony which had 

 swarmed, having a " best queen," giving 

 these cells to nuclei. Of course the nuclei 

 remained queenless till " live " cells were 

 given them later. If often happens, as soon 

 as the queen has emerged from her cell, that 

 a worker goes into the cell to partake of 

 the royal jelly left unused in the cell, after 

 which the cell-cover is crowded back by the 

 ever traveling bees, and the worker is a 

 jirisoner, causing even some good apiarists 

 (o claim that woi'kers sometimes develop 

 in queen-cells. It is well to understand all 

 these little things in bee culture, 



