GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



March, 1917 



Unsealed, partially sealed, and fully sealed honey. 

 Capillary attraction prevents the unsealed honey 

 from running out. 



sand eggs in a day. In fact, the eggs 

 that a prolific queen can lay in twenty-four 

 hours, if all put together and weighed, 

 would equal nearly two and a half times the 

 weight of the queen herself. This is pos- 

 sible only by reason of the fact that the 

 queen is fed almost constantly by the bees. 

 The eggs are about the diameter of a pin, 

 and when the light is just right they are 

 plainly visible 

 ypi "^~. ^i^jF ^9SSf^^ fastened to one 

 jP^aiiu^-.i:P5dfch. ^^1 side Qf the bottom 



of each cell. The 

 brood ordinarily 

 — ^^B3e^~^H^^ i occupies the lower 

 ^^^K^Bl part of the comb, 

 VhBVMIIv. the honey being 

 above it. A good 

 queen starts lay- 

 ing in the central 

 part of the comb 

 and extends her 

 laying in the form 

 of a circle so that 

 the brood is al- 

 ways compact. 

 In three days' time tha egg lia:clieo inlo 

 a tiny larva scarcely larger than the egg 

 itself. It is abundantly supplied with the 

 milky chyle food by the young bees which 

 act as nurses for the fiist two weeks of 

 their lives, and under this cars it grows with 

 a.stonishing rapidity. In about three days 

 from the time the eggs hatch, the larva is so 

 large that it almost completely fills the 



Eggs laid by the queen- 

 bee are alway,s in regular 

 order, uniformly attached 

 to the bottom of the cells. 

 Ordinarily the eggs are nnt 

 as plainly seen as would 

 appear from this phot )- 

 graph ; for the cells, nearly 

 half an inch deep, cut oS 

 much of the light. 



bottom of tlie cell. In another three days 

 it stretches out lengthwise in the cell, and 

 about that time is sealed or capped over 

 with a dark-colored capping made of fibrous 

 material, usually refuse wax gathered up 

 about the hive. This capping ajDi^ears al- 

 most like solid wax, but is really quite por- 

 ous in order to provide air for the rapidly 

 developing bee inside. In eighteen days 

 from the time the eggs hatch, or twenty-one 

 days from the time the egg was laid, the bee, 

 now perfectly developed, begins to cut thru 



Worker bee gnawing the capping of the cell, climb- 

 ing out and crawling unsteadily over the comb. 



the capping, and within a short time it 

 struggles out — rather wrinkled and pale- 

 looking, but fully developed — a mature bee. 

 All day it crawls unsteadily over the combs, 

 jostled about and unnoticed by the other 

 bees, apparently, and then it finds a cell cf 

 honey and begins to feed. From this time 

 on it acts as a nurse-bee, taking care of the 

 larvae, secreting the chyle food, and helping 

 to keep the brood warm. After two weeks 

 it takes up the duties of a regular field-bee. 



WS^^ 



Larva; four to five days old, curled up in the 

 bottoms of the cells. 



Sealed worker brood, sealed drone brood, and un- 

 sealed queen-cells (at the right). 



The queen is the only true female in the 

 hive. The workere are undeveloped fe- 

 males; the drones, the males. Normally 

 there is but one queen in the hive even tho 

 there be as many as fifty thousand workers. 

 The queen mates only once but is able to 

 lay fertile eggs thereafter at the rate of 

 several thousand a day for the rest of her 

 life. Queens sometimes live six or seven 

 years but usually they are not kept longer 

 than two or three years. The drones do no 

 work, their sole purpose being to fertilize 

 queens. In order that there be plenty of 

 them, however, at the time the young queen 

 takes her flight the colony may contain quite 

 a number of drones — sometimes hundreds. 



