May, 1921 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



287 



those first eclls arc sealed, comes tlie great 

 day. And when the sun is high, probably 

 at some time between ten o 'clock and three, 

 the swarm will issue. Out from the entrance 

 of the hive they pour, living drops in a 

 great flood of life. The air is quickly filled 

 with wings and the sound of them. There 

 they circle and swing / and weave strange 

 patterns in the sunlight. Then the watch- 

 ing beekeeper notices a shifting of the neb- 

 ulous cloud, and presently is aware of a 

 quiet dark ball forming on the branch of a 

 tree. Soon they are all clustered there, 

 hanging in almost ominous silence after the 

 rapture of the moment before. Probably 

 more than half the occupants of the hive 

 are there, perhaps two-thirds of them, bees 

 of various ages. And somewhere in their 

 midst is their queen. Did she lead out the 

 swarm or follow? Who knows? Probably 

 the latter. 



Anyway, there they are. And there they 

 hang, perhaps for 15 minutes, perhaps for 

 several hours, or even longer. The theory 

 that scouts are going about hunting for the 

 new home seems to be rather generally ac- 

 cepted, tho one sometimes wonders why 

 they failed to do that necessary bit of re- 

 connoitering earlier. At any rate eventual- 

 ly (and sometimes now) the dark cluster 

 stirs and breaks, and again the air is filled 

 with wings. But this time, instead of gayly 

 whirling and circling, they start straight 

 off towards the spot chosen for the new 

 abode, a hollow tree or a cozy corner hid- 

 den under somebody 's eaves. There they 

 start housekeeping. The young bees hang 

 in their strange rapture of silence and pro- 

 duce the wax to build new comb, the queen 

 is soon laying in the fresh cells, field bees 

 bring in nectar and pollen, and the whole 

 cycle is started anew. 



If the beekeeper be present when the 

 swarm issues, he will take matters into his 

 own hands and the bees will find themselves 

 possessed of a hive instead of a hollow tree. 

 "When they are shaken or dumped into the 

 new hive, wings start a glad fanning, little 

 bodies are raised at a queer angle that some- 

 how signals the others to come on, and soon 

 they are all marching in. 



After a swarm has left, a busy ((uiet set- 

 tles on the old hive, known to the beekeeper 

 as the "parent hive" — altho the real par- 

 ent of the hive, the queen, has accompanied 

 the swarm. Yet viewing the colony rather 

 than the individual bee as the unit, it is 

 true that the old hive is the parent. There 

 the lessened numbers continue with their 

 routine duties, undisturbed and apparently 

 untempted by the exciting, adventurous de- 

 parture of the others. There is now no 

 queen. Yet order and perfect co-operation 

 continue. For in the long rough cells the 

 young princesses are attaining their final 

 growth and development. And presently 

 comes a day when the first one cuts out the 

 end of her cell and emerges, her young 

 slim restless body endued with powers and 

 qualities so different from those of the 



thousands around her. One of the first acts 

 of her life will be the destruction of the 

 other queens, still in their cells. As only 

 one queen is ordinarily permitted in a hive, 

 there is this deadly rivalry between them; 

 when two queens meet, the stings that are 

 apparently never used elsewhere are brought 

 into immediate use. So when this first for- 

 tunate princess emerges from her cell, she 

 leads — thus at least it seems to the human 

 observer — the attack on the helpless rivals 

 unfortunate enough to be a few hours later 

 developing. Soon every one will have been 

 killed, and the workers will have torn down 

 the cells and dragged out the remains. 



Sometimes, however, they do not permit 

 this destruction. For if after-swarms are 

 desired (they never are, by the intelligent 

 beekeeper, but sometimes seem to be by the 

 bees), then the other cells are carefully 

 guarded from the attack of this first queen, 

 and in a few days she herself is going off 

 with a swarm, leaving the other cells to pro- 

 vide a queen for the remaining bees. These 

 may send out still another swarm, and even 

 several others, tho this is both unusual and 

 disastrous. 



When no after-swarms are planned, the 

 remaining cells are destroyed. Then the 

 first-issued queen lives about a week of 

 carefree youth, while gaining the strength 

 needed for her flight. Several times on 

 different days she will venture into the air 

 around the entrance, just as the young 

 worker bees do, marking well the appear- 

 ance and location of her home. Then on 

 some bright day she will strike bravely out, 

 straight up into the high places, for her 

 nuptial flight. And when she returns, life 

 will quietly settle into a matter of duty 

 and routine. 



By this time the bees are devoting them- 

 selves feverishly to an enthusiastic gather- 

 ing of nectar. And when the main honey 

 flow comes on (which may have happened 

 before the swarm went out), the instinct 

 that prompts them to store what they do 

 not immediately need fills comb after comb 

 with the nectar which is then evaporated 

 and ripened into honey, and sealed. 



All this activity, including of course the 

 gathering of pollen too, continues thruout 

 the summer, wlienever there is anything at 

 all in the fields. Some time in late summer 

 when the nectjir flow fails, or later, when 

 the days shorten and the nights grow cool 

 and long, comes the destruction of the 

 drones. And soon autumn has come. Then 

 it, too, goes an unreturning way, and win- 

 ter lies over the beeyard. 



It is in the winter that they form the 

 cluster. For hees are not warm-blooded 

 creatures; their body temperature rises and 

 falls with the temperature of the air about 

 them. By muscular exercise they can pro- 

 duce heat. But were they to get as cold as 

 45 degrees F., they would lose all power of 

 motion, and death would doubtless soon en- 

 sue. So when the air in their hive gets as 

 cold as 57 degrees, they take matters into 

 (Continued on page 314.) 



