632 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



OCTOBKS, 1921 



FROM THE FIELD OF EXPERIENCE 



beforehand whether or not our bees will 

 eonie thru with such stores as they may 

 have. When the winter is over we know, 

 but not before. If we should feed each col- 

 ony ten pounds of sugar syrup late in the 

 fall we might expect the bees would use 

 this syrup first and pass the critical period; 

 but we might have to keep up this practice 

 for ten years in order to hit that one year 

 when it would be necessary- This would be 

 expensive. We have also wintered our out- 

 door colonies very successfully on the very 

 poorest stores, honeydew, when a very fa- 

 vorable open winter happened to follow. All 

 things considered, we have to admit that 

 wintering bees is still problematical. 

 Naples, N. Y. F- Greiner. 



BEHAVIOR OF VIRGIN QUEENS 



Do Worker Bees Prepare the Virgin Queen for 

 Her Mating Flight? 



On August 1, last year, I gave a 10-day- 

 old queen-cell to a rather strong nucleus 

 which had been formed on July 28 in the 

 afternoon. I examined the nucleus care- 

 fully and saw that the combs contained 

 only sealed and emerging brood, the combs 

 used in forming the nucleus having been 

 "ripened" for one week previously over a 

 queen-excluder. On August 8, about 11 

 o'clock in the forenoon I opened the hive 

 and found the cell empty. A little after- 

 wards I saw the young queen coming across 

 the comb, surrounded by seven bees which 

 apparently pulled at her or tried to block 

 her way, even when, as it looked to me, she 

 was trying to get away from them. I first 

 thought that it was the commencement of 

 a balling of the queen, but thereafter that 

 the queen had possibly returned from her 

 mating trip and the attendants were now 

 endeavoring to remove the appendages from 

 the queen. However, no traces of such were 

 to be seen. I looked closer and saw that 

 while the queen was continually trying to 

 cross the comb, the bees (three on one side 

 of her, and four on the other) would stop her, 

 and start to rub or clean her abdomen, from 

 the thorax and down, sometimes with their 

 antennae, but sometimes also with their 

 tongues. Now and again the queen would 

 put down her head to the comb, stretching 

 her antennae forward and whirring her 

 wings, at the same time either curving the 

 tip of her abdomen forward, as does a bee 

 when trying to sting, or raising the tip of 

 her abdomen up in the air, as do the bees 

 sometimes before moving into a new hive. 

 After this had happened some six or seven 

 times, the queen finally went to the top-bar 

 of the frame alone, walking to the end 

 where she suddenly, and to me quite unex- 

 pectedly, took flight, in a manner which I 



cannot describe better than by saying that 

 it looked somewhat like a butterfly sailing 

 away. As I could not follow her flight, I 

 stepped back and closed the hive. August 

 15 I found a queen nicely laying, which I 

 feel sure was the same one which I saw 

 flying away. 



The case struck me as rather peculiar, but 

 in reading Doolittle, the thought has come to 

 my mind, whether the worker bees do not in 

 some way or other prepare the queen for the 

 wedding trip, perhaps even deciding the 

 time? The passages I refer to in Mr. Doo- 

 little 's book read as follows: 



"My hobby has been that of letting the 

 queens fly out to meet the drones, the same 

 as they always do, yet without despoiling 

 colonies, by making nuclei to keep them in 

 from the time they were hatched till they 

 commenced to lay. My first plan was to 

 take virgin queens from eight to ten days 

 old, into the fields to places where I be- 

 lieved that drones congregated, by the loud 

 roaring which I heard in high altitudes, be- 

 tween the hours of 1 and 3 o'clock p. m. 



"I would then let them out of the wire- 

 cloth cages which I had carried them in, 

 leaving each one in a separate place, near 

 some old stump or stone, from which they 

 could mark the location of their cage. The 

 queens would mark the place from which 

 they went, the same as they would when 

 coming from a hive, circling farther and 

 farther, till lost from sight, some of them 

 being gone a long time (long enough to 

 meet a drone) when they would return and 

 re-enter the cage, and if I was on hand 

 they could be easily secured again; but I 

 have to report only failure along this line. 

 If allowed to do as they pleased, after re- 

 turning they would fly out again and again, 

 till they would finally go off, never to re- 

 turn. 



"My next plan was to take a very few 

 young bees and a little piece of comb in 

 these cages, but with this I was no more 

 successful. Why no queen should ever come 

 back under such circumstances, bearing the 

 marks of fertilization, is more than I can 

 understand, yet such has always been the 

 case. 



"Thru the suggestion of Mr. A. D. Jones, 

 I next tried putting the queen over a hive 

 of bees, keeping her in a double wire-clotb 

 cage, the wire cloth being so far apart that 

 the bees from the hive below could not reach 

 her, while an entrance was made from the 

 cage to the outside of the hive thru a tube. 

 Here the queen would stay, with no appar- 

 ent desire to go out, any more than she 

 would if she were kept in a queen-nursery 

 till she was too old to become fertilized." 



Does it not look as if the contact with 

 the bees, or rather the non-contact, has been 

 of consequence? Alex Hoist. 



St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. 



