378 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



June, 1922 



FROM THE FIELD OF EXPERIENCE 



hour or more, at which time she came slowly 

 >oiit of it. I placed a drop of honey on her 

 tongue and she revived rapidly, and when 

 placed back in her hive she seemed no 

 worse off for having her "spell." Since 

 that time I have noted many cases similar. 

 Sometimes they recover and sometimes they 

 quiver a short time and die without regain- 

 ing consciousness. In shipping queens this 

 happened frequently, so that in the course 

 of the season the loss was considerable. 

 This caused me to study the case to see if 

 the cause could be found and a remedy ap- 

 plied. If it were appendicitis, we could op- 

 erate; if it were something like smallpox, 

 we could vaccinate; or, if it were failing 

 glands, we might graft in monkey glands. 

 Now maybe she ran out of vitamines or by 

 mistake' took vitamine "A" when she 

 should have taken vitamine "B." But if it 

 were hardening of the arteries causing high 

 blood pressure, why, nothin' doin'; she 

 would have to die. But before we could ad- 

 minister, we must first diagnose (that word 

 always sounds classy). 



I have always been a wee bit skeptical 

 about a queen's having catalepsy, from the 

 fact that queens in their hives sometimes 

 get so scared that they squeal and make a 

 terrible fuss as though they were "plum 

 skeert to death," but under such conditions 

 they never throw fits. A very significant 

 fact was that they always had these fits 

 just after being picked up by the wings. All 

 report this fact. 



One day I was watching a queen tliat had 

 gone into the wrong hive. The bees, as is 

 their custom, were trying to catch her by 



Queen with her foot ugainst sting. 



the legs, and she was scratching gravel at 

 a great rate. By and by they got her, and 

 in a moment she seemed to take a fit. When 

 I examined her, I found a small j)'*'"* of a 

 worker's sting left in her body. By her 

 actions, I was convinced that these queens 

 that had fits were getting stung in some 

 mysterious manner. T kept a careful watch 

 and some time later I was rewarded by see- 

 ing Just hoAv the thing was done. As I 



picked up a queen by the wings, she put 

 out one of her front feet and placed it on 

 the tip of her abdomen, exactly as shown 

 in the cut. The sting was protruding slight- 

 ly and her foot was over the end of it. In- 

 stantly she quivered and lay as though 

 dead. She had stung herself in the foot! 

 The cut was taken from Mell Pritchard's' 

 book, "Modern Queen Bearing," and was 

 made to show the manner of picking up a 

 queen in order to clip her, and was not made 

 to illustrate this article. Evidently the art- 

 ist who drew this picture had seen many 

 queens picked up in this manner, for the 

 picture is exceedingly true to life. The 

 queen in the picture does not seem to real- 

 ize that she is playing with fire and does 

 not know "it is loaded." 



At other times the queen will curl up in 

 such a manner as to place her sting against 

 her bosom about betAveen the fourth and 

 fifth ribs, or at least where they would be if 

 she had them, and in this position the point 

 of her sting protrudes slightly. The mere 

 touch of the sting is sufficient to make the 

 queen deathly sick, and sometimes she gets 

 an overdose and dies. Since that discovery, 

 I have been particular to keep her "biznez 

 end pinted tother way, ' ' and have had no 

 more cataleptic queens. Therefore, as far 

 as queens' having catalepsy, why, "they 

 haint no sich animul." 



In the April number of the American Bee 

 .lournal, Allen Latham writes that catalep- 

 sy occurs when the queen has nothing to 

 cling to and that it occurs after she has 

 taken hold of the tip of her abdomen. He 

 also states that the queen acts as though 

 slie had been stung by a, virgin. So she does, 

 but she accidently stings herself. 



Vincennes, Ind. Jay Smith. 



SWARM CONTROL 



A Veteran Comb Honey Producer Tells How to Do 

 This in the West 



Is writing upon this stibject any different 

 from a retold story? Yes. When we look 

 back over the past 40 years we see that 

 much has been accomplished in the control 

 of swarming; and while the wreckage of 

 wrong ideas and exploded theories has not 

 been a little, Ave knoAV Ave liaA^e not yet 

 I'cached the ha\'en of complete success. 



While I believe that Ave have strains of 

 bees today in Avhich the SAvarming impulse 

 is much less than 40 years ago, I do not 

 think the time Avill ever come Avhen tlie 

 SAvarming impulse will be eliminated 

 through selection and breeding. 



For 25 years I hav'e had both eight and 

 ten frame apiaries, and T do not find the 

 difference in sAvarming that some report. I 

 am afraid I get the most comb honey from 

 the eight-frame hives. In Avorking for 



