1906 



GLEAlv^INGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1233 



CoDversatioDs 



with 



moJittle 



VARIOUS MATTERS. 



"To-day is September 15. is it not, Mr. 

 Doolittle?'*' 



"I believe it is, Mr. Brown." 



"Came near a frost with us last night. 

 How was it here'/" 



"There was no frost here this morning, 

 but we did have a little frost on the morn- 

 ing of September 4. which was the earliest I 

 ever knew a frost in the fall." 



"Well, why I spoke about frost was this: 

 The night was cold, as you will admit^ — a 

 night during which the bees are supposed to 

 be doing nothing: but when I went out into 

 the apiary this morning I found several lit- 

 tle round caps of wax near the entrance of 

 one of my hives, and I am anxious to know 

 what that means." 



' ' So far as my observation goes, the find- 

 ing of such caps siguities that drones are 

 emerging from the cells." 



" What makes you think so?" 



"If you will tiike the time to examine 

 closely "you will find that the drone, when 

 emerging from his cell, l)itesthe cover of the 

 cell entirely off by a smooth cut, while the 

 workers leave only fragmentary pieces of 

 their cell-c(jvering when they gnaw their 

 w^ay out. The queen cuts the covering of 

 hei" cell in a way similar to what the di'ones 

 do theirs, except, as a rule, a little piece on 

 one side is left which acts like the hinge of a 

 door, the door often closing after the queen 

 has gone out. so that man^ times the bee- 

 keeper is deceived into thinking that there 

 is a queen in the cell."" 



" But is it not late for drones to be hatch- 

 ing?" 



" Yes, in i;sual years: but buckwheat was 

 sown late by some of the farmers this year, 

 and brood-rearing has 1>een carried on later 

 than usual this fall on this account.'" 



" Your speaking about the door of a queen- 

 cell closing after the queen had gone out 

 makes me think of my finding a worker-])ee 

 in a queen-cell this summer, and I supposed 

 that a worker had been perfected there in- 

 stead of a queen. Could I have been mis- 

 taken, and the bee have gone in after the 

 queen had hatched?" 



"That is what you Avere. It often hap- 

 pens, as soon as a queen has emerged from 

 her cell, that a worker goes into the cell to 

 partake of the royal jelly left' therein, after 

 which the cell-cover Hies back, or else it is 

 pushed back l)v the ever traveling bees, they 

 making it fast after it has been closed, and 

 thus very many Ijesides yourself have l)een 

 made to" think' that the imprisoned inmate 

 was what the bees intended for a (jueen, l)ut 



turned out to be a woi-ker; and they, having^ 

 cut off all the iiueen-cells Imt this one, call 

 their colony (jueenless, and send off for a 

 queen, or write to one or luore of the bee- 

 papers about the strange phenomena."' 



"I believe you are right in the matter; for 

 I noticed that the worker had its head to- 

 ward the bottom of the cell, while a queen 

 which has matured in a cell is supposed to 

 have her head toward the point of the cell. 

 But there is another thing I wish to know 

 aliout. In gathering honey, do bees visit 

 dift"erent kinds of Sowers on one trip or 

 gather honey from only one kind of flowers?"" 



"Many seem to think that bees visit only 

 one kind of Mowers while away from the 

 hive in search of nectar, this idea coming. I 

 suppose, from the fact that bees never bring 

 in pollen of different colors at the same 

 time, hence visit only the same blossoms or 

 blossoms of the same color." 



" Well, my neighbor did have some show 

 for his belief that bees do not gather honey 

 from only one kind of flower when out on a 

 trip, in what you say about the pollen, but I 

 thought he had no criterion to go by when 

 he asserted that a Ijee never carries a load of 

 mixed honey. Then you think bees gather 

 only one kind of honey at any one trip?'" 



"No. I do not think that," for I have re- 

 peatedly seen bees go from a gooseberry 

 bush to" a currant, and from clover to rasp- 

 berry bloom, and vice versa. But as a rule 

 there is not enough of this Hying Imck and 

 forth from one kind of flower to another to 

 make any mixture of honey which is per- 

 ceivable when any one of our main honey- 

 flows is on." 



"I am glad to know of this matter, and I 

 will try to do some observing for myself 

 next season. Biit I have more 1 wish to 

 know about. Let me explain a little. Some 

 time in July I had a swarm come out. The 

 same clustered, and was hived. A few hours 

 later they mostly came out of the hive and 

 returned" to the parent colony, leaving a 

 small bunch of bees in the hive. These re- 

 mained six days, when they swarmed out. I 

 found the qu"een with this little bunch of 

 bees when they hung on the limb. What 

 made the most "of the bees leave their queen 

 and go back home again?" 



"Here you have struck on one of the 

 most perplexing things which occasionally 

 happen in the swarming season in a large 

 apiary. The general cause is that a few 

 strange bees from another swarm or else- 

 where go in with the swarm, and for this 

 reason the queen is balled for safe keeping, 

 or for some other purpose, just what I nev- 

 er knew, nor have I found any one else \yho 

 could give a satisfactory reason therefor. 

 When the queen in a newly hived swarm is 

 thus balled, the bees seem to think that they 

 have lost their queen, anil so return to the 

 old hive, all except a few which are near the 

 ball of bees, and realize that the queen is 

 there all right. If they are stopped from go- 

 ing home l>y covering the old hive so they 

 can not get in. they will go to other hives 

 near by, rather than stay where we put 



