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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



September 15, 



the farmer has bees, he has only just about enough to supply 

 his own family with the honey they need, and, if he sells any, 

 must deprive his children of it. 



It is true that in a few favored spots — in the basswood re- 

 gions of Wisconsin, or on the lowlands of the Mississippi, or 

 of the Missouri — bee-keepers are more numerous, as also in 

 some districts of Southern California ; but, after all, these are 

 exceptional spots, favored districts, which are as grains of 

 sand to the sea. It is nevertheless a fact that the greatest 

 portion of the land does not have one-twentieth of the bees it 

 could support, and millions of pounds of honey go to waste 

 for want of harvesters. Yet perhaps some crank may be 

 found who will say that the bees occupy every foot of terri- 

 tory in the United States. Did I not just read in the Chicago 

 Record the opinion of a noted man who claims that the United 

 States should hold Cuba. " and everything else we can get," 

 because we need "room to spread," as there is, according to 

 him, " no place now for a young man to go 1" This fellow 

 would surely consider the United States overstockt with bees, 

 if there was one colony to every one hundred square miles. 

 His name is Chas. E. Hay, of Springfield. Pass it to posterity. 



•' Many men of many minds, many birds of many kinds." 



I believe there is plenty of room, for centuries to come, 

 on our own soil, for both our young men and for our bees ; and 

 I sincerely hope that we will not try to spread over foreign 

 lands and give our enemies a chance to prove true the shame- 

 ful assertion that has so repeatedly been made by some Euro- 

 peans, that " America is fighting under the hypocritical plea 

 of humanity, but in reality only for gain and conquest." 



But I must not digress too far and forget that I am talk- 

 ing " honey " and not " war." 



Now, if there are not too many bees, or bee-keepers, in 

 the country, is there too much honey ? Is honey so plentiful 

 that every person in the land has all of it that he or she may 

 wish and to spare ? No, certainly not ; but for all that, honey 

 is too cheap, and It does not pay. So our critics will say. 

 Does wheat growing pay? Does hog-raising pay ? Does cat- 

 tle-raising pay ? Is either of these lines of farming overdone ? 

 Yes, in one way. The farmer does not get enough for what 

 he sells. But does everybody get all the beef to eat that he 

 wants? It seems to me this question is very much like the 

 question of labor. 



A few years ago we had a young German working for us, 

 who was fresh from the Fatherland. He could speak but 

 broken English, and I used to ask him many questions about 

 his former home. He liked America much better than Ger- 

 many, and said it was easier to make a living here. 



I said to him : "It is your standing army that causes 

 the hard times over there. You have to feed nearly a million 

 men and keep them idle during the best years of their life. 

 That is what drains your country." 



At this he protested. "No, sir; it is just the other way ; 

 if we did not have a standing army there would be just so 

 many more men seeking work, and the poor fellow who has 

 nothing but his labor would have to starve, as he surely could 

 not find anything to do. There are too many laborers there 

 already." 



What do you think of this, friend bee-keeper ? Have we 

 too many men, too many bees, too much wheat, and too much 

 cattle ? Would it be better to have less honey, less bread, 

 less meat, and less men ? Has the old adage — that he who 

 makes two blades of grass grow where only one grew before is 

 a public benefactor — become a falsehood, and should we now 

 consider that he is a public benefactor who will teach us how 

 to decrease production so as to enhance prices? 



No, I do not believe too much honey is produced. I be- 

 lieve that ten times as much honey could be consumed as is 

 now produced if we had made as much improvement in the 

 distribution of food as we have made in its production. I be- 

 lieve that if we could kill the adulteration of honey, and the 

 fear of this adulteration, which is yet the greater of these two 

 evils, we would have a ready sale of all the honey that all the 

 bee-keepers could produce, and that there would be no longer 

 any fault-finding with our editors, because they try to en- 

 courage the pursuit which gives them their living. 



Hancock Co., 111. 



Queens Laying in Queen-Cells — Moving Larvae 



BT G. M. DOOLITTLK. 



By what I read I see that there are still some who claim 

 that the queen never lays eggs directly In the embryo queen- 

 cells found in the hive during times of natural swarming and 

 when the bees supersede their queen. This is only in accord 

 with what was claimed years ago, it being put forth, at that 



time, that the queen had such an antipathy toward rival 

 queens that it would be impossible for her to lay eggs in the 

 cells prepared for her rival in the hive. But as eggs were 

 found in these rudimentary cells by all, something must be put 

 forth to account for their being there, so it was claimed that 

 the workers carried the eggs found in these cells and deposited 

 them there, keeping the queen from removing or destroying 

 these eggs, and the larva; which might hatch from them by 

 clustering about the cells. 



Right here I wish to place myself on the side with those 

 who claim that bees never remove eggs, for in all of my ex- 

 perience of nearly oO years I have never known of a single 

 egg being conveyed from one cell to another, but in scores of 

 cases have I known larvaj to be transferred by the bees to dif- 

 ferent combs and queen-cells. On this point I have been 

 more particular than on most others — so much so that I have 

 often found myself wondering whether those who told about 

 bees removing eggs did not really mean larvse. I call to mind 

 one particular case, where larvae were removed by the hun- 

 dred, as it were, but only the eggs were found in embryo 

 queen-cells, altho the bees had a laying queen. The circum- 

 stances were these : 



A swarm came out one day when I was away from home, 

 and as the queen had her wings dipt they returned. Not de- 

 siring them to swarm, the hive was opened in the afternoon 

 and all queen-cells cut off. The next day this colony swarmed 

 again, and before I had a chance to pick up the queen (she 

 having run under the bottom-board of the hive) the bees com- 

 menced to return ; and while they were doing so another 

 swarm came out, and, without stopping to circle, as they 

 usually do in the air, went directly in with the returning 

 swarm. 



Before things became settled another swarm issued from 

 still another hive, and, almost immediately, another, or the 

 fourth, came out and went in with those already returning, 

 so that I had four prime or first swarms in and on that one 

 hive ; the queen in the meantime crawling out from under the 

 bottona-board and going in with them. 



As the three queens belonging to the other hives had 

 their wings dipt they could not go with the bees, but were 

 returned to their respective hives and the bees allowed to re- 

 main to see what would become of the matter. The next day 

 the four swarms came out as one and were hived in an espe- 

 cially prepared hive, from which I secured more than lUO 

 pounds of comb honey inside of two weeks. 



An examination of the old hive showed hundreds of queen- 

 cells started all over the combs ; and, as I now remember it, 

 nearly 200 of these cells had larva; in them, swimming in 

 royal jelly, while only two had eggs in them. As a number of 

 these cells were built on the sides of the frames it would have 

 been impossible for larva; to have gotten in them (or the cells 

 built over larva;) other than by the bees carrying them there. 



About this time such men as Gallup, Grimm, and others, 

 began to advocate that the queen deposited In the queen-cells 

 the eggs for all q-jeens that were started while the old queen 

 was in the hive, and, if my memory serves me rightly, Mr. 

 Grimm saw a queen laying in a queen-cell, while Mr. Gallup 

 believed they did so by the position of the egg in the cell. 

 Later on, a hired man whom I had work with me in the api- 

 ary witnest the whole act of a queen laying in a queen-cell 

 while I held the frame in my hand, and I have a letter in my 

 possession from J. E. Ginn, of Ellsworth, Maine, which reads 

 as follows : 



"I have just seen [date June 22, 1893] the queen lay an 

 egg in a queen-cell, the same being not more than 10 minutes 

 ago. I thought I would write you at once so I could give all the 

 details correctly. There is a one-inch space between the 

 frames and the glass [Mr. E. has a glass in the back of a part 

 of his hives], and the bees built a piece of drone-comb in this 

 space, the same having drone-brood in it. Looking in to-day 

 I saw a queen-cell half built on the edge of this in plain view. 

 The queen was about an inch from this cell, and one of the 

 bees was feeding her. After a moment she past in between 

 the frames for a second or so, when she came back and went 

 directly to the queen-cell, put her head up Into the cell, then 

 curving her abdomen, she inserted it well up in the cell and 

 deposited the egg. After laying the egg she again examined 

 the cell, remaining in it with her head perhaps 10 seconds. I 

 have written at some length, for the queen seemed to be so 

 particular. I have seen queens lay in worker-comb many 

 times; and while they would examine the cells before laying 

 in them, yet I never saw one look into a cell after she had 

 laid an egg in it, as did this queen in the queen-cell she had 

 laid in." 



It will be noted that the correspondent says that the 

 queen Inserted her abdomen "well up In the cell," thus as- 

 suming the position she does in laying In a worker-cell, as far 



