438 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



hearing," for I verily believe that this 

 big, jolly, musical inmate of the hive 

 has been terribly slandered. 



This has been rather a peculiar sea- 

 son in this latitude. A part of the 

 time bees have just '' boomed," and 

 then the wet and cold would stop their 

 work altogether. My bees are in bet- 

 ter condition now than they were last 

 year this time, and yet I harvested a 

 large crop of comb honey last season. 

 The weatlier has ceased to be cold, 

 but it has been wet and cloudy with- 

 out let up for near a week. I never 

 saw so good a crop of white clover 

 here as we have this summer, and 

 when the sun shines for a few hours 

 the bees gather honey very fast. We 

 have a good deal of linden in this 

 locality, and catnip, tigwort, hearts- 

 ease and numerous other honey-pro- 

 ducing plants, tlie names of wiiich I 

 do not know, abound ; but the cham- 

 pion of them all is tlie horsemint, 

 alias, bee-mint, camphor weed, sand- 

 mint, wild bergamot, etc. It is one 

 of the very best of yielders; lasts 

 from 4 to 6 weeks, and tlie honey 



fathered from it is of superior quality, 

 t commences to bloom from July 

 5th to lOtli ; grows on very sandy land, 

 and literally covers our roadsides, 

 commons, and uncultivated (ields. I 

 wonder if it is the same plant that 

 the Texas bee-keepers speak of as so 

 valuable with them y 

 Keithsburg, 111. 



London .Tournal of Horticulturo. 



Prolonging the Life of the Quecu Bee. 



DK. DZIERZON. 



The celebrated physician Ilufeland 

 wrote a book on the art of prolonging 

 human life. But if there can be a 

 question of prolonging human life ar- 

 tificially, we might certainly expect 

 to be able to prolong the life of bees, 

 the more so as their term of life, is at- 

 tained under varying conditions and 

 at different times of the season. 

 While they exhaust their strength 

 and die in about six weeks during the 

 busiest time in spring and summer, 

 bees reared late in the summer and in 

 autumn look as strong and young on 

 their lirst appearance in spring after 

 six months' rest during autumn and 

 winter as if they had only just left 

 their cells. What is applicable to 

 bees in general must equally apply to 

 the principal bee in the hive— the 

 queen, and to lier I shall chiefly refer 

 in discussing the question of tlie dura- 

 tion of life and the possibility of pro- 

 longing it. 



Tliis question is as interesting as it 

 is of practical importance. The case 

 of so small an insect as a queen bee, 

 which leaves her cell at the end of 16 

 days, and might possibly be fertile 

 and capable of propagating the spe- 

 cies at the end of tliree weeks, to live 

 to the age of four to five years or 

 more, and to be able during this time 

 to produce offspring to the number of 

 about 1 ,500,000, lias probably no par- 

 allel in tlie entire range of nature. 

 The question as to the duration of the 

 queen's life and the possibility of pro- 

 longing it is of a highly practical im- 



portance where the introduction of a 

 new and superior race of bees de- 

 pends on a valuable queen bee, ob- 

 tained, perhaps, at considerable ex- 

 pense. When a bee-master has no 

 isolated apiary it is difficult to keep a 

 race pure until a considerable number 

 of colonies have been formed, which 

 send out drones in large numbers. 

 A bee-keeper of no great experience 

 will also find it difficult to determine 

 with certainty whether the young 

 queen of a colony has been impregna- 

 ted by a drone of her own race, espe- 

 cially when races do not greatly differ 

 in color. 



In rearing queens, bee-masters, 

 therefore, as a matter of precaution, 

 will always fall back upon the brood 

 from the parent colony in the second, 

 and even, perhaps, in the third year, 

 and are anxious of course to preserve 

 the old queen as long as possible. 



The question as to whether and how 

 the life of a queen may be prolonged, 

 was suggested to me by a dispute 

 which had arisen between Miss Titz 

 of Lasswitz, a great Silesian bee- 

 keeper, and a bee-master by the name 

 of St. 



Miss Titz, on the occasion of tlie 

 Neissen meeting, showed some friends 

 who paid a visit to her apiary, in ad- 

 dition to a number of curious objects, 

 an Italian queen bee, which she stated 

 to be six years old, adding that she 

 had succeeded in keeping this partic- 

 ularly pure and valuable queen alive 

 so long by keeping her from excessive 

 breeding. Mr. St. was of a different 

 opinion, maintaining that there was 

 no doubt a young queen had been 

 raised unnoticed, as, according to his 

 long experience, the life of an Italian 

 queen never exceeded tliree years. 

 He further asserted that the eggs be- 

 came developed in the ovary of the 

 queen and pass involuntarily, it being 

 impossible for any influence to be ex- 

 erted on the ovary. 



In my opinion Mr. St. is wrong on 

 both points. Altliough six years and 

 one month is certainly an unusually 

 great age for a queen bee, it is not by 

 any means impossible and incredible 

 that she might attain that age. 



Some years ago I myself had a 

 queen which, though more than five 

 years old, was still very active, and I 

 have no doubt would have lived an- 

 other year if I had not destroyed lier. 

 Sig. Hruschka assured me that he had 

 had a queen which lived to tlie age of 

 seven years. It appears, therefore, 

 quite credible that the queen referred 

 to lived to the age of six years, the 

 more so as she was a fine and vigor- 

 ous specimen, and was carefully kept 

 from over-exerting herself. 



There is no doubt wliatever that it 

 is feasible and in the power of the 

 bee-keeper at one time to stimulate 

 the queen to excessive breeding, and 

 at another time to induce her to de- 

 posit few eggs or none at all. By 

 keeping the entire colony quiet in 

 spring as long as possible, premature 

 breeding is prevented, and the queen 

 does not waste lier strength. 



When once she has commenced lay- 

 ing eggs she knows perfectly well how 

 to accommodate herself to circum- 

 stances and the requirements of tlie 



colony as regards the number of eggs 

 to be deposited. According to the 

 quantity and quality of the food she 

 has taken she produces and deposits- 

 as many eggs as the colony is capable 

 of attending to. It is certain that the 

 queen is also able to keep a mature 

 egg back in the ovary for some time 

 without injury to lierself or to the 

 egg, as she is often obliged to exam- 

 ine a number of cells before she finds 

 one that is empty and suitable, and in 

 which slie deposits the eggs, which 

 undoubtedly would liave been deposi- 

 ted into the first cell examined by the 

 queen if she had found it empty and 

 otherwise suitable. A much larger 

 number of eggs will therefore in the 

 same time be deiwsited in an empty 

 comb inserted into the brood nest, be- 

 cause on an empty comb she can pass 

 from cell to cell, there being no need 

 for her to examine any cell nor to pass 

 any over. A comb containing 6,000 

 cells is often found full of eggs at the 

 end of two days, which shows that a 

 vigorous queen is capable of laying as 

 many as 3,000 eggs a day. We might 

 be inclined to consider that the queen 

 was over-exerting herself at that rate, 

 and in a certain sense we should be 

 correct ; but we must not for a mo- 

 ment suppose that such productive- 

 ness would fatigue or inconvenience 

 the queen. She evidently discharges 

 with energy and pleasure her duty to 

 increase the population of her hive as 

 much as possible, and the less hind- 

 rance she experiences in doing so tlie 

 better she will be. The most vigor- 

 ous queens, therefore, are always to 

 be found in the largest colonies, 

 where of course tlie number of eggs 

 deposited is largest. Where the queen 

 is obliged to discontinue laying eggs 

 on account of the stock having but a 

 small population fatal consequences 

 seem to result. 



In former years before the Italian 

 bees had become acclimatized, which 

 has now been fully accomplished af- 

 ter 29 years' nuuiipulation, I fre- 

 quently experienced the loss of Ital- 

 ian queens in weak colonies after 

 they had commenced depositing eggs 

 in spring, but were compelled to dis- 

 continue on a sudden change in the 

 weather, because the bees were 

 obliged to crowd together again into 

 a thick cluster. The abdomen of the 

 queen in such cases being found very 

 much distended, the conclusion was 

 forced upon me that the impossibility 

 of depositing the eggs formed in the 

 ovary had proved fatal to the queens. 



This unpleasant occurrence has 

 never happened in any of my strong 

 colonies, undoubtedly because the 

 queen was always able to deposit eggs 

 regularly, even during cold weatlier. 

 But the fact that queens in strong 

 colonies are always in first-rate condi- 

 tion at the time of their greatest pro- 

 lificness does not exclude the possi- 

 bility, or even probability, of their be- 

 coming exhausted sooner, or dying 

 prematurely, rrofessional physiolo- 

 gists alone will be able to answer the 

 (piestion as to whether a queen bee 

 is only capable of laying a definite 

 number of eggs, or whether eggs are 

 produced indefinitely as long as the 

 vital power of the queen lasts. Prac- 



