650 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Oct. 10, 



colony has been the completion of about 100 sections of honey. 

 If I were to stop here the judgment of apiarists, from what I 

 have written, would most likely not bo favorable to the use of 

 big hives for comb honey. I5ut there is another side to the 

 picture. One in five of my colonies in the big hives have 

 swarmed. All of my colonies in 8-frarae hives have swarmed, 

 with the exceptions noted, viz.: one qiieenless, one with a 

 clipped queen, and the two lots from Texas. 



Now if the other colonies in the S-frame hives had all 

 been in the large hives, with combs all built, and only one in 

 five had swarmed, I should have had more surplus honey than 

 I have now. Apiarists can get some big yields from some of 

 their colonies in small hives, but then they are quite liable to 

 have a good many colonies from which they get no yield at all. 



Next season I shall make and use some hives 12 inches 

 deep, and of a length and width to take the supers of the 

 lO-frame dovetailed hive. This hive will have about the 

 same capacity as the Dadant extracting-hives, and will be 

 used for comb honey till 1 am satisfied that there is a positive 

 disadvantage in using them. They will not be moved about 

 much. I would like to avoid the many manipulations that 

 seem to be necessary for the successful production of comb 

 honey in the standard hive. 



The Bke-Escai'e. — It is often said, and doubtless with 

 truth, that the smoker is the most indispensable thing in the 

 apiary, but I have gotten a dreat deal of comfort this season 

 out of the Porter bee-escape. There was one case of seeming 

 failure, however. I put the escape on under a large extract- 

 ing-case, one moruing, and towards night an examination 

 showed that but few bees had passed out. The next morning 

 it was the same way, and I left the escape on till the following 

 morning. Then I found a good many bees on the combs, and 

 ■was a good deal vexed, but concluded that I would smoke 

 them out. After smoking and brushing awhile, I noticed that 

 a good many bees were lying around not so large as they 

 ought to bs, and they did not seera to know much. A further 

 examination showed that the three middle frames were about 

 half full of brood, and then my vexation towards the escape 

 vanished like morning dew. 



Since writing the foregoing paragraph I have had another 

 case of seeming failure of the escape to do its duty. It was 

 put on one morning under a case of sections, and at evening 

 the bees seemed to be all in the super that were there in the 

 morning. It was left till the next morning, and then on rais- 

 ing the cover I found the bees all there. Very reluctantly I 

 resolved to smoke them out, as they were the gentlest bees 

 and the best workers in the yard. When the escape was re- 

 moved, a good many bees stuck to the boards, and they were 

 Jaid to one side with it while I smoked the others. 



No further attention was paid to them till some time in 

 the afternoon, when I wanted the escape to put on another 

 hive. On picking it up, there was seen a small cluster of 

 bees under a shady corner of the board. A few of these bees 

 clung to the board, and among them was the queen. Then 

 my faith in the escape returned. I carried the queen to the 

 entrance of the hive, and saw her run in, with a good deal of 

 satisfaction. 



Three-Banded Bees. — I hope a certain Texas queen- 

 breeder will not be offended if I here record the preformance 

 of one of the 3-banded Italian queens which I got in the 

 spring of 18H4. The colony of which she was the head sent 

 out a swarm May 0. Another swarm issued from the same 

 hive 12 days later. Then the first swarra has swarmed twice, 

 and the second one once this summer. The original colony 

 got so strong a few days ago that a 2-frame nucleus was 

 taken from it to keep it from swarming again. This makes 

 six colonies and one nucleus due to this queen this season. 

 Her bees are the gentlest I ever handled. No accurate record 

 of the honey taken from these six colonies has been kept, but 

 it is not less than one full case of sections from each colony. 

 All of them have eases on at this date (Aug. 27), and it is safe 

 to say that they are half filled. 



Another colony, with one of the same breeder's queens, 

 swarmed early, and the swarm swarmed July 15. Since then 

 this last swarm has filled a big lO-frame extracting hive full 

 of honey and brood, and is itself threatening to swarm. 



Manipulations. — In conclusion, I will remark that here- 

 tofore I have read apiarian literature partly with a view to 

 learn what manipulations successful bee-keepers go through 

 with in the management of their bees. Hereafter it will be 

 ray study to avoid as many manipulations as possible, and at 

 the same time secure good results in surplus honey. 



Leon, Iowa. 



CONDUCTED By 



Rei'. Emerson T. Abbott, St. «7osepli, AIo. 



Instinct. — "The bees are gathering honey and pollen 

 for the sustenance of generations yet unborn, thus furnishing 

 a striking illustration of that foresight which, for want of a 

 better name and to conceal our ignorance, we call instinct." — 

 Mr. Weed, in "Ten New England Blossoms." 



Very true, that word instinct has been used all aloni? 

 down the ages to explain all the actions of animals, which 

 man in his egotism has refused to call intelligence. A noted 

 French writer says : 



"For ourselves, we have never well understood what 

 people mean by instinct ; and we frankly grant to the bees 

 intelligence, as we do also to many animals. The great num- 

 ber of the acts of their life seem to be the result of an idea, a 

 mental deliberation, a determination come to after examina- 

 tion and reflection." 



Locating their home is one of these acts on the part of the 

 bees. While lecturing at the State University, the Professor 

 of Biology asked me how I accounted for some of the acts of 

 the bees. I replied that they know things the same as men 

 and women. I was pleased to note his reply, as it was in har- 

 mony with my own views. He remarked : " There can be no 

 question about that ; it is very convenient to call it instinct, 

 but it is knowledge just the same." 



Romanes says: " Instinct is the conscious performance of 

 actions that are adaptive in character, but pursued without 

 necessary knowledge of the relation between the means em- 

 ployed and the ends attained." According to this definition 

 of instinct, the bees surely have something more, for who will 

 deny that they do not have the "necessary knowledge of the 

 relation between the means employed and the end attained," 

 when they take a worker-larva and give it the proper food, or 

 quantity of food, to produce a queen ? If they do not do some 

 reasoning — thinking, if you please — about the matter, how do 

 they know when to give the food and when to withhold it ? 

 This is ouly one of a great many acts on the part of the bees 

 which cannot be accounted for except on the ground of intelli- 

 gence. Romanes well says: "We must, however, remember 

 that instiuctive actions are very commonly tempered with 

 what Huber calls ' a little dose of judgment, or reason.'" 

 Notwithstanding this admission, he, like many others, labors 

 hard to show that there is a wide chasm between reason and 

 instinct, but to me it seems to be a "distinction without a dif- 

 ference." I much prefer to fall in with the idea of the 

 Frenchman quoted above, and "frankly graut to the bee in- 

 telligence." I know this idea is not so flattering to man's 

 egotism, but it is more in harmony with the facts, and the ad- 

 vanced ideas of the 19th century. 



Carrying Es^gs. — The British bee-keepers have been 

 discussing this subject, and in the British Bee Journal of Aug. 

 29th, Mr. Peter Scattergood, who seems to be a careful obser- 

 ver, gives some facts which are worth repeating. 



To a colony, which has been queenless for some days, he 

 introduced a queen by caging her on one of the combs. There 

 were no signs of eggs or unsealed brood in the hive. She was 

 left caged five days. Some 200 cells were filled with brood 

 while the queen was caged, and the inference is that the 

 queen dropped the eggs while in the cage, and the bees gath- 

 ered them up. Both drones and workers were reared from 

 this brood. The bees were much lighter than any others in 

 Mr. S.'s apiary, as his other bees were all black, so that he is 

 quite sure that the eggs could not have been l^id by any other 

 queen than the one caged. He says : 



"The fact of workers and drones of a distinctly Ji(/?iter 

 color to any of my bees resulting from the eggs deposited in 

 the cells, furnishes a complete corroboration of the theory 

 that the eggs were laid by the queen while caged, and were 

 carried by the bees into the cells in which the workers and 

 drones mentioned have been reared." 



If this be true — the evidence as given seems very convinc- 

 ing — it does away with the theory that the shape of the cell 

 has anything to do with the kind of eggs which the queen 

 lays. It also establishes the fact that the workers know when 

 an egg has been fertilized ; for, if they did not, how would 

 they know to put the drone-eggs into the proper cells? This 

 all seems very strange at first thought, but it is not so strange 

 after all, for it has its analogy in other families of social in- 



