1883 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



573 



one instance of such a removal, and that, perhaps, 

 not sti-ictly corresponding with the experience giv- 

 en by the writers, I detail it, not as an axiom in the 

 solution of the problem, but to show very conclu- 

 sively that the bees do not always " eat " the eggs to 

 get them out of the way. 



One morning during the swarming season, in the 

 latter part of June last, while looking after a second 

 swarm of blacks that were hived the day previous, I 

 found a dead virgin queen at the entrance of the 

 hive, that had been brought out during the night, so 

 it appeared; and surmising she had received injury 

 when the swarm was hived, I gave the bees a piece 

 of new comb containing eggs taken from a colony of 

 hybrids about ten days old. The third day after the 

 comb was put into the hive, T opened it to see if the 

 bees had started queen-cells, and found the piece 

 of comb nicely fastened, but the eggs had been re- 

 moved. On further examination I found a fine 

 young queen (the fittest survival, probably), and sev- 

 eral sheets of comb nearly completed. 



Not wishing to further disturb the bees, I wailed a 

 few days, after which, on looking the combs over, 1 

 found a small patch of capped brood. The queen 

 had not begun to lay, but commenced soon after. 

 When the swarm was hived 1 have no recollection of 

 seeing any bees in it showing yellow bands, and I do 

 not believe there were any such, for they came from 

 a hive (box hive) of genuine blacks; but there is 

 now, and has been since young bees began to make 

 their appearance in the hive, a slight sprinkling of 

 hybrids, some with two, and others with three indi- 

 ces of Italian origin. In Mr. Pond's operation, the 

 comb containing the eggs was placed over the brood- 

 combs, and a free passage to it provided for the bees 

 from below. The eggs were removed; but as both 

 colonies (the one from which the eggs were taken, 

 and the one over which they were placed) were Ital- 

 ian, there was no way of deciding how the bees dis- 

 posed of them. In my operation, the eggs were put 

 into the brood-chamber in proximity to the cluster 

 (as close as they could be without breaking it), and 

 the proof evinced in the appearance of yellow-band- 

 ed bees among the blacks comprising the major part 

 of the colony appears to indicate very conclusively 

 that those eggs were removed by the bees to their 

 own combs, cared for by them, and in due time pro- 

 duced the afore-mentioned hybrids. 



ONE-PIECE SECTIONS. 



I find in my Oct. No. of Gleanings a very concise 

 statement of Forncrook's patent one-piece-section 

 claims. It embodies my ideas exactly; and as I 

 have a section made by myself in Feb., 1878, that is 

 a facsimile of Forncrook's, with the exception of 

 the longitudinal groove, I think my claim is as good 

 as his to the invention. When I " whittled it out " I 

 had seen but one honey-section before— the kind 

 used by the Hetheringtons, as I afterward learned. 



Cumberland, Me., Oct. 8, 1883. J. F. Latham. 



Friend L., your fact is a good one, yet I 

 fear you are in error in one respect. You 

 say your black swarm was a second swarm, 

 and so of course it woixld have a virgin 

 queen. Now, if Italians were all around 

 you, this queen would most likely meet an 

 Italian drone, and you quite probably have 

 the kind of bees you mention, without their 

 coming from that patch of brood. The case 

 is a singular one. I have never known bees 

 to move eggs in regular order so as to make 

 a patch of brood somewhere else, although 



we have many reports of moving eggs or 

 larvfp for starting queen - cells, and these 

 queen-cells are often on their old combs. 



KEPORT FOR THE SEASON OF 1883. 



FRIEND DOOLiriLE HAS STILL ANOTHER GOOD YIELD. 



ig'f^T Will be remembered that I put in winter quar- 

 ters, a ypar ag), 80 colonies of bees, 37 of which 

 were to be wintered in the cellar, and 43 on 

 their summer stands. Of those wintered outdoors, 

 32 came through alive, ;J0 of which were fairly 

 good colonies, and the remaining 13 from weak to 

 very weak. Of the 37 placed in the cellar, all came 

 through alive, and 34 of them were good colonies, 

 with but 3 weak ones, showing that, for a steady 

 cold winter, the cellar is the best place to winter 

 bets in this locnlity. Elm and soft-maple yielded 

 pollen (jiiite plentifully on ^pril 14, so the bees were 

 set out of the cellir, as it has been published that, 

 when pollen becomes plentiful, was the right lime to 

 set the bees out, for we could then depend on warm 

 weather. However this may be as a rule, it did not 

 work this time; for in a day or two it came off cold, 

 and we had two weeks of very cold weather. On 

 the morning of April 30, Skaneateles Lake (16 miles 

 long and 2 miles wide) was frozen over nearly the 

 whole length of it, the mercury going as low as 18° 

 above zero. This killed all the pollen flowers which 

 were open, or near opening, and reduced our bees, 

 as to numerical strength, greatly, especially those 

 just out of the cel]ar. By sale of bees and queens, 

 my number was reduced to 55 colonies, 40 of which 

 I decided to work for honey, and the remaining 15 

 were to be used for queen-rearing, as they were too 

 weak to be of much value to produce honey. 



Our season has been a most peculiar one. About 

 May 10 it carae off warm, and remained so for about 

 two or three weeks, when it began to rain, and it 

 was rain, rain, nearly every day from then till about 

 July 30, at which time we had about two weeks of 

 dry weather, when it commenced to rain again, we 

 having but two or three dry days at a time since. 

 Besides, the season has been universally cold — so 

 much so that corn was at least a month later than 

 usual, the frost killing it before most pieces were 

 ready to cut. Owing to this cold and wet weather, 

 the bees were scarcely able to get a living up to July 

 16, although the fields were white with clover, and 

 blossoms were plentiful on every hand. I had to 

 feed about two to three hundred pounds of old hon- 

 ey, to keep mine along in good condition to take ad- 

 vantage of a flow of honey, should such happen to 

 come, which thing happened on the morning of July 

 16; for at that time the basswood opened its flowers, 

 sparkling with nectar, inviting the bees to a feast 

 which they were very glad to accept. Although it 

 rained nearly every day for the next week, still the 

 bees would rush out as soon as a shower had passed, 

 coming home a little later, so loaded as to be unable 

 to reach the hive. As the basswood flowers are so 

 shaped that they shed rain, it keeps th-i water out 

 of the nectar, so the bees can work after a rain, 

 when tht-y could not do so on clover and other flow- 

 ers, which St arid upright so as to catch all the water. 

 At the end of a week it came off cold, and for three 

 days scarcely a bee ventured from the hive, for the 

 mercury rose scarcely to 50° during the middle of 

 the day. But when it did warm up, the bees were 

 on hand again; and during the next week they 



