THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



681 



months in the dormant state, and 

 they came out all right. I did not 

 take a bee-paper then, and I did not 

 think much about it. I am very much 

 surprised that the bee-fraternity had 

 not discovered it sooner. 

 Ostrander,© O., Oct. 14, 1887. 



[Perhaps the Rev. W. F. Clarke 

 ■will have soqjething to write on this 

 matter, as it touches his theory.— Ed.] 



Farmers' Hume Journal. 



Hints to BeEinners— Handling Bees, 



O. Vf. DEMAREE. 



The art of handling, or in bee par- 

 lance manipulating bees, is looked 

 upon by the uninitiated as a great 

 mystery— a species of jugglery ; but 

 such is not the case. A beneScent 

 Creator has given man dominion over 

 the creatures which he has given him 

 for his support and proflt. And it is 

 the privilege and duty of man to 

 study their habits and capabilities, 

 that he may control and care for them 

 intelligently, both with profit and 

 pleasure to himself. 



The farmer has certain methods by 

 which he manages and controls his 

 live stock— methods which conform 

 to their habits and natural history. 

 In the same way the bee-man manip- 

 ulates his bees, using methods con- 

 formable to their habits. 



FINDING CONDITION OF COLONIES, 



With a good smoker I can open any 

 well made, movable-frame hive (no 

 matter how many or what kind of 

 bees it contains), which has nice 

 straight combs, and lift outthe combs 

 one at a time with the bees clustering 

 on them, and make the bees move 

 about with the point of my finger, 

 ■while I look for the queen or examine 

 for eggs and larvse in ihe cells. In 

 this way we may know when our bees 

 are about to swarm by looking for 

 queen-cells, which ordinarily appear 

 before a swarm issues. And if we 

 are rearing queens from fine stock, 

 and feel interested about them, we 

 may know just how matters are pro- 

 gressing by lifting out the frame on 

 which the queen-cells are built from 

 time to time, and know the very hour 

 that the young princess cuts her way 

 out of the royal cell. 



It will be seen that by means of 

 easy access to the interior of the bee- 

 hive, we may study the habits and 

 natural history of the bee at our 

 leisure, and if we are apt scholars we 

 may become masters in the science of 

 bee-keeping. 



TIME OF HEARING TOUNG BEES. 



If you wish to ascertain the length 

 of time it requires to produce a queen 

 from the egg, you may remove the 

 queen and all the unsealed brood 

 from a hive, thereby leaving the bees 

 hopelessly queenless ; then give them 

 a frame containing eggs from your 

 best queen, and you will find that the 

 eggs will hatch into minute white 

 worms, called larvae, in just three 

 days, and the bees will start queen- 



cells. At first the cells will resemble 

 small acorn cups, but as the royal in- 

 fants increase in size, the cells will be 

 enlarged and drawn out in a down- 

 ward direction, looking very much 

 like a peanut, and in about five days 

 after the cells are started, they will 

 be sealed over, and the royal larvse 

 will pass into the chrysalis state, 

 weaving about herself an exceedingly 

 delicate shroud, and in this state she 

 is metamorphosed into the perfect 

 imago, and cuts her way out of the 

 cell on the sixteenth day from the day 

 the egg was laid. 



Now, if we watch her movements, 

 she may be seen moving about among 

 the bees for three or four days, when 

 she will take a gay trip (sometimes 

 several of them) into the air to meet 

 the drones, and in a few more days 

 she will commence laying eggs. The 

 queen honey-bee ordinarily com- 

 mences to lay at nine or ten days old. 



Now let us trace the history of the 

 worker-bee. If you take a note of 

 the time the first eggs are laid you 

 will find that they will hatch into 

 minute larvse in three days, and in 

 about seven days more the larvse is 

 capped over (this we call seafled 

 brood), and on the twenty-first diy 

 from the day the eggs were laid the 

 worker-bees will begin to cut the 

 caps of the cells, and; " hatch out " 

 perfectly- developed worker bees. 



The drones are produced in the 

 same manner as the worker bees, ex- 

 cept that they are ordinarily reared 

 and nursed in drone-cells, the cap- 

 pings of which are much more con- 

 vexed than that of the worker-cells, 

 and thereby may be easily distin- 

 guished from the latter. It requires 

 twenty-three days to produce the 

 drone from the bee. 



AVERAGE LIFE OF BEES, 



The average life of the queen is 

 about three years, though they will 

 sometimes live four, and in extraord- 

 inary cases five years. This ■we as- 

 certain by clipping their wings so that 

 we may always know them. 



To ascertain the average life of the 

 worker bee is an easy matter since 

 the importation of the (yellow) Ital- 

 ian bees to this country. If you re- 

 move the qiieen from a colony of 

 black or dark colored bees, and in- 

 troduce an Italian queen in her stead 

 you will find that in less than ninety 

 days (if in the summer season) every 

 black bee will have disappeared, and 

 the yellow Italians will have taken 

 their place, indicating that the aver- 

 age life of the worker bee in the work- 

 ing season is about forty-live days. 

 But if you introduce an Italian queen 

 in the month of September, there will 

 be black bees living till the following 

 April or May, indicating that the 

 average life of the worker bee in a 

 state of rest, as in the winter season, 

 is perhaps five months, though some 

 of them may live to be six or seven 

 months old. With these facts before 

 us, we can realize the importance of 

 providing every colony with the best 

 queens that can be obtained, if we 

 would have strong colonies. 



Christiansburg,5 Ky. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Keening Bees near a Riyer, etc. 



JAMES DEVINE. 



In order to keep bees at a profit, 

 they should be located near a river, 

 and I will give the reason why, viz : 

 The 600 colonies of bees which I have 

 in charge, are in three different api- 

 aries, located from 2 to 4 miles apart. 

 Two of these apiaries are located 

 near a river, and do quite well, while 

 the third is not located near a river, 

 and the bees do poorly. 



The bees in this locality are not 

 doing much now, as the honey season 

 is about over. I am still taking off 

 honey, but I will get through in about 

 one week ; after finishing up, I will 

 have taken off somewhere between 

 50,000 to 52,000 sections of honey. 

 This part of the State, in the summer 

 time, is warm and dry, and in order 

 to raise crops, irrigation has to be 

 resorted to, which causes alfalfa to 

 grow abundantly. This gives good 

 pasturage for bees, and makes nice- 

 looking honey. The bees close the 

 honey season on sun-flowers, but the 

 honey thus gathered is dark. 



Bakersfleld,? Cailf., Oct. 2, 1887. 



prairie Farmer. 



Bees Do Not Mate Honey. 



MRS. L. HARRISON. 



Many have a mistaken idea in ref- 

 erence to honey. Some say : " I 

 thought honey was honey, all alike ; 

 but now I see it under different 

 brands — clover, linden, goldenrod, 

 buckwheat, etc., etc. If bees make 

 honey, why is it not all alike ?" Bees 

 make honey ! Right there is the mis- 

 take, and the solution of this prob- 

 lem. Bees do not make honey, and 

 never did; not even that found in 

 Samson's time, in the carcass of the 

 lion was made by bees. Neither do 

 bee-keepers make it. It is a vegeta- 

 ble sweet, generated in Nature's great 

 laboratory, which is located princi- 

 pally in the corollas of flowers,but not 

 there altogether. 



EVAPORATING HONEY AT NIGHT. 



When bees are gathering nectar 

 very rapidly, it is put into the cells 

 quite thin, but is never sealed up in 

 this condition. These original can- 

 ners know better than to do this, and 

 as they cannot gather it during the 

 night, they spend that time in boiling 

 down what has been collected during 

 the day. Evaporation may commence 

 in the honey-sac, as the bee flits from 

 flower to flower, and on the final trip 

 to the hive. Naturalists claim to 

 have noticed a fine spray emitted 

 from tlieir bodies, where many are 

 flying home laden totheii«hives. 



Bees hum very loudly at night, 

 during a large yield of honey, which 

 is caused by their fanning with their 

 wings while they work the honey 

 bacls-and-forth on their proboscis, in 

 much the same manner as a confec- 

 tioner does his candy. 



