600 



TrnW, JtME'RieMlf WMM JO^MIfMlr. 



young queens in their cells, " Quahk, 

 quahk." 



When no further swarming is in- 

 tended, all the young queens who are 

 sufficiently matured are allowed to 

 emerge from their cells, and when two 

 of these meet, a deadly combat ensues. 

 One of them stings the other to death, 

 and strangely enough the victor is never 

 injured in the struggle, for neither one 

 stings till she gets in a position to deal 

 a death thrust without danger to her- 

 self. In this way the conflict continues 

 till all the queens but one are killed, 

 and those remaining unhatched are 

 despatched in their cradles. 



These queen cells, of which I have 

 been speaking, are usually found on the 

 edges of the comb, and sometimes even 

 on the wood that surrounds the comb. 

 If a hole happens to be in any part of a 

 comb the bees are likely to make use of 

 the space for a queen-cell. If the 

 queen is at any time lost, when no pre- 

 vious preparation has been made for 

 rearing a young queen, a different 

 course is pursued. 



The bees select a young larva in a 

 worker-cell, which, under ordinary cir- 

 cumstances, would have produced a 

 worker, enlarge its cell greatly, destroy- 

 ing, if necessary, the adjacent cells for 

 that purpose, feed it lavishly so that 

 the little grub is literally swimming in a 

 sea of food, and in due time it emerges 

 a perfect queen. 



If it should happen that nothing but 

 drone eggs are in the hive, the poor 

 bees will try their best to rear a queen 

 from one of these, but it never grows 

 into anything but a drone, and, I think, 

 always dies in the cell. The fact is, 

 there are only two kinds of eggs, drone 

 and worker or queen, for any and every 

 worker egg with the right kind of food 

 and treatment will produce a queen. 



The young worker has its rations 

 very accurately dealt out, just enough, 

 and not a particle is left over; but 

 there is no stint in feeding the young 

 queen, and when she hatches out of her 

 cell there is usually enough food {or 

 royal jelli/, as it is called) left to make 

 one think another queen might have 

 been reared on it. 



The time required for hatching out 

 the perfect bee from the laying of the 

 egg is, tor the drone twenty-four days, 

 for the worker twenty-one, and for the 

 queen sixteen. Curiously enough, the 

 one that matures the soonest lives the 

 longest, for the queen attains the age 

 of two, three and sometimes five years. 



The life of the worker seems to de- 

 pend on the amount of work it does, in 

 the honey harvest living only about six 

 weeks; but those which are hatched 

 late in summer live over till the next 

 spring. It is hard to tell just how long 

 the drone would live if let alone, for 

 when forage in the fields become scarce 

 he is mercilessly driven from the hive 

 to perish. 



The drone is the male and is a lazy 

 scamp, for he not only does nothing 

 toward laying up stores in the hive, but 

 does not even visit the flowers for his 

 own food. He helps himself to the 

 stores gathered by the workers, then 

 flies about for exercise, and comes back 

 with a good appetite for more. 



There seems to be a popular impres- 

 sion that a queen is surrounded by a 



body-guard or a number of courtiers 

 always accompanying her, and ready to 

 attend to her every want, while some 

 have the nolinn that the queen-cell is a 

 kind of throne where the queen holds 

 court and may be found at all times. 



So far is this from being true, the 

 queen cell is torn down shortly after 

 the young queen hatches out, aud be- 

 fore she IS two weeks old she com- 

 mences laying and may be found in any 

 part of the hive. 



No bee accompanies her, but if at any 

 time she stops at any point, the workers 

 near her form a circle about her, all 

 facing the queen as if to do her honor. 

 Presently the queen moves on, and the 

 retinue is broken up, to be formed 

 again when she next makes a halt, but 

 the retinue is formed by a fresh lot of 

 workers each time. 



Within the past fifty years great pro- 

 gress has been made in bee-culture. 

 Some men take as much pride in their 

 stock of bees as others do in their stock 

 of cattle, and fresh importations are 

 constantly made from other lands, 

 Egypt, Palestine, the Isle of Cyprus, 

 but chiefly from Italy. The Italian bee 

 is distinguished from the common 

 black bee by having three yellow bands 

 upon its abdomen, being more beautiful 

 in appearance and more industrious in 

 character. 



I have only touched upon a few points 

 of interest relating to the honey-bee. 

 That the subject is a large one may be 

 judged from the fact that there are 

 published in the English language three 

 weekly periodicals devoted entirely to 

 bee-culture, besides a number published 

 monthly and semi-monthly. 



Marengo, 111. 



POOR SEASON. 



Some Oood Advice about Hie 

 Fall Care of Bees. 



Written for the American Bee Journal 

 BY CHARLES F. MUTH. 



It requires but a small amount of 

 skill and experience to produce a large 

 amount of honey in bee-hives or nail- 

 kegs when the season and surroundings 

 are favorable ; we all know that some 

 of our brethren going in favored local- 

 ities have their egotism tickled more 

 than is necessary when a large crop is 

 realized. Their celebrated hives, in- 

 ventions of their own ; their celebrated 

 methods of manipulation, their fine 

 theories and never-ending arguments, 

 would all drop out of sight with them- 

 selves, if they were living in a locality 

 like we " poor chaps " who have had 

 four poor honey seasons in succession. 



The season of 1888 is as bad as any 

 we have had, and although I never ex- 

 perienced or heard of a colony of bees 

 starving in the month of August, such 

 things are possible, and it is the object 

 of this article to put my neighbors on 

 their guard. 



My bees had, during this season, 8 

 acres of Alsike clover in their imme- 

 diate vicinity, and I extracted 150 lbs. 

 from about 20 colonies, which should 

 not have been done, judging by present 



appearances. I examined my colonies 

 about Aug. 20, and found all strong in 

 bees and brood, but, with a small 

 amount of stores. A June swarm, 

 hived on 10 full combs, had every comb 

 filled with brood in all stages and not a 

 drop of honey. I supplied them at once, 

 as a matter of course. It is a peculiar 

 fact that Italian bees, with a vigorous 

 queen, will fill their combs with brood 

 during a dearth, when with blacks, as 

 a rule, almost all breeding would cease. 



My colony referred to above, is now 

 one of the best in my apiary, but would 

 have starved to death in less than 3 

 days, as a cool, rainy spell set in while 

 the food was still on their hive, lasting 

 for three days or more. There are 20 

 acres of buckwheat in full bloom, and 

 in view of the apiary, which would not 

 have saved it from starvation. 



There are hundreds of colonies of 

 bees in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky, 

 in a worse condition than mine, which 

 may starve to death between now and 

 the beginning of winter, unless they are 

 provided promptlv. 



Cincinnati, O., Aug. 30, 1888. 



ORIG-IN OF HONEY. 



Wliere doe§ the Honey come 

 from ? 



Written for the American Bee Journal 

 BY JAMES HEDDON. 



There have been many interesting 

 articles written under the title of 

 "Where honey comes from," and after 

 reading them all, I can think of no 

 heading more appropriate to my under- 

 standing of the matter, than '' Where 

 docs honey come from?" After last 

 season's severe drought, we had some- 

 thing less than half the usual white 

 clover bloom, and the basswood bloom 

 was an average one. From all I know 

 after twenty years' experience, I should 

 not have had much if any different 

 weather during the above blooming, 

 could I have fixed it my own way. But 

 now, strange to say, of white clover 

 honey we get almost none, and no more 

 than one-sixth of the crop of basswood, 

 nearly all of which was taken in the 

 extracted form. 



For the last four years we have 

 secured but little amber honey which 

 comes from buckwheat and weeds, dur- 

 ing the months of August and Septem- 

 ber, and we credited the failure to the 

 droughts which occurred each year. 

 Now this year we have the same August 

 drought as bad as ever, and we have 

 almost an average yield of this so-called 

 " fall honey." Buckwheat yielded well, 

 right in the drought. Now I am non- 

 plussed ; my observations would lead 

 me to say to a novice who might ask me 

 where honey comes from, that " it just 

 comes out of the air ; " and if he asked 

 me under what conditions, I might say, 

 " when it wants to." 



The pleurisy-root which I have writ- 

 ten about, as the best honey-plant I am 

 acquainted with, actually shared the 

 fate of the clover and buckwheat of 

 this season, at least to a certain extent. 

 Certainly the bees worked on it, con- 



