1877. 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



297 



ooinl), it was toiuul impossible to do so. 

 When all were litleil up at once, a mass of 

 webs nearly as large as one's head was 

 found, in place of the honey and combs. So 

 much for not keeping a careful watch of 

 such property. 



By way of summing up, I would say : Use 

 plain simple uni)atented hives, get Italians 

 as soon as you can, keep your colonies s-tr )ng, 

 l)e sure Ihit none of them by any n\e:ius be- 

 come (jueenless, and you need have no so- 

 licitude in regard to the bi'e-moth among 

 your bees. If you have spare combs, or 

 comb honey that has been taken away from 

 the bees in warm weather, keep an eye on it, 

 and either destroy the w^)rms as soon as 

 they appear, or fumigate them as I have di- 

 rected. When your eye has become trained, 

 you will detect the very iirst appearance of 

 a worm, by its excrement, in the shape of a 

 line white powder. We sonu^times hunt 

 them oiit thus and destroy them, when they 

 are so small as to be only just visible to the 

 naked eye. (iiving your combs a good freeze, 

 will answer the same purpose as the fum- 

 igation. 



BZiZSS. Every body knows what bees 

 are I suppose, and therefore I need not at- 

 tempt to give you a picture of them. If you 

 contemplate becoming a bee-keeper, I would 

 advise you to get a hive of them and then to 

 \ise your own eyes and eai"s, to see if what I 

 tell you about them is true. At present we 

 have but two varieties of bees that are in 

 common use for the production of honey, 

 and with the vast difference in favor of the 

 Italians, we shall very soon have only the 

 Italians. The Egyptians liave been tried in 

 oiu" country to some extent, but are I believe 

 inferior to the Italians, besides being much 

 more vindictive. Bees from the island of 

 l!yprus have been talked of somewliat, but 

 so far as I can learn, they differ but little, if 

 any, from the pure Italians. Albino bees 

 have also been talked about, l)ut after test- 

 ing them in my own apiary, I find them lit- 

 tle different from the common Italians. The 

 fringe or down, that appeai-s on the rings of 

 the abdomen of young bees, is a trifle whiter 

 than usual, but no one would observe it un- 

 less his attention were called to it. The 

 queens are very yellow, but the workei-s as 

 lioney gatherers, are decidedly inferi(n', even 

 to the second generation; and when we select 

 light colored bees or (jueens for several suc- 

 cessive generations, if we are not careful, 

 we shall have a w'orker i)rogeny lacking as 

 honey gatherei-s, and in ability to endure. 

 By selection, we can get almost anything we I 



want, and that quite speedily with bees, for 

 we can i)roduce several generations in a 

 singh^ season, if need be. 



It is said in the South, that they have two 

 varieties of the common or black bee, but it 

 is quite likely they are one and the same 

 thing, for bees in the same neighborhood, 

 vary much in color; tlie bees of one colony 

 may be almost a brown, wiiile in another 

 they are almost black. I shall speak in this 

 book, of but two kinds, the black or (;om- 

 mon, and tiie Italian. 



now IlKES GROW. 



During warm weather, wliile your bees 

 are gathering honey, open yoiu- hive in the 

 middle of the day, and put in the center, a 

 frame containing a sheet of fdn; examine it 

 every night, morning and noon, until you 

 see eggs in the cells. If you put it between 

 two comi)s containing brood, you will very 

 likely find eggs in the cells the next day. If 

 you have never seen an egg that is to i)ro- 

 duce a bee, you may have to look very slrarp 

 the firet time, for they are white like polish- 

 ed ivory, and scarcely larger than one of the 

 periods in this print. They will be seen in 

 the center of the cell attached to the comb 

 by one end. As soon as you discover eggs, 

 mark down the date. If the weather is fa- 

 vorable, these eggs will hatch out in about 3 

 days or a little more, and in place of the egg, 

 you will, if you look sharp enough, see a 

 tiny wliite worm or grub floating in a min- 

 ute drop of milky fluid. If you watch the 

 bees, you will find them incessantly poking 

 their heads into these cells, and it is likely 

 that tlie milky fluid is placed on and about 

 the egg, a little before the inmate breaks its 

 w^ay out of the shell. I infer this, because I 

 have never been able to get the eggs to 

 iratch, when taken away from the bees, al- 

 though I have carefully kept the tenii>er- 

 ature at the same point as in the hive. These 

 worms are really the young l^ee, in its larvae 

 state, and we shall in future call them 

 larvae. They thrive and grow very rapidly, 

 on their bread and milk diet, as you will see 

 if you look at them often. They will more 

 than do\ible in size in a single half day, and 

 in the short si)ace of 3 days, they will have 

 grown from a mere speck to the size of a 

 full grown bee, or so as to completely fill the 

 cell. This seems almost incredible, but 

 there they are, right before your eyes. I 

 l)resume it is owing to the highly concentrat- 

 ed luiture of this same "bread and milk" 

 food, that the w^orkers are so constantly giv- 

 ing them, that they grow so rapidly. If yon 

 take the comb away from the bees for a little 



