358 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUEE. 



Nov 



out investing in expensive fixtures, is ex- 

 tremely praiseworthy. A feeling of praise- 

 worthy independence that is worth every- 

 thing ahnost is engendered by being able 

 to make what yon want, yourself, out of the 

 materials that lie about you, and cost you 

 comparatively nothing. 



HOAV MU< H CAIV AVK HELP THI# BEES 

 IN REARINO q>liEE>S ? 



^fj^EAR NOVICE: Having- recovered partially 

 jfell jB)) from an attack of my old malady, which for 

 %=-^ nearly two years has prevented me from tak- 

 ing any interest in bee matters, I venture to send 

 you a few thoughts on rearing- queens. 



Huber, in lTfl~, tells us how Burnens transferred 

 queen-larvic, preparing- to spin their cocoons, into 

 g-lass queen cells, where he could witness the whole 

 operation. Eig-ht years ago, Mr. K. Bickford gave 

 me some glass queen cells open at the top and base, 

 by iiisf'iting which into queen cells just begun, I 

 was able to repeat the experiment of Huber. 



In the third edition of my work on the Hive and 

 Honey Bee, 1 gave Kleine's method of availing him- 

 self of Dzierzon's suggestion; that as Huber, by in- 

 troducing some royal jelly into cells containing 

 worker brood, obtained queens, so it may be possi- 

 ble to induce bees to construct royal cells where the 

 apiarian prefers to have them, by inserting- a small 

 portion of royal jelly in cells containing worker lar- 



ViV. 



The late Mr. Richard Colvin showed me a method 

 of inducing bees to build queen cells in convenient 

 places, by enlarging with a round stick any cell 

 holding- a suitable larva. This plan sometimes suc- 

 ceeded H'lint na jillji was ijioen, as he could easily 

 spread out the mouth of the cell, so as to make it 

 somewhat resemble the appearance of a cell which 

 the bees have begun to enlarge for the rearing of a 

 queen. These de\ices, however curious, were of 

 little practical importance. 



The plan which you give in Gleanings for Sep- 

 tember seems more promising, as it proposes to 

 save to the bees a large part of the cost in building 

 queen cells. Trial alone can show whether they will 

 accept these artificial cells. I hope they will, but I 

 have often foiuid tliat tlicy would not do just the 

 very things that I most enntideiitly expected of them, 

 and I'ivr vcrKd. They hold the veto power over all 

 our (le\i('es, and cari neither be flattered, bribed, or 

 intimidated, to forego its legitimate exercise, nor 

 ha\-c they the slightest regard for even the seal of 

 the U. S. patent office! 



Now I, too, have taken a tinm around that famous 

 "stairway," but only in imagination, and therefore 

 I cannot warrant the results. I have found that 

 the transferring of larvie to queen cells is a delicate 

 manipulation, and whether from rough handling or 

 because the bees do not like to be dictated to, often 

 fails. Suppose that we could persvuide the bees to 

 undertake the job, themselves! It is well known 

 that, although they seldom transfer eggs from the 

 cells in which the queen has placed them to other 

 cells, as they know that she never puts them where 

 they ought not to remain, yet, not unfroquently, 

 when given brood to rear (lueens, they will remove 

 the larvic to other cells. 



Now, would it not be nice, as you often say, if, 

 when we give them rows of queen cells "stuck on a 

 stick," we could give them a tiny slice of comb with 

 eggs and very small larviP, and thus devolve upon 

 them the pleasing duty of putting- in their new cra- 

 dles the future mothers of the race? Rarely delicate 

 would bo their handling of these foster nurselings, 

 and perhaps much better than ours would their 

 judgment be as to just the proper age at which to 

 reiiio\e them. 



Hut for fear that, after all, either from heMike self 

 will or for want of some Belle-Newton, with deep 

 penetration, to show them how to avail themselves 

 of our admirable provisions, they should prefer to 

 rear them on the comb we give them, I would svig- 

 gest that the brood comb to be given them, after be- 

 ing reduced to— say one-half the depth of a normal 

 cell, should be so placed that while they have access 

 to its contents, they should have no room to build 

 upon it any royal cells. 



Now, lest some of your readers may think that I 

 am slyly making fim of our friend Novice, or else 

 that I am hopelessly visionary in the conceits which 

 I have superadded to his common sense device, I 



give the following, which I wrote for the American 

 Bee Journal, July, 1872, p. 3: 



EXTR.\^ORDIN.\KY INSTANCE OF SAGACITY IN BEES. 



The facts which we are about to relate, are the 

 most interesting of all the special bee wonders 

 which have come under our own observation. We 

 should hardly venture to give them to the readers 

 of the Journal, if we did not feel it to be a sacred 

 duty for every observer to give to the world any 

 such facts, however seemingly incredible, confident 

 that a/acf ("/acfum") in nature is a thing done by 

 the All-Wise Creator, and that in due time its verity 

 will be made apparent to all. 



In the year 18B4, we conceived the idea that a very 

 strong colony, queenless and without brood from 

 which to supply their loss, might perhaps, by having 

 only a few worker eggs or larvie given them, be in- 

 duced to rear queens of e.\tra size and beauty. To 

 such a stock, we gave a piece of comb about half an 

 inch wide and three inches long, containing suitable 

 brood. Examining it a few days after, we found a 

 dozen or more queen cells begun, and with the head 

 of a pin, removed the queen larvii? from all of them 

 but four, and left none in any of the other cells. 

 When those cells were all capped, we thought it 

 would be economy to set the sti-ong stock to work 

 upon a second lot. 



As we had put the first piece of comb into a place 

 cut out for it between one of the uprights of the 

 frame and the comb, we put the second into a simi- 

 lar place on the other side of the same comb. Lift- 

 ing out the combs a few days after to note progress, 

 we were surprised to find not a single royal cell be- 

 gun on this last inserted piece, and not a single lar- 

 v;e in any of its cells. Looking at the piece first put 

 in, to oiu' amazement, we found all the royal cells 

 from which the tenants had been extracted, occu- 

 pied afresh! and the cells much more advanced than 

 at the time we destroyed their first occupants. 

 These bees were evidently determined not to lose 

 the labor they had bestowed on the first set of cells, 

 and had removed to them the larvtc from the worker 

 cells on the opposite side ! 



After the lapse of U years, I still feel something 

 of the enthusiastic delight which thrilled me, as I 

 showed these Avonders to my family, and recorded 

 them in the journal which I had kept from 1852. 



L. L. Langstroth. 



Oxford, Ohio. 



We all most heartily rejoice, friend L., to 

 be able to get something from your pen 

 once more, and if it be a possible thing, 

 would be glad to have a sample of those 

 glass queen cells, in order to have enough 

 made, so that our readers may repeat this 

 wonderful experiment. It has been stated 

 that the queen, when spinning her cocoon, 

 is incessantly in motion ; can you tell us 

 whether this is so or not? 



And so the transposition process, like 

 many other inventions, is an old thing fresh- 

 ly revived, or invented over again. Do we 

 really know so much more than our great 

 grandfathers, after all? I was well aware 

 of tlie plan given in your book for inducing 

 any cell to be made into a queen cell, but 

 the practical application of making a single 

 choice queen furnish larvaj for all the cells 

 built, in any kind of a hive, seems to have 

 been only recently recognized. 



Your ideas are "most opportune, friend L., 

 and although we have not as yet succeeded 

 with the rows of queen cells on the comb 

 guide, we have done enough to feel consid- 

 erably encouraged. Our wonderfully inge- 

 nious friend, Scovell, of Columbus, Kansas, 

 has just sent us a beautiful artificial queen 

 cell, in the bottom of a block, as shown in 

 the cut. See what he says about it. 



By this mail, I send you a small box containing 

 artificial queen cells. I think this plan away 

 ahead of the one described in Oct. No. of 

 Gleanings, for rearing queens in artificial cells. 

 After the larvsB is placed in the cells, the boxes are 

 to be set over the openings between the frames. 



