18?8. 



GLEANINGS IK BEE CtlLTUHE. 



409 



quite a marked difference in the honey crop. 

 If we assume the number of eggs a queen 

 may lay in a day to be 3,000, by taking her 

 away a single day, we should in the course 

 of events be just that number of bees short, 

 right during a yield of honey. To i)ut it 

 very moderately, a quart of bees might be 

 taken out of the hive, by simply caging the 

 queen for a single day. Beginners should 

 remember this, for their untimely, or rather 

 inconsiderate tinkering, just before tlie flow 

 of honey comes, often cuts short their in- 

 come, to a very considerable degree. What- 

 ever you do, be very careful you do not drop 

 the queens off the combs when handling 

 them at this time of the year, and do not 

 needlessly interrupt the queen in her work, 

 by changing the combs about, so as to ex- 

 pose the brood, or upset their little house- 

 hold matters in the hive. With a liltle prac- 

 tice, you will be able to detect a queenless 

 hive, simply by the way the bees behave 

 themselves, on the outside. Where they 

 stand around on the alighting board in a 

 listless sort of way, with no bees going in 

 with pollen, when other colonies tu'e thus en- 

 gaged, it is well to open the hive and take a 

 look at them. If you find eggs and worker 

 brood, you may be sure a queen is there, but 

 if you do not, proceed at once to see if there 

 is not a queen of some kind in the hive, that 

 does not lay. If you do not find one, pro- 

 ceed at once to give them a frame contain- 

 ing brood and eggs, and see if they start 

 queen cells. You ought to be able to find 

 Incipient queen cells, in about 12 hours, if 

 the bees have been some little time queen- 

 less. As soon as you see these, give them a 

 queen if possible. If no queen is to be had, 

 they may be allowed to raise one, if the col- 

 ony has bees enough. If it has not, they had 

 better be united with some other stock. 



A strong hive discovered to be queenless 

 in the months of Oct. or Nov., may be win- 

 tered without trouble, and I am not sure but 

 that a colony kept without a queen until nat- 

 ural pollen can be gathered in the spring is 

 just as well off as one that commences rear- 

 ing brood by the first of Jan., as they usual- 

 ly do. If you have no queen to give them in 

 the spring, give them a comb of eggs from 

 some other stock, at intervals of a week or 

 10 days, until they can rear a queen that will 

 be fertilized. If the first queen reared should 

 prove a drone layer, she must be destroyed 

 that they may have an opportunity of rear- 

 ing another that will not be over a couple of 

 weeks old, when drones begin to fly. This 

 of course takes time and care, so we gener- 



ally prefer to have a laying queen in each 

 hive, at the approach of winter. 



More hives become queenless from queens 

 being lost on their wedding flight, than from 

 all otlier causes together, but the reasons 

 for this have been so fully stated under oth- 

 er heads, such as house AriARiEs, apia- 

 ries, NUCLEUS HIVES and the like, that it 

 will hardly be necessary to go over the 

 ground here. If the hives are 7 feet iipart 

 from centre to centre, as in the hexagonal 

 apiary, there will be little loss of queens from 

 this cause. Where a queen is lost in such a 

 way as to leave brood in the hive from which 

 to rear another, the colony seldom perishes, 

 but when a virgin queen takes her flight, if 

 she is lost, no brood remains in the hive, un- 

 less it is supplied by the bee-keeper; hence, 

 the very great importance of having a few 

 eggs in every nucleus hive, all the time dur- 

 ing QUEEN REARING, whicll SeC. 



ODOR OF A LAYING QUEEN. 



After bees have been some time queenless, 

 they usually become, if no fertile workers 

 make their appearance (see fertile work- 

 ers), very eager for the presence of a queen; 

 and I can in ho Way describe this eager be- 

 havior, if I may so term it, so well as to de- 

 scribe another way of testing a colony you 

 have reason to suspect is queenless. Take a 

 cage or box containing a laying queen, and 

 hold either the cage, or simply the cover of 

 it, over the bees, or hold it in such a way, as 

 to let one corner touch the frames. If queen- 

 less, the first that catch the scent of the piece 

 of wood on which the queen has clustered 

 M'ill begin to move their wings ih token of 

 rejoicing, and soon you will have nearly the 

 whole Bwarm hanging to the cage, or eovei'. 

 When they behave in this manner, I have 

 never had any trouble in letting the queen 

 right out at once. Such cases are generally 

 where a colony is found without brood in 

 the spring. , 



There is something very peculiar about 

 the scent of a laying ([ueen. After havihg 

 had a queen in my fingers, I have had bees 

 follow me and gather about my liand, eVeli 

 when I hnd g(nie some distance from the 

 apiary. By this strange instinct, they ■Vvill 

 often hover about the spot wliere the queen 

 has alighted even for an instant, for hoin-s, 

 and sometimes, for a day or two afterward. 

 Where clii)ped (|ueens get down into the 

 gniss or weeds, or crawl sometimes a consid- 

 erable distance from the liive. I have oft</n 

 found them, by watching the bees that weve 

 crawling about, aloug the i)atli slie had tak- 

 en. When cages containing (|ueeiis are be- 

 ing carried away, bees will often come and 

 light on the cage, making tiiat peculiar shak- 

 ing of the wings, which indicates their joy 

 at finding the queen. 



