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ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION 



141 



have two of them looking alike if I 

 can help it." If you set little nuclei 

 boxes right close together I think most 

 of them would be lost. In one hive I 

 have four entrances, one at each cor- 

 ner of the hive, and in that case I be- 

 lieve they are all right. Take these 

 boxes and have them around the en- 

 trance on each side, and there isn't 

 much danger of the queens getting lost 

 in that hive, but if you had them in a 

 row, side by side,, they would naturally 

 get mixed up. 



Mr. Wilcox: I am of the opinion 

 that the greater portion of them are 

 lof't by birds. One year when I had a 

 great many bees and much swarming, 

 I iDst a number of bees, and I noticed 

 a large number oi kingbirds around 

 the apiary. I shot twenty of them and 

 frightened the clivers away, and after 

 that I lost only cnt or two in the sea- 

 son, so the kingbirds were getting the 

 young queens and drones. 



Mr. Logsdon: I hate to have th^i 

 kingbirds killed. A young queen is not 

 much like a drone. She is more like 

 the worker bee. I killed a number of 

 kingbirds and I dissected them, and 

 never saw anything but a drone — you 

 caniiot Imd any other bee. I even shot 

 them up to Jast season, and I never 

 will kill anothbr kingbird. They are 

 our protection; they do us good; they 

 are our companions in life, and we 

 ought net to aestroy them. I have 

 killed them so many times, and dis- 

 sected them. They feed on the drones 

 only, and we always have too many of 

 them; and 03 to their picking up a 

 virgin queen — if you have ever noticed 

 how rapid and strong the virgin queens 

 are in their flight; a virgin queen is 

 very easily excited, and will run over 

 the frames and fly, and in handling 

 them I have lost, or would have lost, 

 virgin queens, finding them crawling 

 on my coat sleeve or starting to fly. 

 There are different ways of losing 

 them. They are very active and ex- 

 citable. Tou will look in your hive a 

 dozen times before you find her, she 

 is so quick. In making these manipu- 

 lations, being so quick, she gets ex- 

 cited, .and she often takes wing, and if 

 you close the hive while she is taking 

 wing you may often lose her that way. 



Mr. Wilcox: I am glad to hear the 

 opinion, even though it differs from 

 mine. One or the other of us is cer- 

 tainly mistaken. I hope we may some 

 time be able to agree. 



Mr. Whitney: At Kankakee one 



time, when I had my apiary there be- 

 tween two rows of- trees, the bees were 

 inclined to go out in a regular stream, 

 and there were kingbirds there, and 

 occasionally they would go. I watched : 

 those birds very closely, and I feel 

 certain that they caught something be- 

 sides drones. While I had my bees 

 there, on one day a kingbird caught 

 over a dozen inside of two and a half 

 minutes. I watched and saw him do it. 

 Pretty soon he made a dive for those 

 bees going out in a swarm, and they 

 were too many for him — they stung 

 him. He flew away and lit on a post, 

 and chook his head and fluttered about, 

 and that was the last I ever saw of 

 that kingbird in that yard. I am cer- 

 tain he was after bees, and not drones, 

 at that time. 



Mr. Logsdon: Please may I ask 

 what time of the day this was? 



Mr. Whitney: Some time in the 

 middle of the day. 



Mr. Logsdon: About the time the 

 drones were flying? 



Mr. Whitney: I can't remember of 

 drones flying. I have heard it said 

 that they caught nothing but drones, 

 but I am quite certain that they catch 

 bees. It has been told that they sim- 

 ply suck the juices of the bee and spit 

 the bee out, but you could not find 

 the bee in their crop. I have read ac- 

 counts of their doing that, and that 

 has been given as the reason you could 

 not find them in the crop of the bird. 

 I don't know whether it is true or not, 

 but I will not kill ajiy more. After I 

 had shot those kingbirds, I picked up 

 one of them as it came from the tree 

 and fluttered to my feet and died 

 there. I picked it up and said, "This 

 is the last bird of any kind I will ever 

 shoot or kill; if they kill any number 

 Of bees, I won't kill another kingbird, 

 or any other bird," and I have not 

 since, and I never will. 



Mr. Wilcox: I was going to say, the 

 point he made was that he could not 

 find them in the crop. Tou examined 

 the crop and found no bee? 



Mr. Logsdon: I examined the crop 

 and found nothing. 



Mr. Wilcox: Did you find anything 

 else? 



Mr. LiOgsdon: A little cheese or 

 something of that kind. 



Mr. Wilcox: What I wanted to say 

 is that a kingbird has no crop. They 

 only have a place where the crop is. 



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