80 



JOURNAL OP HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



[ January 24, 1866. 



Wliile claiming to have devised a system of bee culture 

 substantially the same with that of Dzic?rzon, before I had 

 any knowledge of his valuable labours, I have in all the 

 editions of my work on "The Hive and Honey Bee," cheer- 

 fully acknoivledged my obligations to him for much valuable 

 information, more especially for the flood of light which by 

 his discovery of parthenogenesis, he has thrown upon the 

 whole physiology .and management of the honey bee. 



My appreciation of the merits of your Journal, and its ex- 

 tensive circulation among bee-keepers, must be my apology 

 for requesting you to occupy so much of your space with 

 matters personal to myself. It would afford me great 

 pleasure to be numbered hereafter among the contributors 

 to your apiai-ian department. — L. L. Lanqstroth, OxJ'ord, 

 Ohio. 



[We can at once answer for " ADevonshieeBee-keepee.," 

 that he wUl most readily correct any error he may have 

 fallen into, and still more readily in the case of a brother 

 apiarian so favourably kjfewn. We are more than pleased 

 to include ilr. Langstroth among our list of contributors. — 

 Eds.] 



A NEW CHAPTER I]Sr THE NATURAL HISTORY 

 OP THE BEE. 



BEE COltMOTIONS AND QUEEN ENCASEMENTS. 

 {Continued from page 62.) 



In accordance with the concluding paragraph in my last 

 article, I shall now proceed to lay before the apiarian readers 

 of this Journal my ijresent views, as evolved from much ex- 

 perience of the curious phenomena, which I have designated 

 Bee Commotions and Queen Encasements. It will be seen 

 that during my investigations, my views varied with .the 

 varying character of the cases coming under my notice, and 

 that I was compellsd to abandon the adoption of any uni- 

 form rule or principle as applicable to a solution of all of 

 them. I shall, perhaps, partly be anticipated, therefore, 

 when I now state what these views are, and the conclusions 

 at which I have ultimately arrived. I am of opinion — 



1st. That queens may be encased or imjirisoned by reason 

 of the entrance of stranger bees into a hive. 



2nd. That queens may be eneasad or imprisoned when 

 superannuated .and infirm through age, or from any natural 

 defect in their procreative pov.'ers — such as exhausted fer- 

 tility; and 



3rd. That young queens may be encased or imprisoned 

 when unfecundated beyond a certain age, and when in an 

 abnormal condition. 



I shall Olustrate the proofs of each of these headings by 

 one or two experiments selected out of many. 



First, then, queens may be encased or imprisoned by 

 reason of the entrance of stranger bees into a hive. 



In my article entitled " Experimental Apiary" (peace to 

 its memory !), it was not without reason, that among other 

 things therein refen-ed to, I emphatically condemned the 

 shifting or transposition of hives. Many years ago, as an 

 experiment, I transposed several hives all at one time in the 

 spring, in order that weaker ones might be strengthened at 

 the expense of the stronger. The result was queen encase- 

 ments and massacres. If any one has never seen a queen 

 encasement, he has nothing to do but to transpose a couple 

 of hives, and in all likelihood he will witness this curious 

 phenomenon in one of its simpler phases at least, and, 

 perhaps, the death of a queen to boot. 



But I had frequently suspected, as before hinted, that 

 the entrance of stranger bees into a hive through whatever 

 cause, often led to the encasement of the queen, and con- 

 sequent commotion. Indeed, I could not account on any 

 other principle for the phenomena exhibited in some of my 

 hives. I sha 1 narrate a caae or two in point, which took 

 place in my apiary no farther back than the month of August 

 last. 



It will be remembered that in the middle r>( that month 

 the weather became intensely hot and oppressive. The ther- 

 mometer marked more than an ordinary temperature and 

 the consequence was, that the bees of most hives lay out in 

 masses. On returning after a short absence fmm liorae, I 

 regretted to find that the massive combs of a unicomb-hive 

 sited in my bee-house, had collapsed and fallen down from 



the heat, killing and crushing one-half of the entire popu- 

 lation. I removed the unicomb, shut up the entrance, and 

 allowed the surviving bees to find access into whichever hive 

 they choose. They entered an adjacent young Ligurian. 

 In half an hour afterwards commotion commenced in this 

 hive, and on listening at the entrance I heard the invariable 

 fluttering sounds so long familiar to rae.as the sure indication 

 of the queeu being encased. The queen of this hive I greatly 

 valued in consequence of the brilliance of her colom-, and I 

 immediately took steps to rescue her from her very equivocal 

 position, tlnlbrtunately the hive was a straw one, but in 

 ten minutes or so I had all the bees driven out into an empty 

 skep and removed a dozen yai-ds off. I released the queen, 

 but so terribly affrighted was she of her adversaries, that 

 heavily fertile though she was, she took flight and returned 

 to the old stance in the bee-house where I secm-ed her. I 

 returned her to the driven bees, but she was again seized 

 by some of them, and in my endeavouring to rescue her from 

 her persecutors, she for the second time took flight and re- 

 turned to her old locality. I then seized and kept her in 

 custody for a little time until I considered what best to do 

 in the circumstances. I now thought of separating the 

 unicomb's bees from the Ligurian hive's bees before proceed- 

 ing further. For this purpose I replaced the Ligurian hive 

 in its old site, and also opened-up the entry to the unicomb- 

 stance, putting an empty hive there. I then allowed the 

 conjoined driven bees to quit the skep into which they had 

 been put at a little distance, and thus each hive's bees 

 gradually betook themselves to their own stances, and I got 

 quit of the unicomb's bees. The captive queen I now in- 

 troduced to her disconsolate subjects, by which she was 

 received with a perfect hurricane of rejoicing. She was none 

 the woi-se of all this rough usage. Here, then, there could 

 be no mistake in this case as to the true cause and origin of 

 the encasement of the queen and consequent commotion — 

 namely, the entry of stranger bees, which though admitted 

 themselves without demur, had, nevertheless, surrounded 

 and imprisoned the queen. One other instance on this head 

 will suffice. 



On the 30th of October, 18G3, 1 dislodged a young Ligurian 

 queen, artificially reared fi'om a thinly jjopulated hive, with 

 the view of putting her at the head of a hive of black bees. 

 This I successfully accomplished, having first taken away 

 the black queen and about two thousand of her bees. The 

 Ligurian queen was, as usual in such cases, surrounded and 

 imprisoned by the black bees, and she did not regain her 

 liberty till the evening of the 31st, or thirty-six hours after 

 the experiment. With the two thousand black bees and 

 queen I joined a number of the Ligurian bees, and here 

 again the black queen was surrounded and imprisoned for a 

 period of nearly equal duration, though in neither case any 

 fatality occurred. 



Second. Queens may be encased or imprisoned when super- 

 annuated and infirm fi'om .age, or from a natural defect in 

 their procreating powers — such as exhausted fertility. 



In 1861, I happened to have in my apiary four hives, 

 Nos. 1, 5, 9, and 13, having very aged queens. No. 1 (jueen 

 was reared in 1S57, No. 5 in l.SaS, No. i) in 1857, and No. 13 

 in 1856. This latter queen was the oldest I ever had in my 

 possession. A few words regarding each. 



On the 21st of May, 1861, 1 removed the queen of No. 1 hive, 

 a Huber, as she was becoming very unprolific and languid in 

 her movements. The brood was scanty and no drone eggs 

 had yet been laid. The withdi-awal of the queen produced 

 almost no perceptible change in the hive. There was no 

 commotion of any kind. Tliis induced me to examine the 

 hive minutely, which I did next day, and I found that the 

 decaying energy of the queen had not been unobserved by 

 the bees, but was anticipated as well by them as myself, as 

 two royal cells containing larva; were well advanced. These 

 wei-e sealed on the morning of the 25th, and a young 

 princess emerged during the night of the 31st. This is 

 another beautiful instance of the wonderful instinct and 

 foresight in tho bee in providing against an impending 

 calamity, tho probable speedy decease of their decaying 

 queen. So much for No. 1. Now for No. 0, straw hive. 



On the 11th of March, 1861, 1 noticed symptoms of No. 9 

 hive having its queen encased. On turning it up I found 

 between two of the centre combs near the bottom, a cluster 

 of bees which were densely wedded together. Conjecturing 



