January 31, 1865. ] 



JOURNAL OP HOETIOULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



103 



by careful observation and laborious experiment on both 

 sides of the Atlantic ijretty ueai-ly at the same time without 

 concert or copying one from another. It matters little, 

 however, to English apiarians whether the American or the 

 Teuton were actually first in the race, which so far as we 

 ean judge from Mr. Langstroth's statement appears to have 

 been nearly " a dead heat;" all wo should do, and all I am 

 desirous of doing, is to accord the full mead of praise to 

 each, and to thank both most heartily for the good service 

 they have rendered to the cause of scientific bee-keeping. 



Most sincerely do I congratulate the conductors of " our 

 Journal," on the prospect of so valuable an addition to their 

 staff of apiarian contributors as the Rev. L. L. Langstroth, 

 and I can assure him, that by none will his contributions be 

 more eagerly watched for, or more warmly welcomed, than 

 by — ^A Devonshire Bee-keepee. 



A NEW CHAPTEE m THE NATUEAL HISTOEY 

 OF THE BEE. 



BEE COMMOTIONS AND QUEEN ENCASEMENTS. 

 (Continued from parje SI.) 



The last case I mention is that of No. 5, a frame-hive. 



On the 12th of April, 1861, I examined this hive as no 

 young bees had yet shown themselves, and as I had ob- 

 served several small drones, imperfectly formed, extruded. 

 My suspicions were aroused in consequence. I detest those 

 little malformed drones. Their appearance always denotes 

 something abnormal, and is suggestive of impending ruin. 

 I drew up the frames and found in two worker-combs drone 

 brood sealed, and several small drones with imperfect wings 

 at large, but no worker brood sealed or hatclied. A con- 

 siderable number of eggs and larvae were noticed in con- 

 tiguity to the sealed drone brood. The cells sealed were all 

 elongated, and as in ordinary di'one cells they had the same 

 convex coverings. The queen was not so feeble-looking as 

 that of No. 13 above alluded to, whose queen was also a 

 drone-breeder. On the 24th and 30th of April renewed agi- 

 tations manifested themselves in this hive, and on examining 

 it on this latter date, I found the queen had disajjpeai-ed. I 

 gave this hive a piece of brood-comb, but, as in the case of 

 No. 13, it failed to rear a queen. 



Prom these and other cases of a kindred character, I 

 concluded that the encasement of these queens and con- 

 sequent commotions were entirely caused by their extreme 

 age and their abnormal condition as drone-breeding queens. 

 _ The only queen I ever had which ceased to lay altogether, 

 either drone or worker eggs, was in 1862, and this was one 

 of the two sent to Mr. Woodbury for microscopic exami- 

 nation in the autumn of that year, as already stated. 



I have already given illustrations of the third class of 

 queens being subject to imprisonment — namely, such young 

 princesses as are not timeously fecundated. I have had 

 instances of young queens, however, which remained per- 

 fectly sterile throughout the entire season so far as I could 

 discover, and which I consequently presumed had failed to 

 get fecundated at all. 



In 1861, in consequence of the extraordinai-Uy unfavour- 

 able character of the weather, a great number of the queens 

 I artificially reai-ed during that season failed apparently to 

 get fecundated at aU. Two became drone-breeders, and one 

 queen reared in July after having been seen taking her 

 usual aerial excursions, appeared again in August after the 

 hive had been sent to the heath, and again during a very 

 mdd day after the hive was brought back, about the end of 

 September. On the latter date she repeatedly came out, 

 took a short circuit, and returned. When returning a num- 

 ber of bees on the board watched her proceedings" and on 

 her attempting to alight repeatedly darted at her in the air, 

 and struck her down to the ground. This, however, I have 

 frequently noticed before in similar cu-oumstances, and the 

 only object the bees have in such freaks appears to be, to in- 

 duce her to extend her flight for certain obvious reasons. 

 in consequence of the repeated assaults on this occasion, 

 the queen appeared really unwilling or afi-aid to enter. She 

 new about the whole apiary curiously examining other hives 

 as if wishing to enter them. Having rested on a low hedge 

 i caught her, and as I had other queens in my apiary at the 



close of that inauspicious year in the same unsatisfactory 

 condition, I resolved to retain her, and in this way I was 

 enabled at little trouble to present a reserve queen to this 

 hive which was adopted. 



I may also state that I once reared in a unicomb hive, in 

 July, 1860, a queen which was somewhat malformed — a 

 marked and considerable indentation being conspicuous on 

 one side of the abdomen. She in due time, however, became 

 fertile, although never very prolific. In the autumn of the 

 following year, 1861, one of my hives at the heath, some 

 twelve miles distant, lost its queen, and I despatched a 

 messenger with instructions to present this qiieen to it to 

 keep it from giving way. My friend performed the message 

 successfully, as I afterwards found in the following spring, 

 when, on the 15th of February, I int^- duced the same mal- 

 formed queen and her subjects into Ji ■:• old unicomb domi- 

 cile, in which she had been reared, -.m the 8th of March, 

 on looking into this hive, I noticed the queen was encased 

 in a cluster of bees. I beat the hive, but though all the 

 rest of the bees went into intense commotion, the bees in 

 the cluster never let the queen out of their hold. I opened 

 the glass, took a twig, and separated her from the bees. 

 Under the irritation produced by my separating them, one 

 bee curved its body as if in the attitude of stinging. The 

 queen, however, moved nimbly off uninjured, but pursued 

 by the bees. Some days afterwards I found the bees again 

 in commotion, and on examining the interior I found the 

 queen had entered a common cell, her posterior part only 

 being visible. I opened the glass, and found her dead. I 

 had a strong impression at the time that the physical defect 

 or malformation of this queen might have had something 

 to do with her untimely end, and this impression has, I think, 

 been confirmed in some other instances in my experience 

 where defective queens were superseded by the rearing 

 of new ones. One of the most extraordinary cases of this 

 kind occurred in my apiary during the last season — so ex- 

 traordinary indeed in the circumstances attending it as to 

 eclipse all others. A notice of this case, however, I must 

 reserve for some future occasion. Suffice it here to say that 

 for the first time in my apiarian experience there was exhi- 

 bited in one of my hives the wonderful phenomenon of two 

 fertile queens living together in apparently the most perfect 

 amity and concord. 



My treatment of the curious phenomena now under dis- 

 cussion, would be incomplete did I not allude to some other 

 instances of queen encasements not yet specially referred to. 



Let us briefly inquire therefore : — 



1st. What are the effects produced by introducing a 

 queen into a hive already possessed of one ? 



2nd. What are the effects produced by the union of two 

 or more swarms with their queens ? And 



3rd. What are the effects produced by the introduction of 

 a queen into a queenless hive ? 



As to the first question, then. In 1859, I had in my ob- 

 servatory-hive a queen which had been deprived of a hind 

 leg. Whether this defect had any influence on her prolific 

 powers I know not (she was by no means very fertile), but 

 it produced a peculiar eccentricity in her ovipositing, which 

 was very detrimental to the prosperity of the colony. Very 

 frequently in attempting to deposit an egg in a cell which 

 she had previously fixed upon, the abdomen would be thrust 

 altogether into a contiguous cell in which an egg had been 

 already laid. The result of this was, that numbers of cells 

 contained several eggs. I noted a case which was narrated 

 by Herr Mehring, in the German " Bee Journal," and in- 

 serted in this Journal by Mr. Woodbury, in August, 1862, 

 which bore some resemblance to the one now stated by me. 

 In this case, however, the queen had been deprived of two 

 of her feet ; but though at first her laying was of the same 

 character as I have described above, yet at the end of four 

 days the oviposition became more exact, and afterwards 

 quite normal. On the 13th of May, having a spare fertile 

 queen, I wished to see how the bees would receive and dis- 

 pose of her. I opened one of the glass frames, placed 

 the stranger queen on a part of the comb unoccupied by the 

 bees, and shut the frame. The queen had scarcely time to 

 move fi'om the spot where I had placed her, when her presence 

 was challenged by a host of sentinels that instantly at- 

 tacked and surrounded her. The queen tamely submitted, 

 and from 5 o'clock p.m. to 8 o'clock the following morning the 



