310 SHIPPING AND TRANSPORTING BEES. 



weeks before, had left those immense bottom lands covered 

 ■with a luxuriant vegetation. The result fully answered our 

 anticipations. Those lately starving colonies, yielded a boun- 

 tiful surplus, while their sisters on the hills had to be fed for 

 Winter. But the labor of transportation, the risk incurred, 

 if the colonies are strong and heavy, and the difficulty of 

 transporting old bee-hives, without danger of some bees 

 escaping, make the habitual shipping of bees for pasturage 

 hardly advisable. 



Shipping Queens. 



594. It was in the numerous and partially successful 

 attempts, which we made before 1874, to import bees from 

 Italy, that we became acquainted with the conditions neces- 

 sary to the shipping of queens. 



695. When they are to be confined a long time, the 

 question of food is the most important. Many were the 

 blunders made by the first shippers, who imagined that 

 they required a large amount of food, and literally drowned 

 them in honey. By repeated and costly experiments, we 

 ascertained that the bees that arrived in the best condition 

 were those that were fed on the purest saccharine, matter. 

 Those that suffered the most, were those that had the most 

 watery (349), or the darkest, honey (627). Water (271), 

 which some Italian shippers persisted in giving them, in 

 spite of what we could say, was noxious ; as the consump- 

 tion of it, with the food, helped to load their abdomen with 

 matter that could not be discharged (73), causing what is 

 improperly called dysentery (784). Water is needed only 

 in brood rearing. 



596. Old bees, or rather, bees that have begun to work 

 in the field, will stand a longer trip than young bees, as the 

 latter consume more honey, and need to discharge their 

 ftbdomen oftener, 



