BEE BEHAVIOR 
% 
is continuous; but after the work ceases, 
the hive becomes almost silent. This varies 
with the amount of honey gathered during 
the day. Sometimes the humming lasts 
almost all night, and sometimes it ceases 
early in the evening. 
COMB-BUILDING AND ITS RELATION TO THE 
RIPENING OF HONEY. 
Comb-building is rapid when most of the 
bees are ripening nectar. If the flow is 
good and many bees have to retain their 
loads for a while, as, with a recently hived 
swarm, wax secretion is rapid. Or if the 
flow is heavy and nearly all have to work 
at the ripening process, wax secretion is 
forced. The bees cannot help producing it 
then. Its production seems to be closely 
connected with the conversion of nectar 
into honey. If this view is correct, it 
affords an explanation of the failure to ob¬ 
tain satisfactory results in feeding back 
ripe honey to have sections completed. 
Honey extracted “raw” or “green” (that 
is before it is sufficiently ripened) and fed 
to comb-building colonies gives much bet¬ 
ter results. 
VARIATION IN COMB-BUILDING. 
No satisfactory explanation has been 
found to account for the construction of 
the two sizes of cells. Several theories 
have been advanced, but so far are only in¬ 
teresting. 
Great variations in comb work is found 
between bees of different strains or of dif¬ 
ferent colonies closely related. Some colo¬ 
nies build comb of wonderful smoothness 
and uniformity, and others never produce 
good combs. One will rarely use a braee- 
or a burr-comb, that is combs built irregu¬ 
larly on sides of hives or combs, while an¬ 
other stieks them everywhere. By selection 
the beekeeper can weed out the stock with 
undesirable traits and perpetuate the oth¬ 
ers. 
The difference in capping is well recog¬ 
nized, and selection is as effective in this 
case as in the former. The difference be¬ 
tween colonies in building out to frame or 
section sides and down to bottom-bars or of 
rounding off the edges has often been re¬ 
marked. It may be stated in a general way 
that the bees which build clear to the wood 
usually leave the outer cells unsealed, while 
those bees which round off the edges of the 
combs seal all cells. (This was first defined 
by Allen Latham.) Of course, there are all 
gradations, but fundamentally the law 
holds good. 
THE ARRANGEMENT OF BROOD, POLLEN, AND 
HONEY. 
The arrangement of brood, pollen, and 
honey, the first in the center, then the oth¬ 
ers in order about it, is interesting, and 
with rare exceptions is always the arrange¬ 
ment. As the brood increases in the spring, 
we may say the pollen is forced outward 
and the honey forced beyond that. In the 
closing of the season the process is re¬ 
versed, and under what we may be per¬ 
mitted to call natural conditions, as in a 
tree, box, or undisturbed frame hive, the 
brood is slowly worked downward and for¬ 
ward, so that at the end of the season the 
cluster is down by the entrance with the 
stores at each side of, and behind it. This 
is not always the location of the cluster in 
our frame hives; but if man has not med¬ 
dled after midsummer, it will generally be 
found to be so. 
THE QUEEN. 
This individual is unquestionably the 
most interesting member of the bee com¬ 
munity, and more talked of and written 
about than any other, and perhaps more 
misunderstood. From earliest infancy she 
is subject to more vagaries than any of the 
other bees. 
The presence or absence of the function¬ 
al odor may have something to do with the 
introduction of alien queens, or it may be 
wholly their behavior. 
After handling a laying queen, bees from 
any hive will run over one’s hand, appar¬ 
ently eagerly seeking the queen, and the 
behavior of all workers is the same whether 
they are from the queen’s hive or from 
another. 
There is much difference in the tempera¬ 
ment of queens. Some are very timid, and 
will run on the slightest disturbance, and, 
if handled or anointed with any foreign 
substance, seem to become really frantic. 
Such queens are very apt to be balled or 
killed by the bees. Other queens will pas¬ 
sively submit to all sorts of treatment, and, 
