BROOD AND BROOD-REARING 
1-17 
ment, and it has caused not a little trouble 
and solicitude to beginners. During very 
warm summer weather, the bees, for one 
l'eason or another, decide to let a part of 
their children go “bareheaded,” and there- 
Bees gnawing thru the cappings and emerging from 
their cells. 
fore, on opening a hive, whole patches of 
immature bees will be found looking like 
silent corpses with their white heads in 
tiers just about on a level with the surface 
of the comb. This seems to be peculiar 
to the offspring of some queens or strains, 
and. is sometimes so pronounced that al¬ 
most no brood are perfectly sealed at any 
season. At this stage of growth they are 
motionless, of course, and so the young 
beekeeper sends a postal card, saying the 
brood in his hive are all dead. Some have 
imagined that the extractor killed them, 
others that it was foul brood (see Foul 
Brood). One can’t help thinking of the 
family which moved from the city into the 
country. When their beans began to come 
up, they thought the poor things had made 
a mistake by coming up wrong end first; so 
they pulled them all up, and replanted 
them with the bean part in the ground, 
leaving the proper roots sprawling in the 
air.' One can rest assured that the bees 
always know when it is safe to let the 
children’s heads go uncovered. 
it is very important, many times, to 
discover just when a queen was lost or a 
colony swarmed; hence one should learn 
these data thoroly; the development of a 
bee occupies 3 days in the egg, 6 in the 
larval state, and 12 days sealed up. 
YOUNG BEES AFTER THEY EMERGE. 
The young bee, when it gnaws its way 
out of the cell, commences to rub its own 
nose, straighten out its feathers, and then 
push its way among the busy throng, 
doubtless rejoicing to become one of that 
vast commonwealth. Nobody says a word, 
nor, apparently, takes any notice of the 
youngster; but for all that, these young 
bees, as a whole, feel encouraged, and re¬ 
joice in their own way at a house full of 
young folks. If a colony is kept without 
young bees for a time, one will see a new 
energy infused into all hands just as soon 
as young bees begin to gnaw out. 
If one should vary the experiment by 
putting a frame of Italian eggs into a 
colony of black bees, he will be better able 
to follow the newly emerged young bee 
as it matures. The first day it does little 
but crawl around; but about the next dav 
it will he found dipping greedily into the 
cells of unsealed honey. After about the 
first day it will begip to look after the 
wants of the unsealed larvas, and very soon 
assists in furnishing the milky food for 
them. While so doing', a large amount of 
pollen is used, and it is supposed that this 
larval food is pollen and honey, partially 
digested by these young nurses. Bees of 
this age or a little older supply royal jelly 
for the queen-cells, which is the same, 
probably, as the food given very small 
larvae. Just before they are sealed up, 
larvae to produce, worker bees and drones 
are fed on a coarser, less perfectly digest¬ 
ed mixture of honey and pollen. Very pos¬ 
sibly the only difference in this food is 
the addition of honey with its contained 
pollen, to the food previously given by 
other and perhaps younger nurses. Young 
bees have a white downy look until they 
are a full week old, and continue a pe¬ 
culiar young aspect until they are quite 
two weeks old. At about this latter age 
they are generally active comb-builders of 
the hive. When a week or ten days old 
they take their first flight out of doors: 
there is no prettier sight in the apiary than 
a host of young Italians taking a play- 
flight in the open air. in front of their 
hive. Their antics and gambols remind one 
of a lot of young lambs at play. See Play- 
Flights. 
It is also very interesting to see these 
young bees bringing their first load of 
pollen from the fields. If there are plenty 
of other bees in the hive of the proper 
age, they will not usually take up this 
work until about two weeks old. The first 
load of pollen is to a young bee just about 
what the first pair of pants is to a boy 
