CHAPTER I.HONEY BEES.
Queen
A
ASWARM of bees containsoneQueen, thousands of workers, and in the summer season a limited number of drones. The queen is the only fully developed female in the swarm. She never leaves the hive except on two occasions—when leading a swarm, and when but a few days old, to meet the drone, or male bee, in the air, for the purpose of fecundation. It appears from close observation that only one impregnation is operative during life, as old queens have never been known to leave the hive for that purpose.
The natural life of a queen averages from four to six years. Queens sometimes become entirely barren before death; at other times the eggs of old queens are found to produce only drones. No matter whether deposited in drone cells, or worker cells, the progeny will be drones invariably. When drones are reared in worker cells, they will be very much dwarfed in size, notwithstanding theworker bees attempt to overcome the difficulty by lengthening the worker cells to accommodate the monstrosities. The queen has a sting yet she may be handled with impunity, for she will not use it except when in deadly combat with a rival queen. She receives the most marked attention from all members of her family; deprive a swarm of their queen, and they will, as soon as the loss is known, manifest the greatest agitation and alarm, and if the swarm is one just hived, and only a few hours from the parent stock, they will all return at once to the old home. They appear to fully realize the vast importance of a mother, and that with no means to supply her place they must soon perish; and to avoid their impending fate they return to the old hive. With old stocks deprived of their queen the result is different, as will be shown further on. Every one who keeps bees should strive to become familiar with the appearance of the queen, that they may be able to recognize her at a glance among thousands of workers, as it will often be necessary to look her up in my new system of bee management. In looking for the queen in full hives, she is usually found on the brood combs, unless in opening the hive she may have been frightened and taken refuge in some hiding place, at the corner of the hive, at the bottom ends of the comb-frames, or some similar hiding place. After we become familiar with her appearance and movements we are able to find her quite readily, even when the hive is crowded with bees.
Worker
The worker bee is much smaller than the queen. On the worker devolves all the labor of the swarm. They collect honey, pollen or bee bread, and propolis, or bee glue. The workers produce wax from honey, and from the wax they build comb, in which to store the honey and bee bread they collect, for their own use in time of need. Wax is produced from honey, as butter is produced from milk. Bees do not collect wax, but they collect honey, which by a natural process in the stomach of the bee is changed, and exudes from between the rings of the abdomen in minute scales of wax, which is detached by the bee and moulded into comb. The worker bee possesses a sting, and is ever ready to make use of it in defending home and treasure. This is a wise provision of nature, for were it otherwise, the other insect and animal tribes would appropriate the treasures of the bee—honey, wax, etc., and this industrious little insect would soon become instinct.
The worker bee possesses an instinct but little inferior to reason in the human family. A few examples will show their wonderful instinct: Twenty hives of bees, placed in a row, but a few inches distant one from the other, all of like size, shape and color; the bees to ourperception exactly alike, no difference in size, shape, color or action;—yet every bee of this vast number (which at some seasons of the year would amount to more than six hundred thousand bees) in these twenty hives knows its own hive, and if let alone will not enter any other, except it be for the purpose of securing the honey therein for its own use, or in other words to plunder and rob its neighbor. There is no intercourse between swarms; each is a separate colony governed by a queen. If through mistake the subjects of one enter the domain of another, a war of extermination is commenced at once. To test this point, I changed two hives so that they were reversed, the one occupying the place of the other. This was done while the bees were out collecting honey in a warm day. The first bees that entered the hive were instantly killed, and this was kept up until the hives were set in their proper places. The ground in front of the hives was covered with hundreds of dead bees. A bee is killed almost instantly by the sting of another.
The young bee on its first excursion from the hive does not leave its home without precaution. With a view to a safe return, it turns its head towards its home, rises slowly on the wing, at first describing a circle of only a few inches in diameter, as it recedes slowly backward, seeming to so mark every object surrounding the hive, as to enable it to return and enter, without the slightest danger of entering any other hive. Bees in spring, in their first flight, mark their location in thismanner. After the location has been thus marked, the bees leave the hive in a direct line, and return by their way-marks with perfect accuracy and regularity.
Drone
The drone bee is a clumsy fellow. The drones are the male bees. Where a dozen or more hives are kept, there is no necessity for more drones than one swarm would naturally rear, yet each one of the twelve swarms carries out its natural proclivities, and rears a large number of these useless consumers, not one of a thousand of which is ever of any use. Swarms should not be permitted to rear a large number of these non-producers. A few are indispensable, yet we should take this matter into our own hands. Not one drone in five thousand ever fulfills the purpose for which it was created. Fifty drone cells are enough for one hive, and when more than this number are constructed (sometimes they will number a thousand or more in a hive) cut out all but a very few, and fit in a piece of worker comb in their place—it is more profit to raise workers than drones. Drones leave the hive to sport in the sunshine in large numbers, every fine afternoon in June and July. When on the wing, they make a very loud, coarse buzzing. They have no sting and may be handled without the least fear.
When the honey season is over, the worker bees drive out the drones, and a prosperous swarm will not tolerate a drone in the hive through the winter. In September I have seen a quarter or more of drones clustered together near the entrance of the hive, whence they had been driven by the bees. The workers on guard about the entrance of the hive, would not let one pass into the hive, though they were constantly making the attempt. As soon as one would approach the entrance to the hive to pass in, a half-dozen or more workers would seize him, and drag him struggling to the edge of the platform and pitch him off, at apparent great danger to his portly and clumsy body.
I wish to impress strongly on the minds of all who adopt my plan of bee management, the great importance of cutting out drone cells, except a few in every hive. Don't leavemorethan fifty, half of that number will do. After you have once cut out the surplus drone comb and fitted in worker comb, there is no further trouble with an excess of drones from that hive. It takes a great deal of honey to rear a large brood of drones, and still more to support them in idleness two or three months.
HONEY CELLS, WORKER CELLS, QUEEN CELL
This engraving represents a section of comb in a miniature comb frame, containing all the different cells found in a hive. At the top are cells for storing honey. At the extreme right, near the bottom, is a queen cell complete, as it appears in queen raising, or in one week after a swarm has been deprived of its queen, in a full stock or as it is found in stocks that swarm naturally, at the time the first swarm issues. Though often found in different places on the comb, and often to the number of a half-dozen or more in one stock or hive, yet its relative position isalways the same. It will always present the same appearance, whether at the edges or on other parts of the comb. Near the queen cells is seen the worker cells, containing brood in all stages of growth from the tiny egg just deposited by the queen to the full-grown grub or young bee. Near the worker cells, at the bottom, are the empty cells.
The natural increase of the honey bee is very imperfectly understood by the great majority of bee keepers. Very many suppose that young bees are raised only in the warm summer months, and their ideas of themodus operandiof increase are exceedingly vague. I find that strong stocks have maturing brood nearly every month in the year—I have found brood in stocks in December and January.
The queen lays all the fertile eggs in the swarm, consequently all increase is dependent on her. I say the queen lays all the fertile eggs, because occasionally under certain circumstances we find eggs laid by workers but under my observation, such eggs never mature. Egg-laying workers are known to be such, by eggs being found in stocks that have been deprived of their queen, and the means of rearing another. This is one of the wonders of nature, of which no satisfactory solution has been given. The points established as to the sex of bees are these: The queen is a fully developed female; the drones are fully developed males; the worker,—what is it?The worker is said by some to beneuter. If this last is true, how are the eggs produced? Others say the worker is a female with generative organs not fully developed! A pretty nice point—to credit them with the power to produce eggs without imparting vitality sufficient to germinate.
We will leave this knotty question, as it is of no consequence in the practical management of bees for profit.Suffice it then to say, the queen is the mother of the entire family, and without a queen no swarm of bees can long exist.
The time taken to perfect the three different kinds of bees—queen, worker and drone—varies slightly. The queen will mature in about sixteen days from the time the egg is deposited in the cell. The drone and worker each in about twenty days. This time is subject to some variation, governed by the weather, and number of bees in the hive, which causes the temperature of the hive to be greater or less. A high temperature will forward, while a low temperature will retard, the maturing of the brood.
Swarms with healthy prolific queens increase rapidly through the spring and summer. The queen at this season will deposit from one thousand to fifteen hundred eggs per day. Some writers estimate higher. To secure so large a number of eggs, and consequent increase of bees, we must have healthy prolific queens to start with, and offer every available facility to encourage the desired increase. How to do this successfully, is shown further on.
If we wish to secure a good harvest of honey, we must have the bees to collect it, and we must have them at the proper time, viz: when the harvest is ready. To do .-this, we must encourage breeding to the utmost in early spring.
Early in the spring the queen enlarges the circle containing the brood; perhaps, if the stock was very strong,and everything favorable, she laid a few eggs in one or two combs near the centre of the cluster of bees in January. Perhaps the cells occupied at that time were less than a dozen, all compact together in a circle, occupying less space than the size of a half dollar. As she progresses, this circle is enlarged, and the cells on the opposite side of this comb are used; then the next comb and so on, at the same time enlarging the circle, keeping the brood compactly together, so that the bees, by clustering around it can keep up the required warmth to forward the brood to maturity. As the young bees hatch, the queen proceeds with her duties of laying eggs until every brood cell is occupied, and as fast as a bee matures and leaves its cell, she is on hand with an egg to occupy the vacant place. This is kept up without cessation till swarming time, when the hive becomes crowded with bees, then, as preparation for swarming, the queen deposits eggs, from which the bees, by a special course of treatment, rear queens. When they are sealed over, as shown in the plates, the old queen leaves the hive with the first swarm to seek a new home. In about ten days the young queens hatch and lead out after-swarms—second, third, etc. When swarming is over, the strongest queen destroys the others, and reigns over the old swarm till another swarming season. This is the process in natural swarming; on my plan we improve upon the process, as will be shown in the proper place.