BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
A good smoker is the most essential equipment for handling bees. The smoker, in which dry rotten wood, the best fuel for smoke, has been started with some live coals, or a mateh, is used to frighten the bees and cause them to fill themselves with honey, after which they are not inclined to resent disturbance. As the hive is approached, a little smoke should be blown in at the entrance, then a little under the cover as it is raised off, when a little more, from time to time, as the bees are handled, will enable one to examine every part of the hive. Too much smoke must not be employed. It should be used at the right time, in which event very little will be needed. While the smoker is not in actual use it may be held between the knees so as to be in easy reach when required.
Various kinds of veils are used, according to the individual taste of different beekeepers. Cotton tulle is much used for such veils; those with an elastic cord in the top to go over the hat, and another in the bottom of the veil, to go about the neek, being most generally preferred. A permanent 'bee hat' is made by sewing the veil about the brim of a large hat. Silk material is also employed for bee veils; but, since it is more expensive and easily torn, only a small piece of it is usually sewed up in the front of the cotton tulle veils, as one can see through this finer material much better. For a more permanent bee hat wire screen cloth is much utilized, sewed to the hat and with an apron of cloth on the lower edge to drop over the shoulders. A width of cloth may also be sewed to the upper edge, in place of the hat, and this provided with a rubber cord to go over the crown of the hat. No matter what material is selected for the veil, it should be black in color, as it is the only color which does not interfere with the vision, especially in sunlight.
It is not only not advisable for the beginner to try to handle bees without protection to the face, but every beekeeper should use a bee veil, as a number of stings in the face are not only unpleasant, but may, under certain conditions, produce bad results when least expected. Bee stings are very disagreeable, but how to avoid them, to a certain extent, may soon be learned. A few stings are inevitable, and a person may become more or less immune to them, so that they will not produce any swelling. While they do not affect some persons, others are given much pain and swelling.
The first thing to do with the sting is to remove it carefully by scraping it out with a knife blade, or the finger nail, in such a way that the poison bag, which is attached to the sting, is not squeezed and the contents forced into the wound. The best care for a sting is to forget all about it as soon as possible. The application of ammonia and other remedies supposed to neutralize the poison are, in most cases, useless, as they can not enter the wound because it closes immediately from swelling. In severe cases inflammation may be reduced by wrapping the affected parts in cold, wet cloths, or bathing with ammonia.
As bees seem to resent dark colored objects, especially black hats and clothing, upon which they pounee much more vehemently and sting with greater fury, light colored clothing should be worn by the apiarist in his work with them:
THE FAMILY OF HONEY BEES.
In order to better understand the necessary manipulation in the successful management of bees, a somewhat general knowledge of the life-habits of the inmates and the economy of the hive is of great advantage.
Honey bees belong to the family _Apidae_, long-tongued bees, one of the families of the order of insects of which bees, ants and wasps are the most prominent members. There are many members of this family--some solitary in their habits, living alone and making their own nests; some living as guests in the nests of other bees, and some social bees living in colonies, a trait which is a distinguishing characteristic of the honey bees, with which we have to do. The scientific name of the honey bee is _Apis mellifera_, to which the many races, or varieties, the German or Black, Italian, Carniolan, Cyprian, Holy Land, Caucasian and other bees belong.
A normal colony of bees consists of several thousand to upwards of sixty thousand worker bees, a few hundred drones, and one queen, or, more correctly speaking, the mother of the hive. The queen is a fully developed female and lays the eggs from which all the other inmates of the hive are born. She is capable of laying eggs which produce either drones or workers, and is probably able to control fertilization of the egg which determines sex. Many more worker eggs are laid, which are always fertilized and are deposited in worker-size cells in the combs, while the drone eggs, very much le-s in number, are unfertilized eggs usually laid in drone-size cells. Under certain conditions, they may also be laid in worker cells.
## 6 Worker bees.
The great mass of the members of a colony are worker bees, whose duties are to defend the hive, for which they are each provided with a sting; to clean and ventilate it; to rear young; to gather food and water, bee glue or propolis; to secrete wax; build comb, and attend to all necessary work of the hive. The worker bees are undveloped females. Their female organs are not as fully developed as those of the queen; but, under certain conditions, they may lay eggs, which. however, produce only drones. These bees are known as "laying workers," and the condition under which they appear is when a colony is hopelessly queenless for a long time and the bees have no way of rearing a queen. Certain workers then begin to lay eggs, with the hope of restoring the colony. The egg laying of these workers is very irregular and scattered about the combs, with several, to a large number of, eggs placed irregularly in each cell. This, together with the drone brood in the worker cells, which can be easily distinguished by the drone broodappings which stick out from the combs like little hemispheres, unlike the nearly flat capings of normal worker brood, is a good sign of the presence of laying workers. However, the occurrence of more than one egg in a cell is not always a sure sign, as a good queen may put several eggs in a cell when first commencing to lay, or early in the season, but only for a short time, after which they are laid in the most regular succession in each cell.
The fact among bees that virgin queens, laying workers, and even fertile queens can lay unfertilized eggs which will live and produce drones is known _is 'arithmogenesis_, reproduction without fertilization, found among many forms of insect life.
## 7 Development of bees.
There are three stages of development, or metamorphosis, in bees, as with all insects, before the fourth stage, or final grown insect, is reached--the egg, larva and pupa. The egg, very small and oblong in shape, can be easily seen with the naked eye, adhering by its smaller end to the bottom of the cell. In three days from the time the egg has been laid it hatches into a very small white larva, or grub. As soon as the larva has hatched it is fed by nurse-bees on a milky white food known as chyle, which is secreted by the glands in the mouth of the bee. This is fed for the first three days, when it is followed by a coarser, partly digested, food of honey and pollen until the larva is fully grown. During the first few days the larva lies curled in the bottom of the cell, later straightening out, as it grows, until it lies on its back with its head to the mouth of the cell.
At this stage the bees cap over the cell and the larva spins a fine coceoon within it, and then goes into a quiescent, or resting, period in the course of which a wonderful transformation takes place. During this, the pupal stage, the legs, wings and all other organs of the adult bee are developed, and in twenty-one days from the date of the laying of the egg, twelve days after the cell is capped, the full grown worker cuts a hole through the capping of the cell and emerges upon the eomb. Their weak and downy appearance easily distinguishes them from the older bees, who have lost most of the hairy covering from their bodies and look smooth and glossy, besides having more or less ragged wings from flying. The next sixteen days are spent by the young bees in assisting in labors within the hive. Their first duty is as ''nurse-bees,'' feeding the larvae, after which they engage in packing and sealing honey, secreting wax, building eomb, hive-cleaning, and guarding and ventilating the hive, during which time only occasional flights in front of the entrance are taken in the warm part of the day. These flights are known as ''play spells'' of the young bees and are often mistaken by the inexperienced beekeeper for an issuing swarm.
The workers become foragers, or field bees, when they are about sixteen days old, to remain such the rest of their lives, unless through some occurrence, they are needed in the hive for nurse-bees, or other purposes. After carefully marking their location and obstacles on their way to the field, so they may return safely, they gather honey, pollen, propolis, and water. So zealously do they labor that they die in the main working season, from overwork and exhaustion, in about four weeks in the field. The average life of the worker bee is five to six weeks during the working season, though they live longer when there is no honey to gather or little field work for them to do. In the winter, when they are less active, their lives are much longer, extending over several months, the adult's existence being prolonged until young bees again begin to hatch in the spring, when they soon die off entirely.
THEQUENQueens are reared from the same kind of eggs that worker bees develop from, i. e. fertilized eggs, the difference between the two resulting from a special process of feeding the young larva intended for a queen bee and changing the shape and size of the cell into one having considerably more room. The first three days of her larval stage the queen-to-be receives the same kind of food as that of all worker larvae, but the quantity is increased after that time till the little larva fairly floats in the white mass of food called "royal jelly." This change of feeding and the increased size of the queen-cell develop fully the female organs of the innate, which would, otherwise, from the same egg in a regular worker cell and with the normal quantity of food, result in a worker bee, or undeveloped female. Unlike the worker bee cells or drone cells in the honey comb, the queen cells are built out from the comb and hang with the mouth of the cell downward, resemble, in their first stage, an inverted acorn cup, and later appear rough and very much like the hull of a good sized peanut. Queen cells are built when they are required. They are not always in the hive. During the swarming season and when queens are to be superseded the bees construct queen cells into which the queen lays eggs; but, if a colony is queenless from the removal or death of its queen, the bees build queen cells about very young worker larvae under three days old, by tearing down the walls of surounding cells. From these queens hatch sixteen days after the eggs are laid, considerable longer in size and having more strongly built legs than the worker bees. Their abdomen is slightly longer and their thorax, to which the wings and legs are attached, is somewhat thicker. The first queen that issues from a cell tears down the other queen cells, or, if several queens emerge, the strongest kills them and fills the mother mission for the hive. For the first twelve to twenty-four hours of her age she remains almost unnoticed by the bees as she crawls over the combs and eats honey. She diminishes somewhat in size and becomes darker in color in a few days until she is hardly larger than a worker-bee, but very active, and at this time these virgin queens are very hard to find. About the seventh day she leaves the hive for her ''wedding flight,'' to become mated to a drone, which always takes place in the open air while both queen and drone are on the wing. After eopulation the drone dies instantly upon separation, as the male organs are torn from his body by the queen when she returns to the hive, and may be plainly seen by the apiarist if he be near. After the seminal fluid is absorbed from the organs, which dry up and disappear, the virgin queen is fertilized, never needing to become mated again, and she now is a fertile queen and becomes a laying queen, beginning to lay in two or three days after mating. She now obtains her full size, resumes her bright color and assumes a majestic appearance, so that she is easily distinguished from amongst the rest of the bees.
If a virgin queen fails to mate she may become a worthless ''drone layer,'' laying only unfertilized eggs from which nothing but drones hatch. Sometimes the young queen may fail to return from her wedding flight, being either caught by some bird, or entering a wrong hive where she is killed by the inmates, leaving her own colony hopelessly queenless as there are no eggs or young larvae from which another may be reared. For this reason a careful examination should be made of such colonies and, if the new queen does not begin to lay in due time, a comb containing eggs or very young larvae from which to rear another, should be supplied, or, better still, a queen-cell almost ready to hatch, or a "Queen, or mother bee."
Beginning laying only a few eggs a day, soon after fertilization, or at the beginning of the season, the number laid by a queen increases daily until the height of the season, the latter part of April or in May. More than 2,000 eggs may be laid during a single day for a short time, after which a gradual decrease takes place until the end of the laying season, in the forepart of winter, is reached.
Although the queen is provided with a sting she in no instance uses it in stinging, except upon a rival queen. Therefore she may be handled without fear but exceeding care should be taken not to injure her by the pressure of the fingers upon the abdomen, or otherwise. The safest way is to handle her by the wings or about the thorax.
The average life of queens is about three years. They are at their best during their first and second season. Many queens have been known to live four to five years, but it is not advisable to keep very old queens as their feebleness results in weak colonies, due to their inability to keep up the required egg-laying, or in their becoming drone-layers, owing to the exhaustion of the fertilizing fluid in their bodies, received when mating. They are generally superseded by the bees as soon as they begin to fail in their third or fourth year. Atthis time the colony builds cell cups into which the old queen lays eggs and from which young queens are reared, one of which will take her place. It is often that the new queen, the daughter of the old mother, will enter upon her egg-laying duties with her mother still in the hive, and live with her in entire harmony until the old one finally dies. Aside from this condition, no rival queen is tolerated in the hive and when there are two, or more, a fierce battle ensues immediately in which all wave one of the combatants and sometimes all of them receive the fatal royal sting and suecumb.
## The Drones or males.
Male bees, or drones, appear in the hives in largest numbers during the swarming season in the spring, when they are needed the most to mate with the young queens, although some of them may be found in nearly all colonies during the greater part of the summer. However, most of them are either killed or driven out of the hives by the bees soon after the swarming season, or upon the approach of a dearth of honey. The length of the life of the drones is therefore very uncertain; several months, if their lives are not ended by the bees or they mate with queens. The only function of the drones is to mate with the young queens. Otherwise they spend their time roaming about in the hive in a leisurely, aimless way, not only helping themselves to the honey in the cells, but taking food from the mouths of the nursing worker-bees.
During the warmest part of the day they fly out into the air and their loud, buzing noise can easily be distinguished. As virgin queens also come out to mate at such times the drones are quick to give phase to any that Draone, or male bee. may appear. The mating always occurs high in the air.
Drones develop from unfertil eggs ordinarily laid by fertile queens in drone-size cells in the combs, although as I have before remarked, such eggs are also laid in certain cases by virgin queens and laying workers, both in drone and worker cells, in which event the drones are considerably smaller in size than, but are apparently just as virile as, the normal drones. They develop from the egg in twenty-four days. Being larger in size and coarser in appearance than the workers, and having a rounded, stubby abdomen, they are easily distinguished. They have no sting.
When drones are overabundant they may be caught in drone traps and then destroyed. These are set in front of the entrance of the hives and are so arranged that the worker-bees can pass through them; but the drones, being larger, can not. In their efforts they soon find their way, through escape cones in a partition, to a compartment in which they remain confined until relieved by the apiarist.
These traps are also used for catching select drones for queen-mating to be taken elsewhere, and, during swarming time, to catch queens to prevent them from leaving the hive.
Quite a number of varieties or races of bees have been tried in Texas and, while all of them possess some good qualities, some have not become popular. Some races are very gentle in disposition, while others are very ill-tempered. This is an important factor to be considered in successful handling of bees. A charaeteristic of the amiable races is their mild temper when being handled, adhering to their combs as they are removed from the hive and the entire colony remaining in a quiet mood, hardly showing any resentment on account of disturbance and making little effort to sting. This is further emphasized by the fact that many queens of such gentle races continue their egg laying while the combs on which they may be are being held up for inspection, without showing the slightest perturbation. Bees which run all over the hive and drop off the combs as soon as they are picked up are very unsatisfactory to handle. It shows a more nervous character and such bees are much quicker to sting at the least annoyance. The beginner should select a good strain of tractable races, a requisite that means much toward successful beekeeping; and the amateur and advanced beekeeper will find that such races are much more agreeable to have in the apiary.
Black, OR GERMAN, BEES.
The common black, or German, bees are still most common in this State, although this race is rarely found any more in its purity in most localities, due to crossing with other races of bees that have been introduced. The result of this continual cross-mating is that most of the bees throughout the State are hybrids. They are a dark race of bees originally brought from Germany. They are rather irritable and more inclined to sting than some of the gentler races. While good colonies store large yields of honey during favorable years, the average is not so good, especially during poor seasons. Besides this and their ill nature, they are poor defenders of their hives against other bees, or robbers, in quest of stores, and the depredation of the wax moth larvae, or ''worms,'' as they are generally called. A valuable trait of the race is that their finished honey combs have a snow white appearance, from the fact that they do not fill the cells quite full of honey and then place the wax exppings, when sealing the cells, well away from the honey. This makes them suitable for fancy comb honey production; but, as a whole, they are considered inferior to other races.
The queens and the drones are blacker than the gray-black worker bees, and, on account of the habit of this race of bees running all over the combs and about the hives, it does not only make them disagreeable to handle, but makes finding the queens very difficult.
## 11 Italian bees.
The Italian bees are the most popular throughout the entire country and, as an all-around, all-purpose race of bees, possess more good qualities than any other. They were first imported into this country from Italy about 1860, and have spread so widely over the whole country that they predominate in nearly all apiaries either in their purity, or their various crosses and hybrids.
There are three varieties of Italian bees. The three-banded Italian, as they originally come from Italy, show three distinct dark yellow, or orange colored, bands on the abdomen next to the thorax. There is a tendency of these bands to become lighter or more yellow in color after the bees have been bred here for a number of years. By constant selection of strains showing the yellowest bands, in breeding, bees with four and five yellow bands was the result and those known as Golden Italians originated. These are very beautiful, but are not regarded as hardy as the original type, and, besides, they are not quite as gentle, as a rule, and are more inclined to robbing.
Another beautiful and kindly variety of Italian bees is that known as Albinos. These show rows of unusually distinct white hairs on the rings, or bands, of the abdomen. This variety is not very commonly found, however, and is not superior to the average Italians.
The color of the queens of each of the varieties of Italians varies a great deal. Ordinarily the queens of the three-banded variety have the main part of their abdomen orange yellow and the rest a dark brown and nearly black toward the tip, but a great number have the abdomen of almost a solid color, varying from bright yellow in some queens to a very dark brown in others. As striking as the difference in the color of the queens is, the workers will all show the three distinct bands if in their purity. The Golden queens are almost entirely yellow, or golden, over the abdomen while some show a darker or even a nearly black tip at the posterior end.
The Italians are larger than the German race, and have longer toneues, enabling them to reach the nectar in deep blossoms out of reach of the black bees. Their doele temperament makes them less inclined to sting, but the Italian hybrids are, as a rule, very ill-natured. As honey-gatherers the Italians are superior to the blacks in every respect, except in the manner of capping their combs of honey. Their tendency is to fill the cells full of honey to the very top and then place the eappings close to, or right down on, the honey. This gives the surface a watery appearance, rather undesirable for fancy comb honey production. Here in Texas, however, this is not of much importance, since section honey is not produced to any great extent, and, as bulk comb honey is covered with the liquid extracted honey, the manner of eappings does not appear. This trait is less objectionable with most of the Italian hybrids, as a rule, but, aside from their combativeness, they are not, on the average, as good honey-gatherers as the pure Italians, although many colonies of the hybrids give large yields of honey.
Cyprian bees.
Cyprian bees were imported from the Isle of Cyprus in 1880. They are somewhat smaller, more active and lighter yellow in color than the Italians. Their abdomen is more pointed and their wings seem larger in comparison to their size. The queens are very prolific and they do not cease egg laying at the approach of a dearth of honey; hence their colonies are always strong in numbers and prepared for any sudden honey flows. In addition to this, they have longer tongues than other bees, and are, consequently, excellent honey-gatherers. They fill their honey cells so full before sealing them that the combs have the same watery appearance as that of the Italians.