BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
In our average. Some specimens are a little larger, and some a little smaller; but when the comb is at all irregular, it is quite apt to be a little larger. The best specimens of true worker comb generally contain \( ilde{s}\) cells within the space of an inch, and therefore this measure has been adopted for comb foundation. If there are five cells to the inch, a square inch would give, on an average, about 25" cells, and 25 on the opposite side would make 50 young bees that can be hatched from every square inch of solid brood. As foundation is so much more regular than the natural comb, we get a great many more bees in a given surface of comb, and here, at least, we can fairly claim to have improved on mature.
Drone comb measures just about four cells to the inch, but the bees seem less particular about the size of it than with the worker. They very often seem to make the cells of such size as to fill out best a given space; and, accordingly, we find them differing from worker size all the way up to considerably more than \(
rac{1}{2}\) of an inch in width. Drones are raised in these extra-large cells without trouble, and honey is also stored in them; but where they are very large, the bees are compelled to turn them up, or the honey would flow out. Now, as honey is kept in place by capillary attraction, when cells exceed a certain size the adhesion of the liquid to the wax walls is insufficient, of itself, to hold the honey in place. Where drones are to be reared in these very large cells the bees contract the mouth by a thick rim. As an experiment, we had some plates made for producing small sheets of foundation, having only 34 cells to the inch. The bees worked on a few of these, with these same thick rims, but they evidently did not like the idea very well, for they tried to make worker-cells of some of it, and it proved so much of a complication for their little heads that they finally abandoned the whole piece of comb, apparently in disgust. Bees sometimes rear worker brood in drone comb, where compelled to from want of room, and they always do it in the way we have mentioned, by contracting the mouth of the cells and leaving the young bee a rather large berth in which to grow and develop. Drones are sometimes reared in worker-cells also, but they are so much cramped in growth that they seldom look like fully developed insects.
Several times it has been suggested that we enlarge the nice of honey-bees by giving them larger cells; and some circumstances seem to indicate that something may be done in this direction,although we have little hope of any permanent enlargement in size unless we combine with it the idea of selecting the largest bees to propagate from, as given a few pages back. By making the cells smaller than ordinarily, we get small bees with very little trouble; and we have seen a whole nucleus of bees so small as to be really hughable, just because the comb they were hateheed from was set at an angle so that one side was concave and the other convex. The small bees came from the concave side. Their light, active movements, as they spotted in front of the hive, made them a pretty and amusing sight for those fond of curiosities. Worker-bees reared in drone-cells, if we are correct, are sometimes extra large in size; but as to whether we can make them permanently larger by such a course, we are inclined to doubt. The difficulty, at present, seems to be the tendency to rear a great quantity of useless drones. By having a hive furnished entirely with worker-comb, we can so nearly prevent the production of drones that it is safe enough to call it a complete remedy.
## How bees build comb.
In this day and age of bees and honey it would seem that one should be able to tell how our bees build comb, with almost as much ease as they would tell how cows and horses eat grass ; but for all that, we lack records of careful and close experiments, such as Darwin made many years ago. In our house-aplary there are dozens of hives where the bees are building right up close to the glass, at this very minute ; and all one has to do, in order to see how it is done, is to take a chair and sit down before them. But the little fellows have such a queer sleight-of-hand way of doing the work that we hardly know how they do accomplish it.
If we examine our bees closely during the season of comb-building and honey-gathering, we shall find a good many of them with
-wave scales protruding between the rings that form the body, and these scales are either picked from their bodies or from the bottom of the hive or honey-boxes in which they are building. If a bee is obliged to carry one of these wax scales but a short distance, it takes it in its mandibles, and looks as business-like with it thus as a carpenter with a board on his shoulder. If it has to carry it from the bottom of the honey-box, it takes it in a way that I can not explain any better than to say it slips it under its chin. When thus equipped, you would never know it was encountered with any thing, unless it chanced to slip out, when it will very destroysly take it back with one of its fore feet. The little plate of wax is so warm from being kept under its chin as to be quite soft when it gets back; and as it takes it out, and gives it a pinch against the comb where the building is going on, one would think it might stop a while, and put it into place; but, not it; for off it scampers and twists around so many different ways, you might think it was not one of the working kind at all. Another follows after it sooner or later, and gives the wax a pinch, or a little serving and burnishing with its polished maudibles, then another, and so on; and the sum total of all these maudinves is, that the comb seems almost to grow out of nothing; yet no one best ever makes a cell.
The finished comb is the result of the unit-ed efforts of the moving, restless mass; and the great mystery is, that any thing so wonderful can ever result at all from such a mixed-up, skipping-about way of working as they seem to have. When the cells are built out only part way they are filled with honey or eggs, and the length is increased when they feel disposed, or "get around to it," perhaps. It may be that they find it easier working with shallow walls about the cells, for they can take care of the brood much easier, and put in the honey easier too, in all probability; and, as a thick rim is left around the upper edge of the cell, they have the material at hand to lengthen it at any time. This thick rim is also very necessary to give the bees a secure foothold, for the sides of the cells are so thin they would be very apt to break down with even the light weight of a bee. When honey is coming in rapidly, and the bees are crowded from to store it, their eigenress is so plainly apparent, as they push the work along, that they fairly seem to quiver with excitement;but for all that, they skip about from one cell to another in the same way, no one bee working in the same spot to exceed a minute or two, at the very outside. Very frequently, after one has beent a piece of wax a certain way, the next tips it in the opposite direction, and so on until completion; but after all have given it a twist and a pull, it is found in pretty nearly the right spot. As nearly as we can discover, they moisten the thin ribbons of wax with some sort of fluid or saliva. As the bee always preserves the thick rib or rim of the comb it is working, the looker-on would suppose it was making the walls of considerable thickness; but if we drive it away, and break this rim, we shall find that its mandibles have come so nearly together that the wax between them, beyond the rim, is almost as thin as tissue paper. In building natural comb, of course the bottoms of the cells are thinned in the same way, as the work goes along, before any side walls are made at all.
When no foundation is furnished, little patchesof combarestated at different points, as shown in the engraving, p. 288. Then as these patches enlarge, their edges are united as perfectly that it is sometimes difficult, when the frame is filled solid, to determine _helver_ the pieces were united, so perfect is the work. At other times there is, perhaps, a row of irregular or drone cells along the line of the union.
The midrib of natural comb becomes thicker as it approaches the line of support and tapers toward the bottom. Why this is so is evident. That there should be a gradual gradation in thickness from top to bottom seems wonderful when we remember the hap-hazard, skip-about work on the part of so many different bees.
How to get itess to build worker comb of from starters of foundation.
While we always recommend bee-keepers to use full sheets of worker foundation because the raising of drone comb und drone brood is an unnecessary waste, yet it very often happens that a bee-keeper runs short of foundation just when it is impossible to get another shipment in time, and therefore the knowledge of how to get the bees to build all worker comb from mere starters is important. Mr. E. D. Townsend, of Remus, Mich., to whom reference has been made elsewhere in this work, in our article for _(Glazunians in Bee Culture_ for Aug. 1, 1969, which we here reproduce, explains the conditions under which bees will build all worker comb, and when they will build worker and drone comb both.
It is a fact that bees under certain conditions built almost all worker comb; and it is also true that, under other conditions, a great deal of undesirable drone comb is built. For instance, a new medium-sized swarm, placed in a hive of a size that may be filled with combs and traced in about 25 days or less, ought to build worker comb mainly, though some of the last combs built may contain a few drone-cells. The secret seems to be in having just the right number of workers and just the right amount of honey coming in, so that the bees will draw out the combs no faster than the queen can occupy them with brood. As long as this condition lasts we should expect the bees to build worker counts. From this we see that, in order to get good results in comb-building from a natural swarm, this swarm should be of just the right size, and there should be a honey-flow of, say, three or four pounds a day.
We will suppose a large swarm is lived during a period when honey is coming in freely. At this time there is too much honey coming in for the best results in comb-building in the brood-nest, if the whole force of workers is compelled to do all their work in the brood-nest. The remedy is to put most of the workers at work in the supers. Most beginners fall in doing this; but the principle is to make the surplus receeptares more inviting to the workers than the brood-nest, and the bees will immediately go up into the supers on being lived. Our comb-honey super with extracting-combs at the sides makes an ideal arrangement for this very thing.
It is plain to see that, if most of the honey being carried in is placed in the sections, where it should be, the queen will not be hurried to keep pace with the workers, consequently all-worker comb will be built. The brood-nest should be filled with comb during the first 25 days after the swarm is lived; for the queen must keep up with the workers and lay in nearly every cell as fast as it is drawn out, or the bees will begin to store honey in the cells. When this condition arrives, the bees, on the supposition that the queen has reached her limit, and that the rest of the combs will be used for storing honey, begin to let the storage size or the drone-cells in the brood. This is likely to occur in about 23 days after the swarm is lived; for by this time the brood is beginning to batch out in that part of the hive where the laying began. From this time on, the queen has nearly all she can do to keep the cells filled with eggs where the young bees are hatching. This means that the comb-building part of the hive is prefected, and that he bees build store or drone comb to a great extent until the hive is filled.
It sometimes happens that a very late swarm will issue; and since the season is nearing its close, it is not possible for such a swarm to build more than five combs before the honey ceases coming in. We have such swarms as usual, and in about two days five of the frames having the least combs built are removed and a division-board placed up against the remaining five frames, this five having been showed over to one side of the hive. If a super is given such a swarm at the time of hiving, it must be a nearly finished one, as the bees will need most of the rtime to finish up the five combs in the brood-nest. If one has two of such five-comb colonies they can be united at the close of the season, so that there will be none but full sized colonies to winter. A better plan than this for late swarms, or for any small after-swarms that one may have, is to hive them on full sets of combs taken, possibly, from hives in which colonies died the previous winter. This is a very good way to get such combs filled with bees, but some swarms lived in this way may need feeding for winter.
There are artificial ways of handling bees so that they will build good worker combs. I refer to the plan of shaking the bees into an empty hive, in the same way that a swarm is lived. If a colony is divided into nuclei of, say, two or three combs each, and each nucleus given a young queen reared the same year, such little colonies will build very nice worker combs; but the beginner will not be interested in this artificial way of making increase, for he should stick to the natural-swarming plan for his increase until such time as he has had experience and made a success of getting a copy of honey. In fact, there are many things to be learned before a beginner should take up artificial ways of making increase.
some conditions where hees build mostly hors' combs only colony found rearing drone broad in the brood-nest will, if a comb is removed and an empty frame put in its place, build drone comb. It can be depended upon, moreover, that a colony of bees with sintered over, containing a queen reared the season before, or one older, will build drone comb until the time that it swarms. By this it can be seen that it is necessary to replace any combs, removed from a colony before it swarms in the spring or early summer, with an empty comb or with a frame containing a full sheet of foundation, or else drone comb will be the result. To be sure that a colony will build a large per cent of worker comb it is necessary to remove all the brood and to cause the bees of that colony to begin all over again, as in the case of natural swarming: or, as mentioned before, the colony can be broken up into nuclei, each nucleus containing a young queen.
For the consideration of the thickness of combs and how far to space them apart see Frames, Self-spacing; also Spacing of Frames; also Cogin Foundation.
**Honey-dev.** So named because it was formerly supposed to come down from the heavens in the form of a saccharier-spray, settling on the leaves of trees and low-growing shrubery. It is now known to be almost, if not entirely, the product of aphids, or plant-lice, and coccids, orscale insects. These are sometimes found on the topmost limbs of a tree, and the honey-dew which they secrete is thrown out as a spray, which falls on the lower limbs and on the sidewalk* or grass. Observers, seeing the leaves of the lower limbs of trees and the grass covered with a sort of saccharier currish, naturally came to the conclusion that this substance was a real honey-dew, and hence the name.
There are certain plants which, under certain conditions, it is said, exude a sort of saccharine substance from the leaves, but, strictly speaking, this is not honey-dew. The ordinary " stuff" that is gathered by the bees,commonly called honey-dew, is nothing but a secretion from plant-liece. There are several species of honey-dew like, among which may be named _Leeonium tiling_, that attack the basswoods; _Leeonium tilingifera_, of the tulip-tree, often called " poplar," and the scale or bark louse that attacks mapletrees,_Puleinario innmerubilis_ (Rath.). Prof. Cook, formerly of the Michigan Agricultural College, now of Claremont, Cal., professor of entomology, and a bee-keeper of long experience, thus describes these ice :
The maple-tree scale or bark louse (_Puleinaria innumerubilis_ (Rath.) consists at this season (188) of a brown scale about five-eights of an inch long, which is oblong, and slightly notched behind. On the back of the scale are transverse depressions, marking segments. The blunt posterior of the insect is raised by a large dense mass of fibrous cotton-like material, in which will be found about 800 small white eggs. These eggs falling on to a dark surface look to the unaided eye like flour; but with a lens they are found to be oblong, and would be pronounced by all as eggs, at once. This cotton-like egg-receptacle is often so thick as to raise the brown scale nearly a fourth of an inch. The scales are found on the under side of the limbs of some trees, and are often so thick as to overlap each other. Frequently there are hundreds on a single main branch of a tree. I find them on basswood, soft and hard maple, and grapevines, though very much more abundant on the maples.
Another feature, at this mature stage of the insect, is the secretion of a large amount of honey-dew. This falls on the leaves below, so as fairly to gum them over, as though they were varnished. This honey-dew is much prized by the bees, which swarm upon the leaves. If such honey-dew is pleasant to the taste, assume never, I should have to fear of the bees colleciting it,.
From the middle to the last of June, the eggs begin to hatch, though hatching is not completed for some weeks after it begins, so we may expect young ice to hatch out from late in June till August.
The young ice are yellow, half as broad as long, tapering slightly toward the posterior. The seven abdominal segments appear very distinctly. The legs and antennae are seen from the other side. As in the young of all such bark-liece, the beak, or sucking-tube, is long and thread-like, and is bent under the body till the young louse is ready to settle down to earnest work as a asperp. Two hair-like appendages, or setre, which soon disnperpear, terminate the body.
The same writer, in the _American Bee Journal_ for January, 1899, gives his reasons for doubting the plant origin of honey-dew. He says :
1. 1 now have carefully examined this secretion for years, whenever seen, and have always found either aphids\(-\)plant-liece; coocids\(-\)scale insects: other hemipicrobugs; or else larvae of insects (these are reported to me) often working in scores\(-\)to be the source of this nectar. This gives strong presumption that such is always the source of honey-dew.
2. We have reason to believe, in the economy of Nature, that energy is never expended by plant or animal that does not in some way benefit by such outgo. We are easily able to see how the insects profit by the secretion of this nectar. They thus lute bees, ants, wages, etc., to their immediate presence, and these in turn reject the birds which else would feed on and destroy the insects.
I once noticed an exhibit of this function in Michigan, so palpably displayed that to doubt it was impossible. The _Leeonium tiling_ - a large bark louse\(-\)was thick on a linden-tree close beside any study window. In early spring the beautiful song sparrow commenced to feed on the young sone insects which thickly dotted the leaves. suddenly the bees and other sweet-loving insects commenced to visit the same leaves for the honey-dew which dropped from the coccids, and the birds at once ceased to come. In a few days cold, or, preferably, nectar in other places, kept the bees and their companions from the place, and the birds again commenced their good work. This alteration of bird and bee visits occurred several times. Such observations make the value of the expansive secretion to the insects clearly evident.
On the other hand, the honey-dew always becomes foul with the black sum or fungus that attacks sweet substances on tree or bush. We can hardly doubt that it is a serious evil to the plants, and are unable to see any good that comes to the plant from it. I fully believe it is always harmful to vegetation, and I feel certain that plants do not originate it to their own hurt.
I referred above to certain acorn-infesting larvae that secrete nectar. I have never seen then, but have often heard of such\(-\)princibelly from Missouri\(-\)so often that I think they may be more than a myth. Yet I am free to say that I should feel more certain if I actually saw them. I can see how oak-tree plant-liece, which are by no means rare, might lead to an erroneous conclusion.
Krigot\(-\)a fungus which attacks rye and other plants \(-\)is also said to secrete honey-dew. If this be true, then I feel sure that the sweet in some way benefits the fungus. If it does the fungus no good, then I be like it, too, has other origin.
In California, where scale insects and aphids are so common, it is very easy to study the honey-dew, and the black repulsive fungus, which our erhardists denominate "smunt." The walnut-tree, this season, has been infested generally with an aphid, and honey-dew and smunt have always attached it.
It is not to be inferred that this honey-dew is unwholesome. It is a secretion, and not an excretion, it has a similar origin to honey, and may be as delicious. Much aphid honey-dew is deliciously wholesome, and the honey from it is superior. Most if not all of the coccid honey-dew, on the other hand, is dark and of ill flavor, and its presence in honey, or as honey, is greatly injurious, and can never be sold for the table. I have sold it by the barrier for manufacturing. This was used to make cookles, and was said to be all right by the manufacturer. I explained all to him, yet the gave the ruling price.
Often this honey-dew is produced in exceeding quantities, and I have known it to crystallize on plants, especially on pine and larch trees, so as to encrust them with white, and become very conspicuous.
Another authority, Prof. H. A. Surface, President of the Pennsylvania State Beekeepers' Association, and State Zoologist, has this to say on the subject of the origin of honey-dew:
Honey dew in this state is never found excepting on plants that are infested with certain scaleinserts, plant lice, or similar insects. It is true that it will be seen on the lower leaves of a tree before the insects get there; but this is because they often leave the trees by flying through the air and commence to feed on the tender new leaves of the upper part and drop their sweet secretions on the leaves below. Later they drop to the leaves below or crawl down the tree, and may be seen on the lower leaves. This does not mean that honey-dew was on the leaves before the insects were there.
Honey-dew attracts ants, wasps, flies, bees, and other insects that feed on sweets; but the plant-lice do not feed on the honey-dew nor on sweets, as they draw all their living from the sap of the trees orplants that are infested. No one has ever seen plant-lice feeding on the sweet liquid called honey-dew; but, on the other hand, we have frequently observed this liquid coming from the corinetics or honey-tubes of plant-lice, as well as from the vendor digestive tract. No one can watch plant-lice during the summer without seeing the honey-dew appear first in small globules, and then increase to larger drops on the corinetics or honey-tubes, especially when ants are stroking the plant-lice with their antennae. There can be no possible doubt about the source of this liquid.