BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
If you have never seen an egg that is to produce a bee, you may have to look very sharp the first time, for they are white like polished ivory, and scarcely larger than one of the periods in this print. They will be seen in the center of the cells attached to the comb by one end. The egg under the microscope much resembles the cut. It is covered, as you notice, with a sort of like jeuceniling, or net-work it might properly be called. Immediately on discovering eggs, mark down the date. If the weather
Figure 2: \(-\)worker-cells of tiny East-India honey (appi polyhedra); Natural size.
Figure 3: \(-\)worker-cells of tiny East-India honey (appi polyhedra); Natural size.
is favorable, these eggs will hatch out in about three days or a little more, when, in place of the egg, you will, if you look sharp enough, see a tiny white worn or grub floating in a minute drop of milky fluid.
If you watch you will find bees incessantly poking their heads into these cells; and very likely the milky fluid is placed on and about the egg a little before the innate breaks its way out of the shell. We infer this, because we have never been able to get the eggs to hatch when taken away from the bees,* although we have carefully kept the temperature at the same point as in the hive. The net-work, as shown in the cut above, allows the milky fluid to penetrate the shell of the egg to furnish nonishment for the young bee at just the time required. These worms are really young bees in their larval state, and we shall in future call them larvae. They thrive and grow very rapidly on their bread-and-milk diet. as you can see if you look at them very often. They will more than double in size in a single half-day, and in the short space of 12 days will expand from a mere sjeck (the larva just hatched) to the size of a full-grown bee, filling the cell completely. This seems almost incredible, but there they are, right before your eyes. We presume it is owing to the highly concentrated nature of this "bread-and-milk" food that the workers are so constantly giving them that they grow so rapidly. If you take the comb away from the bees for a little while you will see the larvae opening their mouths to be fed, like a nest of young birds, for all the world.
Figures under the cut represent the age in days from the laying of an egg. First the larva just having broken the egg-shell on the third day; next, a larva on the fourth day. During the fifth and sixth days they grow very rapidly, but it is difficult to fix any precise mark in regard to size. On the ninth day, the larva, having straightened itself out, the worker-bees cap it over. We have made a pretty accurate experiment on this point, and it was just six days and seven hours after the first egg hatched, that the bees completely capped it over. Just when larvae begin to have legs and eyes, we have not discovered; but we found that the wings develop toward the last of the growth.
Regarding this point, Frank Cheshire, in his work on "Bees and Bee-keeping," says:
The chorion of the egg breaks, usually after three days (the time varies according to temperatures, and a footless larva, with thirteen segments, exclusive of the head, alternately straightens and bends its body to free itself of the envelope. It is extremely curious that, before hatching, the larva presents rudimentary legs, which disappear-a fact which some have supposed to indicate "atariism," a reference to an ancestral type in which the larva bore feet; but this does not seem to be valid, for reasons which would eencencon too much on our space. Toward the end of the larval period, the three segments following the head have little scales beneath the skin on the ventral side, which are the beginnings of the legs, and which can not be seen until the erasure has been immersed in alcohol: the budding wings outside these, on second and third segments, are, by the same treatment, brought under view, as are also the rudiments of the sting in queen or worker larvae, the male organs appearing in that of the drone. After sealing, the fourth segment begins to contract, and the fifth becomes partly trophied, so that, soon, the former constitutes only a partial cover for the base of the developing thorax, and the periole between it and the abdomen, while the latter becomes the narrow, first abdominal segment. It has been explained that the last three segments disappear in forming the sting; and now we find the fourth forming the petiole, leaving nine of the thirteen original segments, of which three go to the thorax and six to the abdomen.
After the larvae are 6 days old, or between 6 and 10 days from the time the egg was laid, you will find the bees sealing up some of the largest. This sealing is done with a sort of paper-like substance; and while it shuts the young bee up, it still allows it a chance to breathe through the pores of the capping. It is given its last food, and the nurses seem to say, "There : you have been fed enough: spin your cocoon, and take care of yourself."
After this, as a general thing, the young bee is left covered up until it gaws off the capping and comes out a perfect bee. Thiswill be in about 21 days from the time the egg was laid, or it may be 20 if the weather is very favorable; therefore it is shut up 11 or 12 days. Now, there is an exception to this last statement, and it has caused not a little trouble and solieitude to beginners. During very warm summer weather, the bees, for one reason or another, decide to let a part of their children go "bareheaded," and therefore we find, on opening a hive, whole patches of immature bees looking like silent corpses with their white heads in tiers just about on a level with the surface of the comb. At this stage of growth they are motionless, of course, and so the young beekeeper sends a postal card, telling us the brood in his hives is all dead. Some have imagined that the extractor killed them, others that it was _fool brood_; and we often think, when reading these letters, 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 counting 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 up in the air. We can rest assured that the bees almost 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 you should learn these data thoroughly : The development of a bee occupies 3 days in the egg, 6 in the larval state, and 12 days sealed up.
The capping of worker-brood is nearly flat; that of the drones so much raised or convexed that we can at a glance tell when drones are reared in worker-cells, as is sometimes the case.
The young bee, when it gnavs 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, they, as a whole, we are well convinced, feel encouraged, and rejoice in their own way at a house full of young folks. Keep a colony without young bees for a time, uni you will see a new energy infused into all hands just as soon as young bees begin to gnow out.
If you vary your experiment by putting a frame of Italian eggs into a colony of common bees, you 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 day it will be found dipping greedily into the cells of unsealed honey, and so on for a week or more. After about the first day it will also begin to look after the wants of the unsealed larvae, 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 digested mixture of honey and pollen. Young bees have a white downy look until they are a full week old, and continue a peculiar 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; we know no prettier slight in the apiary than a host of young Italians taking a playsell in the open air, in front of their hive. Their aties and gambols remind one of a lot of young lambs at play.
It is also very interesting to see these little chaps bringing their first loud 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-baby. Instead of going straight into the hive with its load, as the veterans do, a vast amount of cireling round the entrance must be done; and even after the young bee has one alighted it takes wing again before rushing all through the hive, to justle nurses, drones, and perhaps the queen too; saying as plainly as could words, " Look! Here an I. I gathered this, all myself. Is it not nice?"
We might imagine some old veteran, who had brought thousands of such loads, answering grully, "Well, suppose you did; what of it? You had better put it in a cell and start off after more, instead of making all this row and wasting time, when there are no many mouths to feed." We said we might imagine this, for we have never been able to find any indication of unkindness inside a bee-hive. No one solds or finds fault, and the children are never forced to work, unless they wish. If they are improvident, and starvation comes, they all suffer alike, and, we do believe, without a single bit of hard feeling or eensure toward any one. They all work together, just as your right hand assists your left; and if we would understand the economy of the beehive, it were well to bear this point in mind.
Shortly following the impulse for pollen-collecting, comes that for honey - gathering; and the be is probably in its prime as a worker when a month old. At this age it can, like a man of 40, "turn its hand" to almost any domestic duties; but if the hive is well supplied with workers of all ages, it now probably does most effective service in the fields. See Age of Bees.
When a colony is formed of young bees entirely, they will sometimes go out into the fields for pollen when but five or six days old. Also when a colony is formed wholly of adult bees they can build comb, feed the larvae, construct queen-cells, and perform work generally that is usually done by younger bees; yet it is probably better economy to have bees of all ages in the hive.
**BEES AND FRUIT.** Every now and then we hear complaints of how bees will attack and eat up fruit; and to a casual observer. at least, they apparently do bite through the skin, extract the juices, until the specimen is shriveled up to a mere semblance of its former shape and size. Careful investigation has shown repeatedly that bees never attack sound fruit no matter how soft the skin nor how juicy and pulpy the eutents within the skin.
Souve years ago, Prof. N. W. McLain, then in the employ of the Department of Agriculture. Washington, D. C., conducted an elaborate series of experiments in which mens were attacked by the bees sucking up the juices until nothing but a dried skin and the stones or seeds were left.
Years later, Prof. H. \(\Lambda\). Surface, economic zoologist at Harrisburg, Pa., tried a similar experiment, but in no case did the bees attack the sound fruit, although they jurdok freely of that which he had broken.
At the Wilmington State Fair, held Sept., 1908, in Delaware, Mr. Joel Gilfillan. of Newark. Del., had on exhibition a three-story observation hive containing two combs of bees. In the third story was hung a peach, a pear, and a bunch of grapes. This was kept on exhibition during the entire fair where the general public could see it. As is shown, this fruit was never once visited by the bees. The general verdiet of those who saw it, fruit-men and farmers alike, was that bees would and could not injure _sound_ fruit.
The authors have had, during the past thirty years, between three and four hundred colonies located in a vineyard at their home apiary. Notwithstanding hundreds and hundreds of pounds of grapes are raised every year, the bunches hanging within three or four feet of the entrance of the hives, the sound fruit is never attacked ; but progressive fruit-growers and hortieutlurists there is a general acknowledgment that bees do not attack sound fruit; that the little damage they do to damaged fruit is compensated for a hundred times over by the indispensable service they perform in pollinating fruit-blossoms early in the season to us that he had found the guilty culprit, and that if we would come down to his place _early_ some morning he would point him out, This we did. He showed us a little bird, quick of flight, and almost never to be seen around the vines when any human being was present. This bird, about the size of a sparrow, striped, and called the Cape May warbler (_Dendroica tigrinu_), has a long sharp needlelike beak. It will alight on a bunch, and, about as fast as one can count the grapes, will puncture berry after berry. After his birship has done his mischief he leaves, and then come the innocent bees during the later hours of the day and finish up the work of destruction by sucking the jniices and the pulp of the berry until it becomes a withered skin over a few seeds. While the birds during the early hours of the day are never seen, the bees, coming on later, receive all the credit for the mischief.
The Cape May warbler is not the only bird guilty of puncturing grapes. There are many other species of small birds that learn this habit, and amoug them we may name the ever present sparrow and the beautiful Baltimore oriole, the sweet singer that is sometimes called the swinging bird, from its habit of building its nest on some overhanging limb.
For further information regarding grape-puncturing birds, write to Dr. Merrian, of the United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C.
when bees may damage fruit.
But there are times when bees do a real damage ; and it is then that their owner should compromise, or, better yet, seek means to avoid trouble in the first place. In the fruit-drying ranches of California, apri-eots and peaches are cut up into small pieces and laid upon trays exposed to the sun's says. If there is a dearth of honey at this time, and a large number of bees in the locality, this fruit is quite liable to be attacked. The bees may visit it in such large numbers that they suck out the jniices, leaving nothing but the shriveled form of the fruit. The property is no doubt damaged and its sale ruined. Before such a catastrophe can happen, the bee-keeper should move his whole yard to a point three or four miles distant from any fruit-drying operations. Failing to do so the fruit-grower, if the bees caused trouble, might enter suit for damages, and possibly recover the value of his crop. The bee-keeper, therefore, when the drying season is on, should take the precaution to move his bees away at once or make arrangements with his neighbor whereby he is to give immediate notice if the bees begin work on the fruit.
Years ago we had trouble with a eider-maker. He claimed that our bees would lick up the cider from the press as fast as he could make it. We easily adjusted this difficulty by screening his building with mosquito-netting.
In every case of this sort the bee-keeper should avoid trouble. If he is a member of the National Bee-keepers' Association he might put up a stiff defense, it is true ; but in the case of the fruit-drying ranches and the cider-mills, the bee-keeper had better err on the safe side by avoiding suit for damages, because no bee-keepers' union or any other organization. or lawgers either, for that matter, would be able to give much assistance where it was clearly proven that the bees were doing an actual damage.
## 6 Bees and fruit.
Bes exonerated by a jury.
In 1990, trouble arose between two brothers named Utter, at Anity, N. Y. One was a bee-keeper and the other a fruit-grower. The latter averred that the former's bees punctured his peaches, and that, in consequence of their alleged damage, he was unable to raise any fruit. There had not been very good feeling between the brothers for years. The fruit-grower brought suit against the bee-keeper, and the case was tried on December 17, 18, and 19, 1899, at Goshen. There was no lack of legal talent on either side. The case was a very hard-fought one from beginning to end. Among some thirty odd witnesses examined, the Government expert, Mr. Frank Benton, of the United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., gave in his testimony to the effect that bees never puncture sound fruit : that it is practically impossible for them to do so, owing to the fact that they have no cutting jaws like those found in the wasp and other insects of that character. He also showed how wasps and birds will, under some conditions, puncture fruit ; that these minute holes they make will, during a dearth of honey, be visited by bees. Other expert testimony was offered, nearly all of which exonerated the bees. After all the evidence was in and the pleas were made, the jury retired, and in a short time returned a verdict for the defendant. The fruit-grower had failed to make out a case against the bees.
For further particulars regarding this the reader is referred to the General Manager of the National Bee-keepers' Association.
In case trouble arises, the owner of the bees will do well to read the next subject, "bees as a Nuisance," and also the other subject found in its alphabetical order, " Laws Relating to bees."
Bes as a nuisance.It would seem almost out of place to discuss this question in a work intended for perusal and study by those who believe (and rightly, too) that bees are not a nuisance ; but, as we shall show, there are very good reasons why we should calmly discuss this question in order to avoid trouble that may arise in the future. Certain difficulties have arisen between the leepers of bees and their neighbors. Perhaps the bees, after a long winter continent, have taken a tight and soiled the washing hung on a line in a neighbor's yard. Possibly some of his children have been stung, or there have been times when he has been annoyed while in the peaceable possession of his own property by bees coming on his premises, and smelling around, as they sometimes do during the fruit-eanning season when the aroma of sugar and juicy fruits is flowing out through the doors and windows of the kitchen. Possibly the offended neighbor keeps chickens, and members of his feathered tribe have trespassed on the grounds of the bee-keeper. The result of all this is that bad feelings arise. Compliant is made to the village fathers ; an ordinance is passed declaring bees within the limits of the corporation to be a nuisance, and requiring the keeper to remove them at once or suffer the penalty of fine or imprisonment, or both.
In some instances, live stock has been stung ; a cow or a calf or a horse may get near the entrances of the hives, which, we will say, are within a foot of a dividing line between the two properties. Perhaps the stock is stung nearly to death. Damage is claimed and a lawsuit follows, with the result that a feeling of resentment is stirred up against the bee-keeper. But this is not all. Possibly the bee-keeper has an ujary in his front yard, bordering on the general highway. A nucleus may be robbed out, with the result that the bees go on the warpath, and begin to sting passersby. Perhaps a span of horses is attacked ; a runaway follows ; damages are claimed, and another lawsuit is begun.
In the foregoing we have supposed _possible_ instances. It is proper to state that they are only types of what has occurred and may occur again, so it behooves us to be careful.
In the case first mentioned (the aggrieved neighbor's washing soiled by the stains from bees affected with dysentery), it is well for the bee-keeper to send over several nice sections of honey, or offer to pay for the damage done to the washing. Nothing makes a woman more angry than to have her nice clean white linen, after she has serubbed, rinsed, and hung it out to dry, daubed with nasty, ill-smelling brown stains. But if our bee-keeping friend will take pains to offer an apology _before_ the woman makes complaint, and show a disposition to make the matter good, trouble may be averted. And right here it should be said, if the bees are in the cellar do not set them out on a wash-day ; or if they are outdoors, and the sun comes out bright so they begin to fly strongly from the hives, send word to your neighbors and ask them not to hang out their washing, if it is wash-day, for a few hours. Send along a few boxes of honey, and keep the folks
to watch developments. We found that the blankets helped very materially, as they protected the animals from the onslaught of bees around their bucks and necks where they could not brush or switch them off. Our neighbor did not think it was necessary to put the mosquito-netting over the heads, as he said his horses did not mind bees on the face, as they could be brushed off on the fore-legs. With these large blankets the horses went up and down the rows with very little trouble.
We found upon investigation that the bees were not disposed to be cross, but in going to and from the fields in search of honey they were interrupted in their flight. The switching of the tails of the horses angered then with the result as stated.
But suppose your neighbor is unreasonable and ugly, and he brings suit for damages ; or suppose that your bees are located in a city or village, and that the town council has declared your bees a nuisance.
No not move the bees if you have used reasonable precaution, but write at once to the Manager of the National Bee-keep's Association, whose address will be found by writing to any bee-journal or the publishers of this work. If you are a member of the Association you will be entitled to protection, and possibly all or a part of the court expenses will be paid by the organization. The Association does not undertake to defend its members against criminal carelessness of such a kind as we have already described ; but when the bee-keeper has exercised every precaution, then it endeavors to protect his rights. This means that you should become a member _before_ you get into trouble. The annual fee for membership and protection is $1.00.
Well, we will say the attorneys have been retained, and the Association is back of you. Any number of decisions have been handed down to prove that bees are not a nuisance _per se_; that, when they are properly kept, and due precautions are used, they can not be driven out of the corporation. There are several precedents from various courts, even from the Supreme Court of Arkansas, to show that bees have the right to be kept within exploration like any other live stocks, so that any ordinance not in conformity with these decisions can be declared unconstitution. Several ordinunces clearing bees to be a nuisance have been repeated. See Decisions, under head of Laws Relating to BECs, found elsewhere in its alphabetical order.
## 5 BECs, Cross,
See Anoire of Bees, BECs, Handling,
See Frames, Manipulating ; also Exhibits.
## 6 BECs on Sharks
In some localities, notably in California, Colorado, and the great West, bees are often kept on shares. While this method of doing business has usually been conducted quite successfully and satisfactorily to both parties, yet nevertheless many disputes and troubles have arisen, perhaps because there was a lack of contract ; or if there was one there was nothing in it to cover the point in dispute.