BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
"' A part of the colony then seemed to conclude that it was time to take the first queen and go, but by some mistake she remained in the hive after the swarm had left. The second queen came out as soon as possible after the others had gone, and then there were now _two_ hatched queens in the hive! they ran about on the comb, which was now nearly empty, so that they could be distinctly seen. But they had not, apparently, noticed each other, while the workers were in a state of great uneasiness and commotion, seeming impatient for the destruction of one of them. The mode they adopted to accomplish it was of the most deliberate and cold-blooded kind. A circle of bees kept one queen stationary, while another party dragged the other up to her, so that their heads nearly touched, and then the bees stood back, leaving a fair field for the combatants, in which one was to gain her laurels,and the other to die! The battle was fierce and sanguinary. They grappled each other, and, like.expert wrestlers, strove to infliet the fatal blow by some sudden or adroit movement. But for some moments the parties seemed equally matched ; no advantage could be gained on either side. The bees stood looking calmly on the dreadful affray, as though they themselves had been the heroes of a hundred wars. But the battle, like all others, had its close ; one fell upon the field, and was immediately taken by the workers and carried out of the hive. By this time, the bees which had swarmed made the discovery that their queen was missing, and although they had been hived without any trouble, came rushing back, but not in season to witness the fatal battle, and the fall of their poor slain queen, who should have gone forth with them to seek a future home."
The Apiarian has already been reminded of the importance of securing straight worker-combs for his stocks. To a stock-hive, such combs are like cash capital to a business man ; and so long as they are fit for use, they should never be destroyed (p. 60).! Those who have plenty of good worker-comb, will unquestionably find it to their advantage to use it in the place of the artificial guides (Pl. I, Fig. 2, _e_).! Those who use the guides,should examine a swarm two or three days after it is hived, when, by a little management, any irregularities in their combs may be easily corrected. Some combs may need a little compression, to bring them into their proper positions, and others may even require to be cut out, and fastened as guides in other frames; but no pains should be snared to see that they are all right, before the work has gone so far as to make it laborious to remedy any defects. If a colony is small it ought to be confined, by a movable partition, to such a space in the hive as it can occupy with comb--as well for its encouragement, as to economize its animal heat, and guard against irregularities in comb-building. Yarro, who flourished before the Christian Era, says (Liber III, Cap. xviii.), that bees become dispirited, when placed in hives that are too large.
The possession of five frames of straight worker-comb, may be made to answer an admirable end, if given to a new swarm, so as to alternate with its empty frames. After the bees have had possession of them two or three days, they may be politely informed that these workers' combs were only loaned to them as patterns, and their new combs may be alternated with empty frames. Five combs may thus be used for many successive swarms.
As the artificial guides increase the expense of the frames, and cannot be _invariably relied on_, the practical Apiarian will aim, as far as possible, to dispense with their use. I have devised a plan--which will be elsewhere described--for superseding them, and enabling the beginner to compel his bees, without any comb, to build in the frames with entire regularity.
_It must be obvious to every intelligent bee-keeper, that the perfect control of the combs of the hive is the soul of a system of practical management, which may be modified to suit the events of all who cultivate bees._ Even the old-fashioned bee-keeper can, with movable combs, destroy his faithful laborers quite as speedily as by setting them over a sulphur-pit ; thus preserving his honey from disgusting fumes, while he secures it on frames from which it may be conveniently cut, and preserves all empty comb for future use (p. 71).
As many who would like to keep bees are so much afraid of being stang, that they object entirely even to natural swarming, how, it may be asked, can such persons open hives, lift out the combs, shake or brush off the bees, and practice other processes which seem like bearding a lion in its very den? The truth is, that some persons are so timid, or suffer so dreadfully when stung, that they are every way disqualified from having anything to do with bees, and ought either to have none upon their premises, or to entrust the care of them to others. With the directions furnished in this treatise, almost any one, however, by using a bee-dress, can learn to superintend bees with very little risk. I find, in short, that the risk of being stung is really diminished by the use of my hives; although it is very difficult for those who have not seen them in use, to believe that this can be so.
_The ignorance of most bee-keepers of the almost unlimited control which may be peaceably acquired over bees, has ever been regarded by the author of this treatise as the greatest obstacle to the speedy introduction of noveable-comb hives._ He might easily have invented contrivances which, by adapting themselves to this ignorance, would, at first, have proved much more lucrative to him, had he thought it just, either to the community or to himself, to have taken such a course. Such ignorance has led to the invention of costly and complicated hives,*all the ingenuity and expense lavished upon which, are known, by the better informed, to be as unnecessary as a costly machine for lifting up bread and butter, and gently pushing it into the mouth and down the throat of an active and healthy child.
The Rev. John Thorley, in his " _Female Monarchy_;" published at London, in 1744, appears to have first introduced the practice of stupefying bees by the nareotic flames of the " puff ball" (_Fungus pulverulentus_), dried till it will hold fire like tinder. The same effect has been produced by pushing a rag, saturated with chloroform or ether, into the entrance of the hive, and closing all tight, to prevent the esenpc of the fames. The _bees_ soon drop motionless from their combs, and recover again after a short exposure to the air.
Some of my readers may suppose that such an easy mode of stupefying bees would very greatly facilitate the of this invention is to elevate frames, one at a time, fade a case with _clean_ added, so that they may be examined without risk of annoyance from the bees. Great ingenuity is exhibited by the laventer of this very costly and very complicated hive, who seems to imagine that smoke " must be injurious both to the bees and their brood." Even if a little smoke is so injurious, the Aplarian, by wereienced water, or by drumming upon a hive, after closing its entrance, can cause the bees to fill themselves with honey (p. 273, when all their combs may be safely lifted out.
A Hive-like, or one with movable bars, may be much, once safely managed than any one which proposes to elevate the frames, with-at permitting them to be pushed apart (p. 150). A single hive, the strange-a of which are such as to main and irritate been, is more to be decoded in a _Aplary_ than a thousand of proper constructional; as it advocates bees to regard "self" keeper in the light of an enemy.
On p. 15, I have spoken of the bar-like, as at least one hundred years old. From " A Journey into Greece, by George Wheeler, Bsq." made in 1675-4, it appears that it was, at that time, in common noa trees, and, probably, even then an old invention; he describes how it was used for crolling artificial swarms, and removing spare honey. As the new swarm were made by dividing the combs between two hive,and no mention is made of giving the quescentes one is royal cell -whose old observers were probably aerated with the fact that they could race one from the worker-brook. Huber says:-" Montlell, a Napolitan Predessoi, claims that the plan of artificial sew-sing was borrowed from Favignana, and that the practice is so asdent that ever the Latin names are preserved by the inhabitants in their procedure."removal of combs; but, however valuable to chose ignorant of the great law, that a gorged bee never volunteers an attack, to the better informed, narcotics of all kinds are, for general purposes, worse than useless. _Living_ bees may be easily made to get out of the way; but _drunken_ ones, like drunken men, are constantly liable to be mained or killed.
There is a large class of bee-keepers--not _bee-maasters_ --who desire a hive which will give them, however ignorant or careless, a large yield of honey from their bees. They are easily captivated by the shallowest devices, and spend their money and destroy their bees, to fill the purses of unprincipled men. There never will be a " royal road" to profitable bee-keeping. Like all other branches of rural economy, it demands care and experience; and those who are conscious of a strong disposition to proerastinate and neglect, will do well to let bees alone, unless they hope, by the study of their systematic industry, to reform evil habits which are well nigh incurable.
While I feel increasingly sanguine that the movable-eomb hive* will be extensively used by skillful bee-keepers, I well know the difficulty of rapidly introducing any system of management which is much in advance of current knowledge; even a perfect hive (p. 116) would require years to win its way into general use. It is only of late years, that the splendid discoveries of Huber--like the writings of Bruce on the Sources of the Nile--have emerged from the clouds of ridicule and aspersion in which they were so long enveloped; and even now, to describe a title of the wonders of the bee-hive, however
L088 of the QUEEN.
C II A P T E R X I.
Loss of tile queen.
That the Queen-Bee is often lost, and that her colony will be ruined unless such a calamity is seasonally remedied, ought to be familiar facts to every bee-keeper.
Queens sometimes die of disease or old age, when there is no brood to supply their loss. Few, however, perish under such circumstances; for either the bees build royal cells, aware of their approaching end, or they die so suddenly as to leave young brood behind them. Queens are not only much longer lived (p. 58) than the workers, but are usually the last to perish in any fatal casualty. As many die of old age, if their death did not ordinarily occur under favorable circumstances, it would cause, yearly, the loss of a very large number of colonies. As they seldom die when their strength is not severely taxed in breeding, drones are usually on hand to impregnate their successors.1
Footnote 1: In preparing my attacks for Winter, I foundon the flat of October, 1856two which had sealed queens. As the drones were not killed, in some of the hive, until after the lot of November, these queens might have been Imgegnated, if the weather had not become very cold. When examined on the flat day of February, these stocks had each a few sealed drones and larvae, while weaker stocks had much beod. The following is an extract from Prof. Leldy's description of these queens: Their ovaries were filled with eggs, from a mere point to such as measured four-dths of a line long, and one-elighth of a line broad. Their aprentheesa were filled with macold, granular matter, and epithelial cells, and did not constitute a We have yet, however, to describe under what circumstances the majority of hives become queenless. _More queens, whose loss cannot be supplied by the bees, perish when they leave the hive to meet the drones, than in all other ways._ After the departure of the first swarm, the mother-stock and all the after-swarms have young queens which must leave the hive for impregnation; _their larger size and slower flight_ make them a more tempting prey to birds, while others are dashed, by sudden gusts of wind, against some hard object, or blown into the water: for, with all their queenly dignity, they are not exempt from mishaps common to the humblest of their race.
_In spite of their caution to mark the position and appearance of their habitation_ (p. 125)**,**_the young queen frequently make a fatal mistake, and are destroyed, by attempting to enter the wrong hive_. This accounts for the notorious fact, that ignorant bee-keepers, with forlorn and rickety hives, no two of which look just alike, are often more successful than those whose hives are of the best construction._ The former--unless their hives are excessively crowded--lose but few queens, while the latter lose them almost in exact proportion to the taste and skill which induced them to make their hives of _uniform size, shape,_ and _color._
I first learned the full extent of the danger of crowded Apiaries, in the Summer of 1854. To protect my hives against extremes of heat and cold, they were ranged, side by side, over a trench, so that, through ventilators in their bottom-boards, they might receive, in Summer, a cooler, and in Winter, a much warmer air, than the external atmosphere. By this arrangement--which failed entirely to answer its design--many of my colonies became queenless, and I soon ascertained under what circumstances young queens are ordinarily lost. From the great uniformity of the hives in size, shape, color, and height, it was next to impossible for a young queen to be sure of returning to her hive. The difficulty was increased, from the fact that the ground before the trench was free from bushes or trees, and no hive--except the two end ones, which did not lose their queens--could have its location more easily remembered, from its relative position to some external object. Most of the hives thus placed, which had young queens, became queenless, although supplied with other queens, again and again; and many, even of the workers, were constantly entering hives adjoining their own. If a traveler should be carried, in a dark night, to a hotel in a strange city, and on rising in the morning, should find the strees filled with buildings precisely like it, he would be able to return to his proper place, only by previously ascertaining its number, or by counting the houses between it and the corner. Such a numbering faculty, however, was not given to the queen-be; for who, in a state of nature, ever saw a dozen or more hollow trees or other places frequented by bees, standing close together, precisely alike in size, shape, and color, with their entrances all facing the same way, and at exactly the same height from the ground! On describing to a friend my observations on the loss of queens, he told me that in the management of his hens, he had fallen into a somewhat similar mistake. To econo
### 216 The hive and honey-bere
maize room, and to give easier access to his setting hens, he had partitioned a long box into a dozen or more separate apartments. The hens, in returning to their nests, were deceived by the similarity of the entrances, so that often one box contained two or three unamiable aspirants for the honors of maternity, while others were entirely for-saken. Many eggs were broken, more were added, and hardly enough hatched to establish one mother as the happy mistress of a flourishing family. Had he left his hes to their own instincts, they would have scattered their nests, and gladdened his eyes with a numerous offspring.
Through the length and breadth of our land, beekeepers who suffer heavy losses, from the proximity-and similarity of their hives, unsuspicious of the true cause of their misfortunes, impute them to the bee-moth, or some of the many enemies of the bee. Judge Fishback, of Batavia, Ohio, informed me, in the Fall of 1854, while on a visit to his large \(\Delta\)**p**i**ary, that he had for many years guarded against the loss of young queens, by painting the fronts of his hives of different colors, and making their entrances face in various ways.* Every bee-keeper, whose hives are so arranged that the young queens are liable to make mistakes, must count upon heavy losses. If he puts a number of hives, under circumstances similar to those described, upon a bench, or the shelves of a be-house, he can never keep their number good without constant renewal. The first swarms, and those stocks which do not swarm, as they retain their fertile queens, will do well enough; but many of those that swarm will be robbed
by other bees, or full a prey to the moth, or gradually dwindle away.
As the bee-keeper, from limited space or other reasons, may prefer to keep his colonies close together, I have devised a way of effecting it, without risking the loss of the young queens :-
If he relies upon natural swarming, he should remove the _mother-stock_, as soon as it has swarmed, to a _new position_, giving it two or three quarts of bees from the swarm, before they have entered the new hive, which is to be put on the old stand. These bees having the swarming propensity, will supply the place (p. 156) of those which subsequently leave.
If artificial swarming is practiced, the entrances to the hives of the nuclei should be marked with a leafy twig, and, if possible, made to face differently (p. 189) from those of the adjoining stocks. The new colonies should be formed as directed on page 186. If two Apiaries are used, the artificial swarms may be made in any of the ways previously described, and those colonies which have quecns to be impregnated, removed to the second Apiary.
The bees are sometimes so excessively agitated when their queen leaves for impregnation, that they exhibit all the appearance of swarming. They seem to have an instinctive perception of the dangers which await her, and I have known them to gather around her and confine her, as though they could not bear to have her leave. If a queen is lost in what the Germans call "her wedding excursion," the bees of an old stoek will gradually decline ; those of an after-swarm, will either unite with another colony, or speedily dwindle away.
It would be interesting, could we learn how bees become informed of the loss of their queen. When she is taken from them, under circumstances that excite the whole 10colony, we can easily see how they find it out; for as a tender mother, in time of danger, is all anxiety for her helpless children, so bees, when alarmed, always seek first to assure themselves of the safety of their queen. If, however, the queen is very carefully removed, a day, or even more, may elapse, before they realize their loss.* How do they first become aware of it? Perhaps some dutiful bee, anxious to embrace her mother, makes diligent search for her through the hive. The intelligence that she cannot be found being noised abroad, the whole family is speedily alarmed. At such times, instead of calmly conversing, by touching each other's antennae, they may be seen violently striking them together, and by the most impassioned demonstrations manifesting their agony and despair. I once removed the queen of a small colony, the bees of which took wing and filled the air, in search of her. Although she was returned in a few minutes, royal cells were found two days later. The queen was unhurt, and the cells untenanted. Was this work begun by some that did not believe the others, when assured that she was safe? or from the apprehension that she might be removed again?
All colonies whose queens are to be impregnated should be watched, that the Aparian may be seasonally apprised of their loss. Such colonies, if provided with suitable brood-comb, will seldom forsake the hive, if the queen is lost. An old stock which cannot be suppplied with a queen or the means of raising one, should be broken up,and the bees added to another colony; a new swarm, unless a queen nearly mature can be given to it (p. 149), should always be broken up. If the new colony is large, it will be better, instead of breaking it up, to give it a queen from some old stock which can easily raise another. If, however, the Aparian uses movable-comb hives, and pursues the nucleus system (p. 188), be will always have queens on hand for all emergencies.
* IIuber has proved that bees do not ordinarily transport the eggs of the queen from one cell to another. I have, however, in several instances, known them to carry worker-eggs into royal cells. Mr. Wagner put some queenless bees, brought from a distance, into empty combs that hadlain for two years in his garret. When supplied with brood, they raised their queen in this old comb.! Mr. Richard Colvin, of Baltimore, and other Aparian friends, have communicated to me instances almost as striking.
Having described the precautions necessary to prevent the loss of queens, it remains to show how the bee-keeper can ascertain that a hive is queenless, and how he can remedy such a misfortune. As soon as the bees begin to fly briskly in the Spring, a stock which does not industriously gather pollen,* or accept of rye flour, and which refuses clean water, given to it in an empty comb, is almost certain to have no queen, or one that is not fertile--unless it is on the eve of being destroyed by worms, or of perishing from starvation.
A stock is sure to be queenless, if, after taking its first Spring-flight, the bees, by roaning, in an inquiring manner, in and out of the hive (p. 67), show that some great * "The tenth and last species of women were made out of a bee; and happy is the man who gets such a one for his wife. She is full of virtue and professor, and is the best wife that Jupiter can betow."-gractarok, No. 200.
* "The fifth and fifth species of women were made out of a bee; and happy is the man who gets such a one for his wife. She is full of virtue and professor, and is the best wife that Jupiter can betow."-gractarok, No. 200.
they usually give reliable evidence either that all is well, or that ruin lurks within, if their first flight is not noticed, it is sometimes difficult, in the common hives, to get at the truth. If the bees are driven up among the combs, by smoke, the presence or absence of brood may often be ascertained. If a few imperfect bees are found on the bottom-board, or in front of the entrance, it shows that the hive has a fertile queen.
* I strongly advise giving every movable-comb hive a thorough examination, as soon as the bees begin to work in the Spring.* The combs, with the adhering bees, may be put into a clean hive, and the old one, after being cleansed from everything offensive to the delicate senses of the bees, may be given to another stoek. In making this thorough cleansing of his hives, the Apilarian will learn which require aid, and which can lend a helping hand to others; and any one needing repairs, may be put in order before being used again. Such hives, if occasionally re-painted, will last for generations, and prove cheaper, in the long run, than any other kind. If, in the Spring examination, a hive has no queen, it should be supplied, if populous, with one from a weaker stock. If it is small, comb, with hatching bees, should be given to it from a stronger colony. Or it may change stands with a strong stock, when the bees are actively gathering stores; or bees brought from a distance may be added to it.* If it raises a queen before she can be seasonally impregnated, she may be killed, and more brood-comb given to them. The smallest stocks may thus be preserved until the drones appear, by which time they may be made as strong as is desired. The stocks deprived of their queens should be managed in the same way. By this device, every queenless stock, however feeble, that survives the Winter, may be nursed into profitable strength.