The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1883-05-10
A Few Facts About Bees.

knowledge OF inc lnSClDcCS ana nab
its of bees. Without going into
the minute details which a thor
ough naturalist would be curious to
master, there are certain facts ca
pable of being put into small COM
pass, with which it is absolutely
necessary every bee-keeper should
be familiar.
Bees are of three kinds. Every
complete hive or colony contains
one queen, a number of drones, the
fewer the better, and a multitude OF
workers, the more the merrier. The
queen is the only perfect female and
lays all the eggs from which all the
other bees are produced. The eggs
are of two different kinds. The
one matches into drones or male
bees, while the other produces
workers. These, however, are
simply undeveloped females and ev-
cry worker-egg is capable, under
special treatment, of developing into
perfect female or queen. The
special treatment consists in build
ing what is called a queen cell, a
roomy, pendant receptacle, some
what resembling peanut, housing
the egg or young larvae there, and
feeding it with a peculiar substance
known among bee-keepers as ''roy-
al jelly" This food has the effect
of fully developing the young fe-
male, so that she comes upon the
stage of life fully qualified to in
crease and multiply. Instinct,
impels bees to rear queens
when the colony becomes very pop
ulous and swarming time is al
hand, also at any time when the
colony is deprived of it's queen.
Only one queen with few excep-
tions) is required or allowed in a
hive at one time. Sometimes a
queen will wander into the wrong
hive; at other times bad weather
prevents swarming, though the
preparations have been made for it.
and In such cases queen slaughter
is very apt to take place, unless, as
often happens, the workers protect
the young queens until the weather
is more favorable and circumstances
are more propitious for swarming
Within few days after being
Matched, the young queen issues
from the hives on what is prettilV
called her "bridal tour"-courtship,
marriage and impregnation being
all accomplished on the wing, dur
ing a brief fight. Only for this
purpose does she leave, except when
swarm issues. One impregna-
ton lasts for lifetime Before it
occurs, strange to say, the queen
has the power to drone eggs, after
ward she is capable of laying both
drone and worker eggs. 1t some :
times happens that queen fails to
meet drone at the proper period of
fertilization. She then becomes a
drone-layer, and with such 8 queen
a colony is doomed to extinction.
This and other facts in the natural
history of the bee show the utility
of the movable frame hive,
which admits the examination, and
permits the bee-keeper to remove a
drone-laying queen and give the
wasting colony a fertile queen OF
brood out of which to rear one.
The queen bee is endowed With
wonderful prolifcacy, and when
honey-forage is plentiful, instinct
impels her to put forth all her en-
ergies in the direction of fecundity.
1t has been sscertained by careful
experiments that fertile queen is
capable of laying upward of two
thousand eggs in a day. Her pro
Efficacy is regulated by the supply
of honey, and, hence, it is the poll
cy of all good bee-keepers to feed
in early spring, so the colony will
be ready with o strong force of
young bees to take advantage of
the honey season, when it comes.
The average lifetime of queen
is about three years. but they do not
lay SO well the third year. If they
are not prolific the third year, we
remove them and replace them with
young, prolific successor. Work
er bees are short-lived, not aversg-
ing more than six weeks in the
busy season. Drones are also
short-lived. They are reared in the
spring, when the colony becomes
strong and the time approaches for
warming; and when the honey sea-
son Is over the worker bees drive
them out of the hive or sting them
to death.-C. P. Dodd, in the
N. Y. Independent.