French Broad hustler. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1916-1919, 1917-02-08

istics depends good ceal on whether
lone makes a success or failure. In
4 every hive or colony Of bees we nave
1.-THE following: the queen bee; the
fdrone, and the worker. The queen is
the only fully developed female bee IN
the hive, save at certain periods OF the
Eswarming season. She lays ali the
eggs that produce the thousands OF
bees in the hive (some times two eor
three thousand eggs she lays daily
There is only one laying queen in "a
hive at one time. The queen lives
from one to.fiye years and occasionally
| longer. The drone bee is the male
bee We find him in the hive only
during the swarmlng and mating s";A-
son. At the end of this period he is
driven from the hive and perishes in.
various ways The worker bee is an
undeveloped female bee. There are
many thousands of them in a good col
ony. Should colony lose its queen
when there ar no drones the probable
| itv is that the new queen reared from
an egg which would otherwise pro-
tduce worker bee would not be mated.
She would lay eggs which would only
produce 1rones and in all probability
the hive would soon die out as there
would be no bees to take the place of
the ones dyeing off, AS the colony be-
came weaker in numbers the moths or
worms" would take possession. A
fertile queen, therefore. lays two kinds
of eggs, one produces a drone or male
bee and the other a female. But per-
haps only one in a hundred thousand
or more is fully developed into queen
and therefore most of them become
workers When a queen is made she
never leaves the hive except when TAX
ing q swarm with her. While the queen
may live four or five years the work
er's life is very seldom over four
months and in the summer they gen.
orally wear themselves out in a few
weeks. The honey comb is an oily
secretion from the worker bee and this
can be produced at will under certain
weather or temperature conditions.
There should be in a good vigorous
colony from one hundred to one hun
dred and fifty thousand bees. though
many colonies with far less than that
number store considerable honey on
favorable years. OF course in winter
the number of bees in a colony is not
good strong colony ought to consist of
from twenty-five to thirty-five thou
sand. 1t will be seen, therefore, that
about the. most important thing about
a colony of bees is to have a queen
that will produce a large number of
bees. All things being equal it is the
number of bees which produce the
honey and not the number of hives
one has. A good vigorous colony of
bees in tight hive will never become
prey to the boths or worms" as thev
are called. These pests are appar-,
emily the cause of the most of the fail
ures with bees in this section. The
real cause. however, is excessive
swarming and starvation in winter.
Swarming ic natures way of making
increase. but one swarm is as many
as should be allowed from colony in
one season, and if it were possible to
prevent swarming altogether the hon.
ey crops would be very materially in
creased. A hive of bees is like a hen
they become very "broody' before
swarming and waste lot of time in
which they could produce lots of hon.
ey Unfortunately we can not prevent
swarming altogether, but we can con-
troll it to such an extent that we are
not materially effected by it. We now
know how to raise queens and start
new colonies without waiting for the
bees to swarm, and then by minimiz-
ing the swarming we gain considera-
bly, in the transaction. A hive that
swarms naturally once loses about
half the bees then able to fly, when it