Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1876 — Honey Bees. [ARTICLE]

Honey Bees.

Contrary to the excellent Dr. Watts, the busy little bee does not improve each shining hour by any means. Whether the hours be sinning or clouded, the Jittle busy bee only works in the flower At all other times it simply stays at home and eats, from which an "excellent moral may be deduced for the benefit of those sour old crabs who insist that the whole duty of man is to work like a steam-enl gine night and day, winter ani summer; If we were to imitate the little busy bee, as a matter of fact, we should be idly twothirds of the time. . - Applying the Dr. Watts beedbeory to people again, we find that facts about the age of bees knock the breath completely out of all goody-goody theories; that a man must work alibis life inorder to live a tong time. A queen bee, whd hever works any, will live four years, w’liiie your working bee, in ’ the honey season, lives only from four to sjx weeks. There’s a comment on the healthfulness of labor. Even through the winter, when the bees cannot leave their hives, the working bee only lives about six months. The working bees will fly as tar as four or five miles to get honey. They are uncommonly strong for their size. A curiously, intensely fascinating employment is the rearing of beeS, and studying their habits and laws. Part of it actually seems like witchcraft. Bees build three kinds of comb, called worker comb, drone-comb and honey-comb, the difference between them consisting in the size of the cell. The honey-comb is to store honey in, and is built in the upper part of the brood-combs. All the rest except honeycomb is brood-comb, for the rearing of young bees. There are three kinds of bees in a hive, a queen bee, the

ood cell kind, of a fide tie ItotChed out. qPthaf tail. ’’Tito btedlsWibnly b in the hive, ana nays all the eggs for the n«ta r warms. ';Thirfriotaldt cells afre quite small, the drone-cells considerably largdtßßd about the size Mimi tit: A queen-bee cell loolto’very iddd’iii antong w&irist. :il; mu! io’’■ i A bee’s efcg is about tfie size a needle 1 point, and- if the f. quelin fibe toys ah egg ih h drone-cell the resulting bee which hatches will be a drohep ifi again, she deposits an egg FilWlittW worker -cell, the bee wMfth hatohes tftetattftto wiH be'a working-bee&and soon, 'file size bf(tto cel! id Whita tlfo lAftt- fllems td determine the size ami sb.vof the qetaltipg bee in everycast; ItHs vdiy singular again. ’ ' .■r mc.’toHCy if jjr . The working bees rear queeife as they need them) to >‘iuit thiOfr&dlvt*. ' lit- is popularly supposed tKw the' queen bee in a hive die£t<ft»fc tilled br an accident, that the rfest ODthe hive all perish. It is a popular mistake. -If a hive of beeS lose their queen, they fiednt to know" that they have lost their and manifest great alarm; but that does not hinder them from repairing the loss. They set' to work at once to rear anotheftßlbtfier for themselves. How? <Th!si also is one of the odd things in bceology. The workers select an ordinary workerldell containing an-egg, and build it oirt and elongate it Ull it becomes of the siisefaltoislfiipC of a Queen-bee cell. After the laiwa hatches in this* tall’ the iWirlftirJbeetf:'UOgitp and feed and stuff’ it with all their might, as cjne w-ould fatten a turkey for Thanksgiving. Consequently tlie wOriter-larva grows and thrives and fattens, and in time comes to be a queen bee. - -, ; - The food which they feed to the young queen that isto be is a mixture of honey and beß-bread<” * This food is called by t|ie bee-keepel- “ royal jelly.’ r The working bees are all females^—imperfectly-de-veloped females—and it follows that if you take any young workihg bee arid give tier plenty to eat and room >'to grow, and nothing to do, in time she will become a queen bee. There’s a moral as is a moral iprydu. The drones are all perfectly-developed male -bees—lazy gentlemen who bask in the sunshine and eat. A male bee 1 never works any. The bees Who do all the work, ihside and out, are all females—im-perfectly-developed female bees. It reqdires sixtetaf days to hatch a qtieen, twenty-one days to hatch a working bee, £' id longer to hatch a drone than any of' e rest/ twenty-four days being required for that.

The female working bees appear satisfied with their lot in life, in general, and fully persuaded that it is their mission to make honey for the gentlemen drones to eat. But, ma#k you, as winter approached, or if there has been a poor honey harvest, tlie female working bbes appoint a regular day of knock-down and drag out, and Sting all the gentlemen drones to death with a fearftil slaughter, so that the store qf honey may last the queen and the workers through the winter. There’s another moral from tlie life of the bee; and it is not found in Dr. Watts, either. Nature does not provide the gentlemen drones with stings, so there is nothing left for them but to siibmit to be stung to death by the infuriated females. Yet another' moral not to be found in Dr. Watts. IHow the morals do come in in showers long htoe!) "The female bee has to do ill: the work, but she also is alone provided with a sting.; Very -phoper, indeed. 1 Bee-koepers have now leairued to Control the rearing of bees almost at'pleasure and produce them of; siich kinds and in such numbers as they 1 ‘riant. Thip gives beekeepers great advantages in Tearing queen jees from any given clioioe stock, for jfoodqjd-stock is as important-in bees as .lt ain horses or people. < An entluisiastio. beekeeper some -tu»<? ago tried a very singular experiment. He took a frame of .broodr-cejja full of young, pnhatched bees, away from the hive and put it by itself. There was ne queen-bee pell among them, and of->course the young beef?, as tliey hatck’fd. oqt, / never saw or heard of such a creature as a queen bee. Nevertheless, with that sfrangu, miraculous instinct which is past, finding out by the wisest of us, these yoitng -.bees .yere inpateiy conscious, of tfieir loss, and, : as ■ soon as they could move about, built opt and'etongafed a cell, and if od the larva in it and actually reared a queen, for themselves. When we -find ouf,how, these young bees knew: enough to do that we, shall oe some centuries wiser than-we are now. ,> • ‘ ’ “Let; me show you a queen bee,” said our friend. He dived down into the bunch bf bees- with his hand, jpst as you would pjutyour hand into .»• bag of peanuts,j shoved she bees aside this way and that, and finally held up in his fingers the royal lady herself. She was- .nearly twice as large .sis the resfcmid of a -shapely form, Iwitii a shining, downy cqsrf all over her, land royal of great brilliancy across her queenly baqß. Cincinnati Commercial. i