Beehive

“ In treating of that useful insect the honey-bee, we will first explain briefly the domestic economy of the hive, and the distinction between the different individuals composing the entire colony, and then pass on to the more practical details of bee-keeping.
A beehive contains three kinds of individuals—a queen, drones, and workers. The queen is a female, and is the mother of the community. The drones are males, and the working bees neuters, being neither males nor females. During the warmer part of the year the queen seems to be incessantly employed in laying eggs. ”

“ How the Bees Work AS I said, the work in the Beehive City is divided up.
The Worker Bees are divided into various groups: who forage for nectar; who gather pollen; who guard the entrance to the hive from enemies; who clean the city; who build the comb; the nurse-bees, who feed the babies; the undertakers, who carry away the dead; and a group whose duty it is to fan the air to keep the hive cool.
The Ventilating Workers—The Fanners
They keep their tiny wings vibrating so rapidly that sometimes the draught they make will put out a lighted candle flame held at the entrance of the hive at night. ”

“ The great remedy for the moth is in the right construction of a BEEHIVE.
Whatever the form of the hive you use, have the entrance within three or four inches of the top. Millers are afraid of bees; they will not go among them, unless they are in a weak, dispirited condition. They steal into the hive when the bees are quiet, up among the comb, or when they hang out in warm weather, but are still and quiet. ”

“ Bees have the power of counteracting superabundant heat by perspiration. Not unfrequently, on a hot summer's morning, a good deal of moisture may be noticed at the entrance of a crowded hive, which the inmates have been enabled to throw off. This is a healthy sign, because a sign of great numerical strength. The humming sound always to be heard in a beehive is produced by breathing. ”

“ The study of bees illustrates the same conclusions. It is well known that in a beehive there are three kinds of inmates, as the queen, the drones, and the workers,—the last-mentioned being females whose reproductive organs are imperfectly developed. ”

“ Among our insect friends the leading place belongs either to the honey bee or the silkworm. As silkworms are not especially successful in this country and as their principal food, mulberry trees, are not common, the nature student who cares to study our beneficial insects had better devote his attention to honey bees. An observation beehive is simply a glass box or hive instead of a wooden one. When we are not engaged in studying our bee city, the hive must be covered with a blanket as bees prefer to work in the dark. ”

“ Bees and beehives, too, are a subject extremely well suited to a description of gardens and garland plants, while, at the same time, where they are successfully managed, they are a source, without any great outlay, of very considerable profit. ”

“ I have often felled bee-trees whose honey was so clear that it could not be distinguished from a glass of water put by its side. If you are near home when you cut down a bee-tree, you drive the creatures, which have collected close by in a swarm round their queen, into a bag, take them home, and shake them out into a hollowed tree, nail a board at top and bottom, cut a hole in the lower board, and place it above-ground at a spot protected from the north wind. The bees at once set to work, continuing it winter and summer, and in a short time the hive is filled with honey and wax. ”

“ We have seen the queen lay her eggs, the little bees hatch out, the nurse bees feed them, the foragers come in and dance their whirling dervish dance and unload their baskets of pollen and sacs of honey, the wax-makers hang in heavy festoons and make wax, the carrying bees carry the wax to the comb-builders, and the comb-builders build comb of it, the house-cleaners and the ventilators clean house and ventilate, and the guards stopping intruders at the door. ”

“ The bees are the most useful of all, and we now see what service they render to plants, for when a little worker dips into a flower in search of nectar, her body becomes covered with pollen. It may be that the next flower she comes to is one in which the stigma is ripe, so that the bee, as she pushes her way in, rubs her pollen-covered body against it, [111] and thus the flower is fertilised by pollen from another plant. When a bee is nectar-gathering, you will notice that she always keeps to one kind of plant on each journey, just as the pollen gatherers do. ”

“ Is it not odd that bees can make so much wax from their small wax-bags?
Did you ever find in the earth the nest of a humble-bee? The humble-bee queen works. Humble-bees dig holes in the earth with their front feet.
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When they have made a hall and a room, they make a nest. It is of grass, or leaves, or hay, cut fine. They lay eggs in the nest.
They make honey in large combs. The combs are more soft and dark than those which the hive bee makes. Field mice and moles eat these bees and their combs. ”

“ Bees go by me as I stand under the apple, but they pass on for the most part bound on a long journey, across to the clover fields or up to the thyme lands; only a few go down into the mowing-grass. The hive bees are the most impatient of insects; they cannot bear to entangle their wings beating against grasses or boughs. Not one will enter a hedge. They like an open and level surface, places cropped by sheep, the sward by the roadside, fields of clover, where the flower is not deep under grass.
II.
It is the patient humble-bee that goes down into the forest of the mowing-grass. ”

“ It is intended, by inducing the queen to remain in her original apartment, that all breeding should be there performed, as well as the storing of bee-bread and honey, for the winter sustenance of the bees. The cap hive, or upper chamber, known as the "super," is for the storing of honey, which the bee-keeper looks upon as a surplus, and which, at the close of the honey gathering, or as soon as filled, he intends to deprive the bees of, and appropriate to his own use, of course taking care to leave sufficient in the lower or stock hive for winter sustenance. ”

“ Hundreds of bees may be - 99 - seen entering the hives, with pollen, at almost any time in the honey season, particularly in the morning before the dew is off the grass. It is easier for the bees to collect it at this time, as the moisture causes it the more readily to adhere to the cavities of the legs. Honey when collected is deposited in the stomach of the bee, in which it is borne to the hive, and there deposited in cells in the comb. The bee has the power of raising this honey from its stomach, in the same manner that all ruminating animals raise the cud. ”

“ The collection of pollen by the bees is made in greatest quantity in the earlier part of the day, before the heat of the sun has dried up the moisture which renders it more easily packed into the little masses which adhere to their legs. After they are fully loaded, they return to their hive, and deposit their burden in cells in which there is neither honey nor brood. ”

“ In looking for the queen in full hives, she is usually found on the brood combs, unless in opening the hive she may have been frightened, and taken refuge in some hiding place, as the corner of the hive, at the bottom ends of the comb-frames, or some similar hiding place. After we become familiar with her appearance and movements we are able to find her quite readily, even when the hive is crowded with bees.
WORKER BEE.
The worker bee is much smaller than the queen. On the worker devolves all the labor of the swarm. They collect honey, pollen or bee bread, and propolis, or bee glue. ”

“ One of the chief objects of my researches has been, to ascertain what shape of hive is the most profitable; and, with this view, I have tried all the different kinds in my apiary, and I have invariably remarked, that bees thrive better in low hives than in high ones; that, in general, those which are broad and flat, or extended horizontally, amass more honey, thrive better, and give out stronger and earlier swarms, than those which are high, and of several stories, and for the following reasons. ”

“ On this account the orchard is a good place for an apiary, for it seems—more abundant the honey, more plentiful will be the fruit. Bees bear the fructifying matter from one sex of flowers to the other, but they confine their attention to one kind of flower during each excursion: and the careful observer may see how the colour of the pollen on the bodies of the bees will vary from yellow to red and brown, according to the kind of flowers from which it has been gathered. ”

“ Coonie heard one boy say, “you don’t use bumble-bees’ honey, do you?”
“No, boys, I don’t use the honey myself, but I don’t want you to kill the bees or rob their nests so they will have to starve. Bees do a great deal of good on the farm.”
“What good are bumble-bees?” one of the boys asked.
“Why, they do a lot of good. They distribute the pollen from the heads of the clover, and that makes the seed mature and develop.” ”

“ But notwithstanding these destroyers, a thousand swarms of bees may be pastured here for every one now gathering honey. The greater portion is still covered every season with a repressed growth of bee-flowers, for most of the species are annuals, and many of them are not relished by sheep or cattle, while the rapidity of their growth enables them to develop and mature their seeds before any foot has time to crush them. The ground is, therefore, kept sweet, and the race is perpetuated, though only as a suggestive shadow of the magnificence of its wildness. ”

“ On the Impregnation of the Queen-Bee.—In looking into a hive in spring or summer, the Queen will be seen laying eggs in the cells; in the smaller cells, those of workers, and in the larger those of males or drones. These eggs, if examined on the fourth day from their being deposited, will be found hatched, and a small worm produced, which is floating in a whitish liquid, ascertained to be food introduced for the nourishment of the infant brood; and in due time a perfect bee emerges from the cell. But how is this living animal generated? ”

“ Fruit trees, when in blossom, give much pollen and honey at a time when these are greatly needed by the bees for rearing brood.
Peach, pear, apricot, plum and especially apple trees, when in bloom are encompassed about with the happy chorus of busy and grateful bees; and no other creatures can so successfully vocalise blissful contentment as they. Many careful experiments have proved beyond doubt that the help of bees is necessary for securing the pollenation requisite to produce good crops of fruit. ”

“ After this term of apprenticeship they enter upon the labours of adult bees, and collect honey, pollen, and propolis—particulars as to which functions, and that of wax secretion, will be found in the third and fourth sections of our next chapter, and in the sections devoted to these four items in Chapter VI. Water and salt are also brought in to aid in the sustenance of the young brood. The older bees perform the duties of the younger when there are none or insufficient of the latter in the hive ”

“ Bees, when fully grown, feed almost wholly on honey; but the larvæ require for their development a more substantial kind of nourishment. Such solid fare is found by the bees in the pollen of flowers, a farina which contains some of those nitrogenous elements in which honey is deficient. The body of a worker-bee is covered with hairs, to which the pollen adheres when, by contact with the bee, it is rubbed from the anthers and stamens of flowers. ”

“ This is composed of the pollen or dust of the anthers of flowers, which the workers are constantly employed in gathering. They fly from flower to flower, to collect it in the little baskets formed of hair, with which their hind legs are provided; and having deposited their booty in the hive, they return for a new load. This bee-bread, after it has been received into the bees’ second stomach, is brought up again, changed into a whitish jelly; and with that substance, the young brood are diligently fed by other bees, till they change into nymphs. ”

“ Having finished the excavation, and carpeted her new dwelling with soft leaves, &c. the insect proceeds to construct brood cells. The wax of which these are formed is secreted, as in the domestic bee, in certain receptacles placed on each side of the middle process of the abdominal scales, and is extracted by the bee in the form of laminæ, moulded to the shape of the insect's body. Unlike the Queen of the hive bees, the mother-bee of this family possesses these wax-secreting organs as well as the workers, and produces the substance in greater quantity than her progeny. ”

“ Of course, the first work of the bees is to build themselves combs, and these combs being produced by the secretion of wax from honey, a great drain upon their resources immediately begins, and any little outlay at this juncture is abundantly compensated by its enabling these industrious emigrants the more quickly to push, forward the furnishing of their new home. Clean combs from hives that may have lost their bees are readily accepted, and cause a great saving in time and material to the bees ”

“ Their wants and their food shall consist of honey and pollen; each flower secretes but little, just enough to attract the bee; nothing like a full load is obtained from one; were it thus, the end in view would not be answered; but a hundred or more flowers are often visited in one excursion; the pollen obtained from the first may fertilize many, previous to the bees' returning to the hive; thus a field of buckwheat may be kept in health and vigor in its future productions. ”

“ To-day we passed one of these lofty trees bearing above twenty bees’ nests, among them four old ones 52 white with wax.1 As the country is full of tapangs, in which alone do the bees build their nests, the stories of the great amount of wax formerly procured in this district may be true. Why do the honey-bees generally build on one particular tree? Its being the finest in the forest is no good reason, perhaps there is something enticing in the bark. ”