In September I have seen a quart or more of drones clustered together near the entrance of the hive, from whence they had been driven by the bees. The workers on guard about the entrance of the hive, would not let one pass into the hive, though they were constantly making the attempt. As soon as one would approach the entrance to the hive to pass in, a half dozen or more workers would seize him, and drag him struggling to the edge of the platform and pitch him off, at apparent great danger to his portly and clumsy body.
I wish to impress strongly on the minds of all who adopt my plan of bee management, the great importance of cutting out all the drone cells, except a very few in every hive. Don't leave more than fifty, half that number will do. After you have once cut out the surplus drone comb and fitted in worker comb, there is no further trouble with an excess of drones from that hive. It takes a great deal of honey to rear a large brood of drones, and still more to support them in idleness two or three months.
This engraving represents a section of comb in a miniature comb frame, containing all the different cells found in a hive. At the top are cells for storing honey. At the extreme right, near the bottom, is a queen cell complete, as it appears in queen raising, or in one week after a swarm has been deprived of its queen, in a full stock, or as it is found in stocks that swarm naturally, at the time the first swarm issues. Though often found in different places on the comb, and often to the number of a half dozen or more in one stock or hive, yet its relative position is always the same. It will always present the same appearance, whether at the edges or on other parts of the comb. Near the queen cell is seen the worker cells, containing brood in all stages of growth, from the tiny egg just deposited by the queen, to the full-grown grub, or young bee. Near the worker cells, at the bottom, are the empty drone cells.
Breeding.
The natural increase of the honey bee is very imperfectly understood by the great majority of bee keepers. Very many suppose that young bees are raised only in the warm summer months, and their ideas of the modus operandi of increase are exceedingly vague. I find that strung stocks have maturing brood nearly every month in the year—have found brood in stocks in December and January.
The queen lays all the fertile eggs in the swarm; consequently all increase is dependent on her. I say the queen lays all the fertile eggs, because occasionally under certain circumstances we find eggs laid by workers, but under my observation such eggs never mature. Egg-laying workers are known to be such, by eggs being found in stocks that have been deprived of their queen, and the means of rearing another. This is one of the wonders of nature, of which no satisfactory solution has been given. The points established as to the sex of bees are these: the queen is a fully developed female; the drones are fully developed males; the worker,—what is it? The worker is said by some to be neuter. If this last is true, how are the eggs produced? Others say the worker is a female with generative organs not fully developed! A pretty nice point—to credit them with the power to produce eggs, without imparting vitality sufficient to germinate.
We will leave this knotty question, as it is of no consequence in the practical management of bees for profit. Suffice it then to say, the queen is the mother of the entire family, and without a queen no swarm of bees can long
The time taken to perfect the three different kinds of bees, queen, worker and drone, varies slightly. The queen will mature in about sixteen days from the time the egg is deposited in the cell. The drone and worker each in about twenty days. This time is subject to some variation, governed by the weather, and number of bees in the hive, which causes the temperature of the hive to be greater or less. A high temperature will forward, while a low temperature will retard, the maturing of the brood.
Swarms with healthy prolific queens increase rapidly through the spring and summer. The queen at this season will deposit from one thousand to fifteen hundred eggs per day. Some writers estimate higher. To secure so large a number of eggs, and consequent increase of bees, we must have healthy prolific queens to start with, and offer every available facility to encourage the desired increase. How to do this successfully is shown further on.