Bee-keeping for profit

by W. S. Morley

When the young queen is about a week old she will leave the hive to find a mate. As mating can only take place when the queen and drone are on the wing, she soars into the air followed by the rival and eager drones. When the mating is accomplished the queen returns to the hive and is then capable of laying eggs, both fertile and unfertile, at will. The drone also returns home, but only to die: he has laid down his life for the perpetuation of his race. A queen that has been recently mated can be identified by a white speck on the back near the end of the abdomen—the organ torn away from the drone.

Should a queen fail to be mated within six weeks of her leaving the cell she is only capable of laying unfertile eggs. The egg-laying capacity of the queen, under the "chyle-food" treatment is enormous, ranging up to 3,000 eggs per day.

When a ruling queen realises that a queen grub is being reared in the hive, the sex-hatred of a possible rival soon manifests itself, and were it not for the watchful care of the workers the young queen's career would soon be ended. But the old queen is put virtually under arrest, and not allowed to venture near the queen cells. Her agitation increases until she summons together all who are willing to follow her and leaves the hive. This exodus of a queen and her adherents is known as "a swarm." (See [page 44].)

The queen bee can always be distinguished by her greater size, while the increased length of her legs makes her still more prominent among the workers. If it is wished to prevent the rearing of queens in the hive, all that is necessary is for the bee-keeper to cut out the queen cells from the combs, and give the bees additional room to store the food they gather.

The Worker Bee.—The normal worker bee is an undeveloped female and a true amazon. She is utterly indifferent to the drone, and is, of course, unable to propagate her species. In some cases, however, the ovaries of a worker are so far developed that she is able to produce eggs which are necessarily unfertile. Such a worker is a nuisance in a modern hive worked for profit.

As we have already seen, the egg from which the worker develops is precisely similar to that from which a queen springs; the rôle of worker or queen is determined by the cell in which the egg is deposited. A grub in a worker cell gets but little "chyle" food—it is stopped altogether on the third day—and a mixed diet of honey and pollen. The drone is brought up entirely on the latter food.

As soon as a worker grub leaves the cell it enters upon its life of labour. It is immature at this point, and as the air-organs, or tracheæ, are not fully developed, it cannot fly. Its first work, therefore, is that of "nurse" to the grubs still in the cells, and to supply the queen with "chyle" food. About a fortnight after leaving the cell, the young bee, if the weather be fine and warm, will venture out of the hive to try its wings, and on early spring days such numbers of them may be seen sporting near the entrance of the hive as to lead a novice to suppose that swarming was about to take place. The bee-keeper of experience, however, while rejoicing at the sight, will know that the exodus is partly due to the fact that some natural or artificial food has entered the hive and that more must be supplied for the needs of the inmates.

After the worker's trial flight, she proceeds upon her duties as a food supplier to the community. She has had some experience as a "nurse" in handling pollen, so that at first it seems but natural she should give most attention to that food, and, in cleaning her body from its clinging particles, she finds out the uses of her several organs. In the beginning her loads of pollen are often small, but with experience her carrying capacity soon finds its limit. In time she discovers nectar in the flowers, and as she becomes less able to gather pollen she increases her honey-collecting power. When nectar is abundant bees will often commence their work at sunrise and continue throughout the day until sunset. In such a "honey-flow" the average life of the worker from the time she leaves the cell is seldom more than six or eight weeks, every minute of which is given up to the communal labour. The whole of the work inside the hive depends upon the worker—she is architect, builder, caretaker, nurse, sanitary officer and the rest; there is method in everything she does, so it is inadvisable to interfere unnecessarily with any part of it. She objects strongly to undue interference, to mere curiosity of inquisitive humans. The worker bees are, indeed, wondrous creatures: they are known to have their feelings of friendship and dislike almost human in their intensity; their expressions of sorrow on the loss of their queen or when their stores are failing are as unmistakable as their hum of contentment when the hive is thriving, or the buzz of anger when rudely-disturbed.

The Drone.—The drone is the male bee. He is the progeny of an unfertilised egg laid by the queen, or by a fertile worker. His life is usually a short and merry one. He lives entirely on the labour of others, and, unless there is something radically wrong with the hive, he is seen only during the spring and summer months, when his services are in requisition. When on the wing the drone is by far the noisiest of bees, although the sound he makes is somewhat similar to that made by the worker when on the warpath, the note of warning to the disturbing human, and the trumpet call to her fellow-workers.

Owing to the peculiar structure of the drone, mating can only take place in the air, and when it has been accomplished the drone returns to the hive but to die. When the honey-flow fails the death warrant of the drones still in the hive is issued. They are seized by the workers and killed or ejected from the hive. To the onlooker there is a certain amount of amusement to watch this slaughter of the non-producers of the community: to see a couple of workers wrestling with the unwieldy drone, perhaps biting off one of his wings in the effort to disable him, before the finishing stroke is given. When, however, a bee-keeper sees the array of dead drones he will probably think it would have been better for him had they been workers—producers rather than consumers of honey. It is, of course, greatly to the advantage of a bee-keeper that the number of the drones should be kept down as low as possible. This can be done by giving the bees full sheets of bees-wax impressed completely with the basal forms of the natural worker cells, thus inducing them to confine their building to those cells only.