BEEKEEPING

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21858, 11 August 1936, Page 8

BEEKEEPING

TO THE EDTTOB OT THE PHBBS Sir,—ln “The Press” of Friday on the picture page, there appeared some news items which must rather puzzle beekeeners as well as others. There is nothing very startling in the announcement that a noted biologist of Czechoslovakia has 7,000,000 bees in one hive, though it is hardly correct. Evidently he has a good number of hives, which, instead of placing in a bee-yard, he keeps in a beehouse for convenience in observation and ex--perimenting. No one hive can contain more bees than one queen can produce, because no queen will tolerate another queen in her hive. There is only one exception to this, a temporary arrangement where a failing queen has been found laying eggs in the same hive and even on the same comb as her daughter. A good queen can Jay an enormous number of eggs daily, but even with everything favourable, it would take several exceptionally strong colonies to total 1,000,000 bees. The other pajrt of the story is hard to swallow without some salt; a single hive,-36 feet high and 91 feet across, at the top of an enormous gum tree, and yielding 70001b of honey, seems too good to be true. At the best, one can only assume that the tree is a decaying one with many separate cavities where colonies of bees have taken up their abode. It can have no more claim to be called e single hive than the one mentioned first, wnleis

Indeed, there- -exists s .race of bees I in which the queens behave differently from all other queens, m which case; the limit may be, anything. As wei live so close to Australia, perhaps some of your readers may be able to ' tell us the probable origin of the story. —YoUrs, etc.. • „ T.AJS. August 8, 1536. •