THE BUSY BEE.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 54, 27 November 1907, Page 2

THE BUSY BEE.

V STARVED QUEENS,

SOMJS JNTJJRKSTING FACTS.

The busy bee—the farmer's insect—lias been talked about to some purposo at Hastings lately by the Government apiarist, Mr. Hopkins.

.Mr. 'Hopkins told tlie members of tlio recently formed Hnwke's J3«y Beekeepers Association that the Italian queen bees now reaching New Zealand from Australia are stuntod, and tliat those coming from other countries are no.better. Mr. Hopkins, in the days before the Department got him, used !-o breed and sell Italian queens oil a rather large scale. So his opinion 011 iho quality of the present queens and the modes r>E rearing them are worth attention. The Lightning Method. According to him the queen rearing business is now conducted 011 rather lightning lines. The queen rearers, in order to obtain as many queens as possible from their stocks, raise them 011 starvation principles, stunting them of their staff of nurses during the nuclear days, when the infant queen has to ho fed and warmed and nursed' in lier cradle coll. And then in the .next stagrt, after sho has emerged from the cell and been transferred to the baby nucleus to await the age of matrimony, they stint her of companions to keep her warm. Filially she is frail, stunted royalty, destined to disappoint some hopeful, up-to-date beekeeper, and ruin a colony. A Dairying Parallel. How apt is tiltr parallel between queen rearing and calf rearing !■ If one may believe the evidence of dairy themselves, "too many dairymen treat tjicir cows like machines with no constitutions to duiu 1 ago, or lilio a squeezed lemon. They milk them to exhaustion, and then turn them 01a to rough it in the eold winter months 011 the hill's." Thus at tlio time when, the calr is shortly to bo born, the mother is put out for- a month or two on short feed and exposure. Then the calf is robbed of its mother's cream and reared 011 skim milk or whoy; and there rises up a race of stunted cattle —or would rise up if they were not slain in infancy for the skin trade. Queen Rearing!.

But let us return to our hives. The first stsigo of the quecn-reoring practice is to provide, in tho nucleus hive, a queen cell coiitiuningn fertilised egg. All fertilised boo eggs produce females; and if they arc "hatched" and'nourished in queen cells they produce queen females, and if in worker cells they produce worker females. The unfertilised . eggs givo birth only to males— the drones. This is only one of the many strango ways in which the busy beo has taught us that sho is unfettered by ordinary laws of nature. Another intcrestli'jj feature is tliat though she meets her "husband" only once in her existence —and slays him on tho spot—she can thereafter lay three thousand fertilised eggs every day of her life— about four years. She secures tho fertilisation of her eggs by means of a little sack which she can operate at will. AVlien the workers present her with worker colls shefills thorn , with fertile eggs. But when tho larger drone cells are offered she suppresses the sack and lays drone eggs —unfertilised — tii order. This process o'f "birth from ,1 virgin" is called by scientists parthenogenesis. ■ It has a valuable commercial significance to a beekeeper. If, he buys a purely impregnated Italian queen bee her progeny will, of course, be pure Italian. _ But if her. young queens become crossed with ordinary black drones the beekeeper can at least rely on getting puro drones,', for the. drone orogeny is not affected by the cross: it is as pure as its' mother.

The Right Mode. In the nucleus .of the queen rearer, .1 fertilised egg in a quean cell is 'supplied to a colony of "nurses." ' These mirses are newly hutched bees, under 14 days of age. They (ill the queen cell with food, and mix 't up wifh a digestive concoction called chyle, thereby manufacturing a sort of "humanised milk." if these nurses are numerous :>ll goes we!!. The young queen fattens, rapidly, her royal frar.lo expands with a vigour bclittins; the- prospective head of a nunforous household," and finally slie sallies forth "irom her cell to assassinate her rivals—it- she finds any—and to fly forth to marriage' ■'

The Method. This was, 110 doubt, the way in which Jlr. Hopkins' queens wero reared of old. jjuti\lr. Hopkins has described to the Hawko's J!ay beekeepers a more modern method, under which the .staff of nurses are curtailed tu an irreduciMo minimum. The young queo\ hco therefore receives less nourishment and less warmth than her needs, and she emerges un liur world ing: dav half starved and 011i'ceblcd by cok!.' She is exported and probably either di( i on the voyage or perishes soon after she lias beeu introduced to her new hive. In such conditions the loss to a beekeeper is far in excess of the cost of tht queen. 'At the Hastings meeting 0110 apiarist said lie imported 3(J queens from Australia, and 28 ui them died soon afterwards. A Serious Matter. It is hard to say whether tho man whose queens die or lie whose queens livo to rear a colony of sickly oit'spriug suffers t'he greatest loss in the end. The welfare of the whole family of bees depends on the welfare of the queen, aii.d any practices that undermine her constitution should be strenuously discountenanced. Mr. M'Evoy, the foul brood inspector of Canada, has declared tli.it 9o per cent, of the quoeu bees of his Dominion ought to be killed.

Box Hives Prohibited. Wo have now in New Zealand an. Act of Parliament which, in order to. suppress rout brood, prohibits the keeping of common box hives of bees after March 24 next.' 'When such drastic legislation is desirable, it is certainly also desirable that the sinipfer remedy of raising strong queens should bo fully encouraged. Mr. Hopkins states that strong queens cannot bo profitably raised for less than 10s. each. But the Australian weaklings aro sold for <ls. and as. each. State Queens. Fortunately help is at hand from the Government. It is intended from now onwal'ds to breed strong Italian qtieeit bees at the State apiaries, and distribute them at nominal prices to the beekeepers. This departure will, no doubt, bo greatly appreciated by the industry, and Mr. Hopkins deserves every credit for his enterprise. Probably no queens will bo available for distribution tor at least a year hence, but what queens aro then sent out will bear the Government hallmark, countersigned by the most expert queen rearer ill Australasia, Mr. Hopkins himself. AVncrenga is regarded as an ideal queen rearing site, because it is five or six miles distant from any habitat of wild bees. The industry of beekeeping has an interest for all New Zealanders. In the mild dry elimato of Hawkc's Bay, in the warmth of sunny Auckland, in the meadowy lands of Tarauaki, and oven in tlio bracing air of Southland the bees liourish, and, under proper caro, gwo good profit for labour bestowed.