The Honey Bee

Northland Age, Volume 1, Issue 4, 30 October 1931, Page 9

The Honey Bee

Were it not for the industrious honey bee, the world would lose a very profitable minor industry, for honey and beeswax, both products of the busy little bee, make apiculture an interesting business. Anyone can raise bees and produce honey in good years, but when crops are poor and nectar scarce, instead of gathering honey the farmer frequently must feed his insects.

Courtship among the bees is an odd procedure. So far as bee men have been able to tell, the drones are useless for anything but this, yet hundreds of them are fed and cared for in every hive, at least until winter. Nature has contrived a most ingenious method of making sure that only the best and strongest drones are successful in courtship, for when the queen takes off on her marriage flight with a group of drones on her trail, only the strongest and best flier will succeed. The queen is gifted with a power of flight that only the strongest males can equal. After the flight the queen spends the rest of her life laying eggs, while workers attend her, feeding her, and preparing the egg cells. Bee’s eggs are oblong in shape and bluish white in colour. The secret of honey manufacture belongs to the bee alone, for this sweet viscid material is elaborated in the bee’s honey sac out of the nectar of flowers, and is stored in the honey combs. It is intended by the bees to serve as food for the colony during the winter. A great deal more than is absolutely necessary is produced, however, for men and bears seem to regard honey as stored for their special benefit. Wax for the combs is taken from the abdomen in flakes by the hind legs and worked into place with the mouth. Each comb consists of two sets of cells, one on each side. Taking a comb 14 by 7 inches we find that it contains about 4000 cells, which can frequently be constructed in 24 hours.

The swarming of bees is nature’s method of providing for the increase in number. When this happens, usually on a warm, sunny day, the queen rushes out, preceded and followed by crowds which buzz and throng on each other, forming a miniature cloud which generally lights on a near-by bush until ready to move to a previously selected place in the chimney or roof of a house, or in a hollow tree, unless the beekeeper provides the swarm with new quarters.