THE APIARY

Otago Witness, Issue 2014, 29 September 1892, Page 8

THE APIARY

By Novice.

Before we can work intelligently with bees, and feel assured that what manipulation of comb or bees we undertake will have definite and certain results, it is necessary to have some knowledge of the economy of the hive, and also a general knowledge of the physiology of the honey bee. Most of our readers are aware of the appearance of a prosperous colony of bees from tho outside — how there is incessant movement, how each bee seoms intent' ou its own work of the moment, how, in the diligent bustle of the hundreds of bees' that are coming and gou-g the whole day in apparently the greatest confusion there is the most complete order. Each of the thousands of the inmates is doing its own task for the benefit of the community as a whole — the guards at tho door challenging each new arrival, and only admitting those that can give the countersign correctly, hustling and often killing any stranger that attempts to enter, tho older bees .being met after entering by young nurse bees, to whom their loads of honey are given up, while they start out again intent on making the most of their opportunity. The bees a term younger, and carrying both pollen and honey, pass on to the combs, and first putting their- loads of pollen into a cell turn .round and ram it home with their heads, and then pass .on to another cell in which they deposit the honey they have brought. Another set are building comb and sealing up tho ripened honey, obtaining their material, the pure wax, from another lot of bees who are hung up in clusters, and who produce it by eating honey for the purpose. The wax sweats out as it were in scales from the six little wax pockets underneath each bee. These scales are taken by the builders to the comb in progress (usually in the cluster of bees making w#x) and placed' in position. First one bee gives it a bite or a push, and then another does the 'same, and so, apparently without method and slowly, there is produced the white comb that is so much admired by all lovers of the beautiful and symmetrical. Others, again, are busy keeping the hive clean, carrying' out all refuse and dead bees, and when possible flying off with' it through the air and dropping it a distance from the hive. If anything is found too large to be carried out it is covered with propolis to prevent it becoming offensive. I found a mouse this spring glued to the bottom board and covered in this way. Others, again, are in constant attendance on tho queen, supplying her with the highly concentrated, alreadydigested food which is necessary to enable her to produce the enormous quantity of eggs she does daily, often in the height of the season laying more than her own weight of eggs in the 2A hours ; yet others, and these the youngest members of this model community, are busy feeding the young larvas, cleaning out the cells from -which the young bees have ju3t emerged, sealing up other larvao which have arrived at the right age — each one doing that work which its instinct prompts it to do ; and so, throughout what appears the greatest confusion, there is a moßt admirable order and method.

In every hive in a normal condition in the summer time there are three kinds of bees — the queen, the workers, and the drones. In the winter there are but two — the drones are all driven out of the hive in the late autumn and starved to death. The queen so-called is the mother bee. She alone is able to reproduce the species, and on her strength aud fecundity will depend tho prosperity of the colony. If the queen is taken from a colony, or is accidentally killed, the workers immediately set abont to raise another from one of the eggs in tho hive. They do this by providing a newly hatched out larvje with a special kind of food called by beekeepers " royal jelly," because it is only produced in the hive when queens are being raided. The effect of this food on a larvae that without it would have been a worker bee is to produce an entirely different insect. The queen is easily recognised, as she is longer and brighter than the workers. The drones are the males, and their 6ole purpose in life seems to be the fertilising of the queen. Evans describes them as the lazy fathers of the industrious hive.