THE BEE FARM.

Western Star, Issue 1292, 27 February 1897, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE BEE FARM.

The Work ms Bee.

From the Agricultural Gazette o/N.S. W

Working bees at home are the rank and file of the hive; the architects, the buiders, the preparers of building materials, the purveyors* the cooks, the nurses, the Inspector of nuisances, the scavengers, the sentinels and the defenders. All and every bee when at home has to fulfil these and many other duties at some time durin'g her indoor life, from the day she escapes from the chrysalis till she goes ont to procure home supplies. The working female, says Kerly and Spence, is zealous for the good of the community, a defender of public rights, enjoying an immunity from the stimulus of sexual appetite, and the pains of parturition, laborious, industrious, patient, ingenious, skilful, ; incessantly engaged in the mature of the young, in collecting of honey and pollen, in elaborating wax, in constructing cells and the like. Pay most assidious attention to objects, queen bees, which had her ovaries been developed, she would have hated and pursued with the most vindictive fury till she had utterly destroyed them. Abroaid they are foragers, collecting pollen to feed the juveniles at home with bee-broad, honey for winter stores, and propolis to stuff up cracks, and cementing foreign intruding substances that are too cumbersome to remove bodily or too tenacious to be removed piecemeal, Abroard they are one of the great fertilisers of the vegetable world. They are our forest makers, our florists, aha our orchardists. AS forest-makers, they perpetuate the species of tree and plant upon’which they work. As fruit-producers, they are constantly improving their form, their color their fla\ or, and their season. As florists theyare ever varing our flowers in shape, in perfume, in color, in tint, in streak, and in freckle. They are constantly reproducing old colors and fashionable‘combinations thereof, and suffusing them with the most attracting shades to please the searcher for novelties in the floral weild. ■■ . 1

Watch the changes the working-bee makes as she undergoes in her transition egg to image, noting how she performs her various home duties, and following her into the field, the orchard and the garden, and watching her in nature’s workshops elaborating new varities of flowers and fruits. .

The fecundation of the mother bOe by the drone is the first element in different tianing the sexual character of the eggs germ in the ovary of the queen bees Swammerdown, an old entomologist, on noting a strong odour, emanating from a drone beo, was under the impression that the same odour permeated the queexj-beo, and in this way the eggs were fertilized, Francis Huber, experimenting with the the theory, confined a number of drones in a peforated box. Placing the box of drones with, the hives, from which _all drones had been excluded, and confiding a virgin queen with the same hive. Heedless to say, with our present knowledge of the domesticated bee, she became a drone-breeder. ' , The ! egg, after fertilisation and the treatment it receives after it is deposited in the worker-cell, produces erse of the rank and file. 1 While in this cell it is termed a “ worker-egg." A misnomer introduced into the bee-keeper’s vocabulary before the scientific knowledge of the economy of the hive bee was so well-known as at present. ’ ■ ‘ ' ' - There are such things as workers eggs. They are the produce of afertile worker, but these eggs always develops dronebees. The queen bee, after she has satisfied herself that the cell she has selected is wholly untenanted and cleaned ready for the reception of an egg, places her abdomen therein, and after it is withdrawn we see fixed at the base of the cell, and parrallel to its sides, an elongated pearly white egg, one end being rather larger than the other.

; In the larger end there is a minute doorway by means of the sexual character of the embryo drone bee contained therein can be differentiated. These eggs remain in the position in which they are lying parallel to the base of the cell, ;which occupies about two more days to complete its final position. The heat necessary to hatch these eggs and for their after developement should not be less than 78deg, Fah. , .■ ■■■ ,

i Draught has much to answer for in, preventing early spring swarms. So also has the common practice of leaving the supers on the brood chambers without an intervening warm quilt between the two boxes. The more snugly in the brood chamber the bees are kept in the winter months and early spring, the sooner will early swarms issue, always providing the old stock has been kept numerically strong since the previous autumn, if “ the early bird catches the worm,” it is the early swarm that gets the moat honey. : , When the inmate of the egg hatches out, a little whitish worm is seen lying on the bottom of the cell and parallel to it. As soon as the little inmates were liberated from the egg covering they ate supplied with a white semi-transparent fluid by the nursing bee. After receiving this food they grow rapidly and very soon touch the angles on either side of the cell. The little inmates literally float in this’ milky fluid. Very shortly their couch becomes too short for them to stretch themselves upon. They then assume a bent or semicircular position. The degrees of these circular segments increases until both ends meet. When there is no further room to coil they stretch themselves along the aides of the cell. When the larvae transformation is nearly completed the organs of .locomotion commence developing, first the legs followed by the- wings, and so on ; that is the beginning of the chrysalis stage. The nurse bees now begin the work of enclosing the inmates by sealing them m with a brownish mixture composed of wax and pollen, or bee bread, the same kind of material as the cappings of the drones and,the cell of the queen bee is formed with. ■ During the second stage of transformation the larvm frequently moult or change their skin ; this occurs five or six times during growth. After the final moult they are fed for about four days. The inmate is now supplied with no more food, and the work of coon spinning begins as soon as the capping of the cells. The first duty devolving on working bees on entering into active life is the care of her brothers and sisters during their infantile life. Huber was the discoverer of nurse bees. The particular function of the bees of this kind is to take care of the young for they are not charged with provisioning the hivoIf increase of colonies is the thing sought note that the combs introduced contain brood in all stages of developement, from egg to chrysalis, as well as a good supply of stores, honey, and pollen. This last is indispensible.