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BEE-KEEPING FOR PROFIT
=E. H. TAYLOR,= WELWYN,
============= HERTS.
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[Illustration: How to Handle a Frame]
BEE-KEEPING
FOR PROFIT
BY
W. S. MORLEY
WITH EIGHT PLATES
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1914
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
1. GENERAL INFORMATION AND HINTS 3
2. HIVES 21
3. BEE-KEEPERS' REQUISITES 35
4. BEES: THEIR HABITS AND PRODUCTS 44
5. FLOWERS AND BEES 53
6. HINTS ON WORKING THE BEES 58
7. HINTS ON WORKING THE BEES (_continued_) 68
8. FEEDING 82
9. HOW TO SECURE THE HARVEST OF THE HIVE 92
10. HOW TO SECURE THE HARVEST OF THE HIVE (_continued_) 98
11. DISEASES OF BEES 106
12. ENEMIES OF THE BEE AND BEE-KEEPER 112
INDEX 120
LIST OF PLATES
HOW TO HANDLE A FRAME _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
QUEEN, WORKER AND DRONE BEES 12
A STANDARD FRAME WITH DRAWN-OUT COMB: AN EFFICIENT
QUEEN EXCLUDER: A FRAME HIVE WITH THE TOP REMOVED 36
QUEEN ON A PATCH OF SEALED HONEY 48
EXAMINING FRAMES 64
"SKEPPING" A SWARM 68
"SHAKING" A SWARM 78
SECTION FITTED WITH COMB FOUNDATION: BEES AT WORK
ON A SECTION 94
INTRODUCTION
IT is only in comparatively recent years that attention has been given
to bee-keeping on a scientific basis. Aforetime there were certain
traditional methods to be followed to secure the honey harvest, but
those who practised them knew neither the why nor wherefore. To-day,
however, thanks to the observations of our great scientists on the life
and habits of the bee, to their patience and diligence in noting the
insect's manner of working, we are in possession of knowledge which has
enabled the practical bee-keeper to reduce the old haphazard ways to
method, orderliness, and definite purpose.
The budding bee-keeper, as he reads one or other of these great works
on the bee and its ways, may begin to wonder if it is not all too
wonderful for him to deal with, and if he may ever hope to become
proficient in the art and practice of bee-keeping. Let me say, here
and now, that, given patience, perseverance, and diligence, a measure
of success is open to anyone who brings intelligence into his work.
Although the doubts and difficulties that assail the tyro, and the
questions arising therefrom, might raise a smile from the expert--if
only as a reminder of his own early aspirations and efforts--yet there
is no reason for despair; though disappointments are certain to arise,
they should be accepted merely as spurs to further effort, as steps
towards the ultimate goal of success.
Some may think--rashly--that there is nothing new to be said or
learned about the bee, but the fact is that even scientists are still
ignorant as to the definite uses of certain of the insect's organs,
and of the origin and remedies of some of the diseases from which it
suffers. Putting aside, therefore, the merely commercial aspect of
bee-keeping, there is still a wide field of interest and research open
for exploration by the intelligent bee-keeper.
BEE-KEEPING FOR PROFIT
CHAPTER I
=General Information and Hints=
The question of profit depends almost entirely upon the knowledge,
energy, and perseverance of the bee-keeper, for, given suitable
hive-accommodation and proper attention, the bees can generally be
depended upon to do their share of the work.
=Regularity and Foresight.=--All who are engaged in productive work in
conjunction with Nature know that "there is a time for everything,"
in connection with that work, and every advantage must be taken of
that particular tide if full benefits are to be secured at the harvest
season. Work must be done in regular rotation. A farmer must plough his
land before he can sow his seed; the seed must be sown at a certain
time--sown in hope many months before the harvest can be expected. The
same regularity and hopeful anticipation are necessary in bee-keeping
if full advantage is to be secured of the honey-harvest. In the same
manner, just as farmers must make use of modern methods and appliances
to obtain the best return for the outlay of capital and labour, so
the bee-keeper must bring into his work the practice of up-to-date
principles and labour-saving appliances connected with bee-keeping.
The old "skep," and the happy-go-lucky methods connected with it have
given place to the frame hive with well-defined principles to govern
and stimulate the production of its community of workers.
To work a bar-framed hive for profit it is first necessary that
the bee-keeper should exercise forethought and be prepared for any
emergency that may arise. He should always have by him plenty of spare
frames, foundations, supers, and other necessities, for nothing is more
annoying than a shortage of such during an unexpected honey-flow. It is
always at such times that his orders take longest in fulfilment, for
it is then the appliance-maker is overwhelmed with commissions from
unprepared clients, and the delay in the delivery of the goods means a
corresponding reduction of the bee-keeper's profits.
=Watchfulness and Intelligence.=--These two qualities are essential
assets to any would-be successful bee-keeper. There is no "golden
rule," for his guidance through the year, nothing that must be done
invariably at stated times and seasons. It is here that the novice
is puzzled and perplexed, for apparently what is right at one time
becomes wrong at another, but it is only by experience that the guiding
knowledge is acquired. For instance, it is useless to feed a hive with
the view to increase the brood, if the hive be queenless, or possesses
a drone-breeding queen, or a fertile worker. And again, it is useless
to put a super on a queenless stock or a weak hive, for instead of
helping to conserve the heat of the hive one but adds to the area for
the bees to heat with their own little bodies, with the additional
risk of chilling the brood and starving the bees. For it should be
remembered that the colder the hive, the greater the consumption of
food by the bees.
_It is well to bear in mind that the best of all heat-producers in a
hive are the bees themselves, but to enable them satisfactorily to
become so suitable accommodation and food are absolutely necessary._
=The Queen.=--One of the greatest mysteries connected with the hive
is the life history of the queen bee, and her position in the bee
community. Each hive is, as it were, a republic of female workers,
who serve with slavish devotion one of their number set apart from
birth for the position of supreme head of the community. Like their
sex generally throughout Nature, they give of their best where it is
most needed. They know by their instinct that if the queen is fed with
rich food her egg-laying capacity is stimulated, and, on the contrary,
when the honey-flow is finished, that the supply of such food must be
checked, with a consequent reduction in the number of eggs laid. They
know that the greater the population of the hive the greater the drain
on their honey store.
Generally speaking the life of a queen bee extends from two to five
years, at which age she is generally exhausted, or is deposed by the
community in favour of a younger queen.
The egg from which a queen bee develops is at the first precisely
similar to that which produces a worker, and both are fertile. It all
depends upon the kind of cell in which the egg is deposited by the
queen whether a mere worker or a royal offspring ensues. The queen
cells are acorn shaped, and larger in size than the others and are
generally placed on the edge of the comb. It is when the eggs are
hatched--three days after they have been placed in the cells--that the
special treatment of the queen grub commences. It is taken charge of by
the nurses and fed with the rich food--known as "chyle" food (see page
50), and it is this food alone that produces the difference between a
queen and a worker bee.
When the young queen is about a week old she will leave the hive to
find a mate. As mating can only take place when the queen and drone
are on the wing, she soars into the air followed by the rival and
eager drones. When the mating is accomplished the queen returns to the
hive and is then capable of laying eggs, both fertile and unfertile,
at will. The drone also returns home, but only to die: he has laid
down his life for the perpetuation of his race. A queen that has been
recently mated can be identified by a white speck on the back near the
end of the abdomen--the organ torn away from the drone.
Should a queen fail to be mated within six weeks of her leaving the
cell she is only capable of laying unfertile eggs. The egg-laying
capacity of the queen, under the "chyle-food" treatment is enormous,
ranging up to 3,000 eggs per day.
When a ruling queen realises that a queen grub is being reared in the
hive, the sex-hatred of a possible rival soon manifests itself, and
were it not for the watchful care of the workers the young queen's
career would soon be ended. But the old queen is put virtually under
arrest, and not allowed to venture near the queen cells. Her agitation
increases until she summons together all who are willing to follow her
and leaves the hive. This exodus of a queen and her adherents is known
as "a swarm." (See page 44.)
The queen bee can always be distinguished by her greater size, while
the increased length of her legs makes her still more prominent among
the workers. If it is wished to prevent the rearing of queens in the
hive, all that is necessary is for the bee-keeper to cut out the queen
cells from the combs, and give the bees additional room to store the
food they gather.
=The Worker Bee.=--The normal worker bee is an undeveloped female and
a true amazon. She is utterly indifferent to the drone, and is, of
course, unable to propagate her species. In some cases, however, the
ovaries of a worker are so far developed that she is able to produce
eggs which are necessarily unfertile. Such a worker is a nuisance in a
modern hive worked for profit.
As we have already seen, the egg from which the worker develops
is precisely similar to that from which a queen springs; the rôle
of worker or queen is determined by the cell in which the egg is
deposited. A grub in a worker cell gets but little "chyle" food--it
is stopped altogether on the third day--and a mixed diet of honey and
pollen. The drone is brought up entirely on the latter food.
As soon as a worker grub leaves the cell it enters upon its life
of labour. It is immature at this point, and as the air-organs, or
tracheæ, are not fully developed, it cannot fly. Its first work,
therefore, is that of "nurse" to the grubs still in the cells, and to
supply the queen with "chyle" food. About a fortnight after leaving the
cell, the young bee, if the weather be fine and warm, will venture out
of the hive to try its wings, and on early spring days such numbers of
them may be seen sporting near the entrance of the hive as to lead a
novice to suppose that swarming was about to take place. The bee-keeper
of experience, however, while rejoicing at the sight, will know that
the exodus is partly due to the fact that some natural or artificial
food has entered the hive and that more must be supplied for the needs
of the inmates.
After the worker's trial flight, she proceeds upon her duties as a food
supplier to the community. She has had some experience as a "nurse"
in handling pollen, so that at first it seems but natural she should
give most attention to that food, and, in cleaning her body from its
clinging particles, she finds out the uses of her several organs. In
the beginning her loads of pollen are often small, but with experience
her carrying capacity soon finds its limit. In time she discovers
nectar in the flowers, and as she becomes less able to gather pollen
she increases her honey-collecting power. When nectar is abundant bees
will often commence their work at sunrise and continue throughout
the day until sunset. In such a "honey-flow" the average life of the
worker from the time she leaves the cell is seldom more than six or
eight weeks, every minute of which is given up to the communal labour.
The whole of the work inside the hive depends upon the worker--she
is architect, builder, caretaker, nurse, sanitary officer and the
rest; there is method in everything she does, so it is inadvisable to
interfere unnecessarily with any part of it. She objects strongly to
undue interference, to mere curiosity of inquisitive humans. The worker
bees are, indeed, wondrous creatures: they are known to have their
feelings of friendship and dislike almost human in their intensity;
their expressions of sorrow on the loss of their queen or when their
stores are failing are as unmistakable as their hum of contentment when
the hive is thriving, or the buzz of anger when rudely-disturbed.
=The Drone.=--The drone is the male bee. He is the progeny of an
unfertilised egg laid by the queen, or by a fertile worker. His life
is usually a short and merry one. He lives entirely on the labour
of others, and, unless there is something radically wrong with the
hive, he is seen only during the spring and summer months, when his
services are in requisition. When on the wing the drone is by far the
noisiest of bees, although the sound he makes is somewhat similar to
that made by the worker when on the warpath, the note of warning to the
disturbing human, and the trumpet call to her fellow-workers.
Owing to the peculiar structure of the drone, mating can only take
place in the air, and when it has been accomplished the drone
returns to the hive but to die. When the honey-flow fails the death
warrant of the drones still in the hive is issued. They are seized
by the workers and killed or ejected from the hive. To the onlooker
there is a certain amount of amusement to watch this slaughter of
the non-producers of the community: to see a couple of workers
wrestling with the unwieldy drone, perhaps biting off one of his
wings in the effort to disable him, before the finishing stroke is
given. When, however, a bee-keeper sees the array of dead drones he
will probably think it would have been better for him had they been
workers--producers rather than consumers of honey. It is, of course,
greatly to the advantage of a bee-keeper that the number of the drones
should be kept down as low as possible. This can be done by giving
the bees full sheets of bees-wax impressed completely with the basal
forms of the natural worker cells, thus inducing them to confine their
building to those cells only.
We have already referred to the fact that a worker bee and a virgin
queen are capable of producing eggs. The progeny of these eggs,
however, although they may be produced in worker cells, are drones,
fully developed, though smaller than those hatched in drone-cells. When
this state of affairs is discovered in the hive the bee-keeper must
ascertain by observation whether it is the queen's doings, and, if so,
depose her and, if that of a fertile worker, destroy her. As a rule a
fertile worker deposits her eggs in a scattered sort of way, but as the
cells containing them are always capped as drone-cells--that is the
cappings are raised in a dome-like way--they are easily distinguishable
to the experienced eye.
[Illustration: Worker Bee]
[Illustration: Queen Bee]
[Illustration: Drone Bee]
(_Magnified two diameters. Photographs by John J. Ward, F.E.S._ )
=Metamorphosis.=--The metamorphosis, or change of form, which occurs
in the early life history of the bee is among the most interesting in
the insect world. When the egg is deposited by the queen, it rests
on end on the bottom of the cell and almost parallel with the sides.
At the close of the first day it inclines to an angle of about 45°,
and after two days it falls to the floor of the cell. As a rule, the
period of incubation is three days, and the grub is immediately taken
charge of by the nurse bees, and fed according to the kind of cell
in which it has been placed. At the end of five or six days the grub
is sealed up in its cell to undergo the next, or pupa, stage of its
existence. Generally speaking, the queen is ready to leave her cell on
the fifteenth day, the worker on the twenty-first, and the drone on the
twenty-fourth day from the time the egg is laid. If the weather is cold
these periods may be extended: it is a curious fact that the egg of an
insect can often bear a greater intensity of cold without injury than
can the developed insect.
=Anatomy of the Bee.=--It is advisable that all bee-keepers should
know something of the structure of the bee, of its principal organs
and their functions. The subject is too technical to be dealt with at
length in a volume such as this, but the following notes may be of
sufficient service to rouse interest to further inquiry.
=Tracheæ.=--Bees have no lungs, but in place of them have air-sacs,
connected up by air-tubes or _tracheæ_ which run throughout the body,
varying in size much as do the "veins" of a leaf, until they are minute
enough to serve the extremities of the insect, the antennae and sting.
This arrangement of the air-supplying organs, general throughout the
insect world, may have something to do with the hibernation, to which
most are subject in a greater or less degree, in cold weather.
The worker-bee is extremely sensitive to cold, but the queen seems far
less susceptible, and often causes perceptible anxiety in a hive by
wandering out of the cluster in cold weather. I know of one instance
which came under my notice where the queen was very much alive in a
hive in which all the workers were dead, or dying from starvation in
cold weather, and although it is a recognised fact that queens which
have been injured by frost become drone-breeders it was not so in this
case.
=The Antennæ.=--The antennae of the bee must be accounted among the
most marvellous of its organs. They are made up of a number of joints
and chambers, and, though they are conjectured to be the organs of the
senses of hearing, feeling, and smelling they are not definitely so
known to be. As in the case of many other insects the antennæ of the
male bee are much longer than those of the female.
=The Tongue.=--From the bee-keeper's point of view the tongue of the
bee is one of its most important organs, for by means of it the bee
secures the nectar from the flowers. When the nectar is in abundance
the tongue serves as a trunk or proboscis through which it can be
drawn, and when the supply is scanty the spoon-like end of the
proboscis serves to lap it up. From the tongue the nectar passes into
the "honey stomach" from which it is regurgitated and stored in the
hive.
=The Legs.=--The six legs of the bee serve for manifold purposes
other than walking, and are so wonderfully adapted to them as to be
worthy of close study. They serve as hands, as combs and brushes for
cleansing purposes, they are provided with claws which are available
for climbing rough surfaces, or for clinging in the swarm: between the
claws is a pad which secretes a substance which enables the bee to walk
comfortably on smooth surfaces whether upside down or normally. On the
thighs of the hind legs are the pollen baskets in which are carried the
burden of pollen gathered from the flowers and taken to the hive for
storage.
=The Eyes.=--Three eyes, one simple and two compound, form the
complement for each bee. The single eye, the smallest, is placed in
the centre of the crown of the head, and the two compound on either
side of the head. Each compound eye consists of hundreds of facets
each of which has a perfect vision. Much argument has been made as
to the reason for all this sight-power, but without arriving at any
satisfactory conclusion. It is certain, however, that although the
bee can move about freely and work in the darkness of the hive, _yet
it cannot see in the dark_, for who among those who have worked bees
has not heard the plaintive wail of a bee that has been overtaken by
the night before gaining its hive--and this with the hives within easy
range?
=The Jaws.=--The jaws are used in much of the work of the
hive--kneading wax, cutting and reducing the combs, capping the cells,
for clearing away refuse, and particularly for carrying dead bees from
the hive. They serve as weapons, too, for fighting, and in ejecting the
useless drones when their season is ended. Then the jaws are used as
nippers to cut the wings of the bulky drone and so render him helpless.
=The Wings.=--Each wing consists of two parts, an arrangement which
allows the bee to close, or fold them up when she alights. On the
adjoining edge of each part is a row of minute hooks, and when the
wings are expanded these hooks become attached and thus provide a
strong and reliable flying surface. In addition to providing the means
of flight, the wings of the bee serve as fans for the ventilation of
the hive, a certain number of the community, who also act as sentries,
often being engaged in such duty. Should a bee-keeper see any of the
"fanners" at work on the alighting board at the entrance of the hive
he may know at once that the hive is too warm, and if he be wise
will open the entrance a little wider. Should the bees continue their
ventilating work after that, then he may surely know that something is
wrong and open the hive to investigate. The bees do not so work without
urgent need. It may be that the stores of food are fermenting, or that
wet has penetrated to the combs: mice may have entered the hive, or,
worst of all, foul brood may be rampant. All these would cause bad
odours, and the bees should be helped as speedily as possible to remove
the evil.
=The Sting.=--This weapon of offence and defence is usually the last in
the equipment of the bee to be used, for its discharge generally means
loss of life to its owner. To the enemy against whom it is launched, it
becomes a source of irritation and annoyance and sometimes of danger.
The sting is a fine lance, with incisions down one side which act as
barbs when the flesh is pierced by it, sinking the lance deeper at each
convulsion of the stinger or the stung. So soon as a barb is fixed it
is impossible for the bee to withdraw the sting, and in its struggle
to be free the whole of the stinging organs--including the poison
sac--are dragged from it, and the poison enters the wound. For this
reason it is necessary that the sting should be extracted as soon as
possible, for the longer it remains in the flesh the greater will be
the irritation. Should the sting be inflicted near a hive it will be
wise to remove oneself from the neighbourhood without loss of time, for
it is a well-known fact that the scent of the sting attracts other bees
and arouses their anger against the presumed enemy of their kind.
_The best remedy for a sting from a bee_ is methylated spirit, applied
immediately the sting has been extracted--though it is well to remember
that bees have an abhorrence of spirit, so that all trace of it
should be removed before venturing near a hive, or further stings may
be induced. There are many popular remedies for stings, such as the
application of ammonia, washing soda, the blue bag, an onion--all of
which have the same object--to nullify the effects of the irritant
poison, of which formic acid is one of the principal constituents.
Occasionally bees will attack fowls, although it is more than likely in
most such cases that the fowls are the aggressors and mistake the bees
for flies, of which they are very fond.
=Stingless Bees.=--There has been much talk of breeding stingless bees,
but personally I do not think such bees are ever likely to oust our
native breeds, for what chance could they have in fights with the armed
variety?