The Creator has stamped the seal of His infinity on all his
works, so that it is impossible by searching, to find out the
Almighty to perfection. On none of them, however, has He
diplayed Himself more clearly than in the economy of the honey-bee.
No doubt He intended the bee, as truly as the domestic animals,
for the comfort of man. In the early ages of the world, and even
until quite modern times, honey was almost the only natural sweet
and the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey had once
a significance which it is difficult for us to fully realize.
The honey-bee is the only insect that has been domesticated by
man, and besides giving us wealth and a splendid luxury, it possesses
many charms and is a study for the naturalist.
There are very few societies in this country for learning
and investigating the wonders of this little insect. For ages
past,
organizations have been effected by our best men to develope
the various agricultural resources of the land, and during the
same period the most industrious workers of our continent have
been consigned to the ignominy of a dealth by fire and brimstone.
If apiarists had given the time and attention in seletion
the males and females from the largest, most industrious, prolific,
and docile colonies to breed from, with the same care, shrewdness
and attention that has been practiced with horses, cattle sheep,
hogs and poultry, we would have a race of bees far superior to
what we now possess. Man cannot obtain labor from any other souce
as cheap as from the honey-bee, as they work for nothing and
find themselves, requiring only a free tenement. The census returns
of 1850 show the amount of wax and honey in the United States
to be 14,853,790 pounds. In 1860, 126,386,855 pounds. With the
increased attention given to the pursuit, together with the increase
of colonies, we have no doubt that the present returns will show
a vast increase of product. Possessing, as we do, a genial climate
and a fertile soil, producing plants with a due degree of skill
and enterprise, capable of the production of richly varied honey
and flowers, the bees can be increased to an extent that the
profit arising therefrom will pay all our taxes, and furnish
our tables daily with one of the choicest luxuries of life.
The honey-bee belongs to the genus apis and is of that class
of insects that live in perfect societies. A full colony or
swarm consists of one queen, being a perfect female, and
fifteen to thirty thousand workers, and also a few hundred drones.
The latter are the only perfect males and are only found during
the summer or swarming season. No colony can long exist without
a queen. She lays all the eggs, but does not govern her subjects
or dictate their workings, but is governed by them in all her
movements, being fed by them to control the number of eggs required
according to the season and capacity of the hive. When she becomes
old she is superceded by a young queen, raised by the workers,
who kill the old one. The same egg that will produce a queen
can also produce a drone or worker, depending on the skill of
the latter in forming the cell and kind of food furnished. If
a queen is required, three cells are converted into one, and
the young grub on being removed to it most not be more than five
days old, and then fed for eleven days on what is called payal
jelly. Hence, a queen is produced in sixteen days, while it takes
twenty-one to develop workers.
Within from three to six days after the queen leaves her
cell, she flies abroad to mate with the drones in the air, and
returns to make the hive populous. Her natural life is four
years, but is sometimes superceded in the first year. A prolific
queen will lay two or three thousand eggs per day. The workers
are smaller than the queen or drone and are in fact non-sexual,
though really imperfect females; yet they nurse the young, gather
the honey, obtain the pollen, propolis-glue and other substances
requisite for honey-preserving purposes in the hive, and are
armed with stings to defend the community. The drones are like
some of the human family, eating much and doing little; hence,
when the drone season is over, the workers kill the drones or
drive them out to starve. If the workers make a mistake and form
too many drone-cells, the drones will sometimes be so numerous
as to eat the honey as fast as the workers can procure it; but
by the improved method of bee-keeping, in the use of movable
frames, the drone can be removed, and comb for raisning workers
inserted in its place. In fact the whole breeding department
can be regulated in the same manner. The wax is produced for
building comb in which to store the honey and pollen and for
the deposit of eggs.
The workers which produce the wax do nothing else. The wax
exudes from their bodies in scales; is a costly matter in the
way of time for the bees, as only in the honey-season can
they make one pound of wax, while they can procure twenty pounds
of honey. Dr. Kirtland says they consume twenty-five pounds of
honey to produce one pound of comb. Pollen, or bee-bread, is
gathered from, and is the fertilizing dust of flowers. The color
and quality varies with the different plants. It is never stored
in drone-cells but used to feed the young in early spring before
flowers appear. If flour of rye is placed near the hives, the
bees will obtain from it a similar substance, and are stimulated
to brood early in the spring. Each swarm will profitably use
two pounds of flour before vegetation is in bloom.
Bee-keeping has been so simplified, the science has been
reduced to such an art, that any one who chooses can keep bees
and manage them well, and the land described as flowing with
milk and honey can be realized in Wisconsin, and honey become
abundant for home use and profit in the market.
Honey in clear white comb, still commands the highest price,
but is not the most profit to the producer or consumer. By
a cheap aparatus the honey is driven from the comb by centrifugal
force without injuring the comb, and the entire comb restored
to the hive to be refilled, and in the best of the honey-season
can be successfully done every third or fourth day. Those who
eat honey in the comb also eat the wax which is indigestible
and unwholsome, which is not the case in the use of extracted
honey. by this process we can have clover, linden, or buckwheat
honey as we choose; and all who use the Melipulte testify that
three pounds can be obtained where only one can be had in the
ordinary way. If the bee had not such a formidable weapon, both
of offense and defense, multitudes who now fear it might easily
be induced to enter upon its cultivation; but the science teaches
us laws by which all necessary operations may be performed without
incurring any risk of exciting its anger while removing comb
covered with bees, forming new swarms, exhibiting the queen,
transferring them and their stores to other hives and extracting
the honey, and thus enjoying the pleasure and profit of a pursuit
which has been appropriately styled the poetry of rural economy.
The laws are only three:
First. The honey-bee, when filled with honey, never volunteers
an attack, but only acts on the defensive.
Second. They cannot under any circumstances resist the temptation
to fill themselves with liquid sweets.
Third. When frightened, they immediately begin to fill themselves
with honey from the combs. By blowing upon them
smoke, it will always frighten them so that the largest and
most fiery colony may at once be brought into complete subjection.
In this consists all the secrets, charms, and receipts for
taming bees with which unprincipled venders have long hum-
bugged a too credulous public. The soul of this system is
a complete control of the combs. With gentle movements and a
thorough knowledge of the science, any one, male or female, can
superintend a large apiary, performing every operation necessary
for pleasure and profit with as little risk of stings as must
be incurred in managing a single hive in the ordinary way. The
eggs of the queen are deposited equally on each side of the comb,
to economize heat for developing the brood, seventy degrees of
Farenheit being required. It requires twenty-four days to perfect
the drones, twenty-one days to perfect the workers, thirty-six
hours of which it occupies in spinning its cocoon; and sixteen
days to perfect a queen, twenty-four hours of which time it occupies
in spinning its cocoon. Such is the enmity of young queens to
each other that the one that first emerges from the cell rushes
to those of its sisters and tears to pieces even the imperfect
larvae. There are five peculiarities of queens:
1st. She arrives at maturity almost one-third sooner than
a drone, and just one-third sooner than a worker.
2d. Her organs of reproductions are completely developed.
3d. Her size, shape and color are greatly changed, her lower
jaws are shorter, head rounder, abdomen without the
receptacles for secreting wax, legs have neither brushes
or baskets, and sting is more curved and one-third longer than
a worker's.
4th. Her instincts are entirely changed. As a worker she
would have thrust out her sting at the least provocation; now
she
may be pulled limb from limb without attempting to sting.
As a worker she would have treated a queen with the greatest
consideration; now she destroys her as a rival. As a worker she
would frequently have left the hive to labor; as a queen she
never leaves after fertilization except with a new swarm.
5th. Her term of life is remarkably lengthened. As a worker
she would have not lived more than from three to seven or
eight months; as a queen she lives four years or more.
All these wonders may now be demonstrated to any one who
prefers an acquaintance with facts, to caviling at the labor
of others. The workers, the smallest in size, are alike our
wonder and admiration, whether we consider their unvarying God-implanted
instinct in hoarding rich stores of honey for future use, or
in their matchless architectural skill in building comb, or in
their entire devotion to the queen's welfare, and to that of
her numerous maturing progeny. We must regard them as the most
wonderful class of the insect family.
Is is creditable that these little insects can unite so may
requisites in the contraction of their cells either by chance
or
because they are profoundly versed in the most intricate
mathematics? Let it be required to find what shape a given quantity
of matter must take in order to have the greatest capacity and
strength; occupying at the same time the least space, consuming
the least labor in the construction. When this problem is solved
by the most refined mathematical process, the answer is the hexigon
or six sided cell of the honey-bee, with its three, four sided
figures at the base, the shape of which figures cannot be altered
ever so little except for the worse. To an intelligent and candid
mind the smallest piece of honey-comb is a perfect demonstration
that there is a great first cause.
Dr. Evans says:
"On books, deep poring ye pale sons
of toil,
Who waste in studious trance the midnight
oil;
Say, can ye simulate with all your rules?
Drawn, or from Grecian or Gothic schools?
This artless frame, instinct her simple guide,
A heaven-taught insect baffles all your pride;
Not all your marshaled orbs that ride so
high,
Proclaim more loud a present Deity,
Than the nice symmetry of these small cells,
Where on each angle genuine science dwells."
As bees carry on their bodies the pollen or fertilizing dust,
they aid wonderfully in the impregnation of plants while prying
into blossoms in search of honey or bee-bread. In genial
seasons, fruit will often set abundantly, but many springs are
so unpropitious that during the critical period of blossoming,
the sun shines only for a few hours, so that those only can reasonably
expect a remunerating crop, whose trees are all murmuring with
the pleasant hum of bees.
Extensive fruit-growers report that many times fruit was
a very uncertain crop, a cold storm frequently prevailing when
the trees were in blossom, and they have observed that if
the sun shone only for a few hours, the trees secured a crop.
Then all gentlemen, and ladies too, should learn the science
and improved art of agriculture, and keep bees to gather the
delicious nectar which would else be lost on the desert air,
and also to mingle the pollen of flowers, for fruit will flourish
all the more, when flowers mate by rifled store. And they who
with health would live at ease, should cultivate both fruit and
bees. The creator has admirably adapted these insect societies
to all classes of mankind, and this adaptation speaks eloquently
of his wisdom, goodness and care for the welfare of his creatures.
In bee-keeping, as in all other pursuits, we must first understand
our business and then proceed upon the good old maxim that "the
hand of the diligent maketh rich." Artficial swarming, colonizing,
and dividing, so fascinating in theory, would always be practiced
if successful. I will give only one of many modes of forced swarming
which is a success and depends on three contitions.
First. Time.
Second. Condition of the colony.
Third. Conformity to the laws that govern the economy of
the hive.