Chapter 3

Now unless the bees chance to catch him by the collar, or nape of his neck, while feeding, and drag him out of his place of concealment, they will be compelled to cut away the combs all around his silken path, or gallery, and drag out the worm and his fortress all together. At the same time, the bees are compelled to cut away the combs so far as to destroy many of their young brood in making room to remove the annoyance. I have known them to cut away their combs from four to eight or ten inches to re move this silken shroud, and have known them to cut and drag out their only remaining Queen before she was transformed to the perfect fly, which occasioned the entire loss of the whole colony.

Repeated experiments have demonstrated the fact, that placing bees on the ground, or high in the air, is no security against the moths. I have lost some of my best stocks by placing them on the ground, when those on the bench were not injured by them. I have made a groove in the bottom board, much wider than the thickness of the boards to the hive, and filled the same with loam: I then placed the hive on the same, in such a manner as to prevent any crack or vacancy for the worms; and yet in raising the hive four weeks afterwards, I found them apparently full grown all around the hive in the dirt. I have found them very plenty in a tree ninety feet from the ground.

The best method, in common practice, to prevent the depredations of the moth, is, to suspend the bottom board so far below the lower edge of the hive as to give the bees free entrance and egress all around the same during the moth season, or to raise the common hive, by placing under it little blocks at each corner, which produces nearly the same effect. But I know of but one rule, which is an infallible one, to prevent their depredations, and that is this: keep the combs well guarded by bees. See Rule 10.

Large hives, that never swarm, are never destroyed by the moth, unless they lose their Queen, melt down, or meet with some casualty, out of the ordinary course of managing them. They are not often in the least annoyed by them, unless there are bad joints, cracks, or shakes, so as to afford some lurking places for the worms. The reason for their prosperous condition is obvious. The stock of bees are so numerous that their combs are all kept well guarded during the moth season, so that no miller can enter and deposit her eggs.

Hives made so small as to swarm, are liable to reduce their colonies so small as to leave combs unguarded, especially when they swarm three or four times the same season. All swarms, after the first, sally forth to avoid the battle of the Queens; constantly making a greater draft, in proportion to the number left, until the combs are partly exposed, which gives the miller free access to their edges.--The seeds of rapine and plunder are thus quickly sown, and soon vegetate, and fortify themselves by their silken fortress, before the bees are aware that their frontiers are invaded. While the moths are thus engaged in establishing their posts on the frontiers of the bees, the latter are constantly and indefatigably engaged in providing themselves with another Queen, to supply the place of the old one, which has departed with a swarm, and raising young bees to replenish their reduced colony. Now as the moths have got possession of the ground on their frontiers, it requires a tremendous effort on the part of the bees to save their little colony from a complete overthrow.

If late, or second and third swarms are always returned immediately, according to the rule, the combs are kept so guarded that the moths are compelled to keep their distance, or be stung to death before they can accomplish their purposes.

Hives made so large as not to swarm may lose their Queen, and then they will abandon their habitation and emigrate into the adjoining hive, leaving all their stores to their owner, which, unless immediately taken care of, the moths will not fail to destroy.

The moths are often complained of when they are not guilty. Hives are frequently abandoned by their occupants, in consequence of the loss of their Queen, unnoticed by any observer, and before any thing is known of their fate, the hive is destitute of bees, and filled with moths.

In the summer of 1834, one of my neighbors had a very large hive that never swarmed, which lost their Queen; and in the course of a few days the bees entirely vacated their tenement, and emigrated into an adjoining hive, leaving the whole of their stores, which amounted to 215 lbs. of honey in the comb.

No young bees or moths were discovered in the hive. Instances of this kind frequently occur, and the true cause is unknown, from inattention.

The Queen may be superannuated, or may become diseased in the breeding season, so as to render her unfruitful; or she may die of old age. In either case, the colony will be lost, unless supplied with another Queen, as explained in remarks on Rule 8; for when the Queen becomes unfruitful by either of the foregoing causes, the bees are not apprized of the loss which will in future be sustained by them, until after the means of repairing the same are gone beyond their reach. All the grubs may have passed the various stages of their transformation, or at least advanced so far towards the perfect insect, that their nature cannot be changed to a Queen.

The Queen is much more tenacious of life than any other bee, and may live to a great age. But one Queen exists in the same hive any great length of time. When there are more than one, the peculiar sound of each, as explained in remarks on Rule 2, is heard by the other, which always results in a battle between them, or the issue of a swarm in the course of a day or two.

Bees, when placed in a dark room in the upper part of the house, or some out-house, are easily cultivated a short time with little trouble, and are sometimes made profitable to their owner; but as they are liable to some of the same casualties as those kept in swarming hives, they cannot be as profitable.

Large colonies never increase their stock in proportion to the swarming colonies. There is but one female in a large colony, and they can do but little more in raising young bees than to keep their stock good by replenishing them as fast as they die off or are destroyed by the birds, reptiles and insects, which are great admirers of them, and sometimes swallow them by dozens. Now if it requires five swarming colonies to be equal in number to the one first described, it is not difficult to imagine that five times as many bees may be raised by the swarming colonies: for one Queen will probably lay as many eggs as another.

The swarming hives are no more liable to be destroyed by the moth during the swarming season, than others, if the hives are kept well replenished with bees according to Rule 10.

RULE XI.

ON FEEDING BEES.

If it is found that a swarm need feeding, hitch on the feeder, well stored with good honey, while the weather is warm in October.

The apiarian should use the same precaution in feeding, as directed in Rule 4, to prevent robberies.

REMARKS.

The best time to feed is in the fall, before cold weather commences. All hives should be weighed, and the weight marked on the hive before bees are hived in them. Then, by weighing a stock as soon as frost has killed the blossoms in the fall, the apiarian will be able to form a just estimate of their necessities.

When bees are fed in the fall, they will carry up and deposit their food in such a manner as will be convenient for them in the winter. If feeding is neglected until cold weather the bees must be removed to a warm room, or dry cellar, and then they will carry up their food, generally, no faster than they consume it.

A feeder should be made like a box with five sides closed, leaving a part of the sixth side open, to admit the bees from their common entrance with its floor level, when hitched on the front of the hive. It should be of sufficient depth to lay in broad comb, filled with honey. If strained honey without combs is used for feeding, a float, perforated with many holes, should be laid over the whole of the honey in the box, or feeder, so as to prevent any of the bees from drowning; and at the same time, this float should be so thin as to enable them to reach the honey. It should be made so small that it will settle down as fast as the honey is removed by the bees. As soon as warm weather commences in the spring, the feeder may be used. Small drawers cannot be depended on as feeders, except in the spring and summer, unless they are kept so warm that the vapor of the bees will not freeze in them. It would be extremely hazardous for the bees to enter a frosty drawer. They will sooner starve than attempt the experiment. Drawers may be used without danger from robbers, but when the feeder is used, robbers must be guarded against as directed in Rule 4.

Care should be exercised, in fall-feeding, to supply them with good honey, otherwise the colony may be lost before spring by disease. Poor honey may be given them in the spring, at the time when they can obtain and provide themselves with medicine, which they only best understand.

Sugar dissolved, or molasses, may be used in the spring to some advantage, but ought not to be substituted for honey, when it can be obtained.

Bees sometimes die of starvation, with plenty of honey in the hive at the same time. In cold weather they crowd together in a small compass in order to keep warm; and then their breath and vapor collect in frost, in all parts of the hive, except in the region they occupy. Now, unless the weather moderates, so as to thaw the ice, the bees will be compelled to remain where they are located until their stores are all consumed that are within their reach. One winter we had cold weather ninety-four days in succession, during which time the bees could not move from one part of the hive to another. I examined all my hives on the eighty-third day, and on the ninetieth day I found four swarms dead. I immediately examined for the cause, which was as already stated. I then carried all my hives into a warm room and thawed them, so that the bees could move. Some hives that I supposed were dead, revived; some few swarms I found nearly destitute of stores, which I carried into the cellar, turned them bottom up, cut out a few of the combs, so as to make room to lay in combs filled with honey, which served as good feeders.

RULE XII.

ON WINTERING BEES.

On the near approach of winter, as soon as the bees have receded from the drawers and gone below, insert a slide, take out the drawers, and supply their places with empty ones, bottom up. Suspend the bottom board at least one eighth of an inch below the lower edge of the hive, and open the ventilator.--Clean off the bottom board as often as the weather changes from cold to warm. Close no doors upon them, unless they are kept in a spacious room, and in such a place that the breath and steam of the bees will not freeze.

REMARKS.

Various methods have been practised by different individuals. Some have buried them in the ground, others kept them in the cellar, chamber, &c. One course only will be observed in this place.

RULE XIII.

ON TRANSFERRING SWARMS.

This operation should never be effected by compulsion.

FIRST METHOD. Insert drawer No. 1 into the chamber of the hive, to be transferred as early as the first of May. If the bees fill the drawer, they will recede from the lower apartment and winter in the drawer. As early in the spring as the bees carry in bread plentifully on their legs, remove the drawer, which will contain the principal part of the bees, to an empty hive. Now remove the old hive a few feet in front, and place the new one containing the drawer where the old one stood. Now turn the old hive bottom up. If there are any bees left in the old hive, they will soon return and take possession of their new habitation.

SECOND METHOD. Take drawer No. 1, well filled by any hive the same season, insert the same into the chamber of the hive, to be transferred in September, (August would be better.) If the bees need transferring, they will repair to the drawer and make the same their winter quarters. Then proceed in the spring as directed in the first method.

REMARKS.

This management should excite a deep interest in every cultivator, both in a temporal and moral point of view. Temporal, because the lives of all the bees are preserved; moral, because we are accountable to God for all our acts. We are not to be justified in taking the lives of animals or insects, which are but lent blessings, unless some benefit to the owner can be derived from their death, which will outweigh the evils resulting from such a sacrifice. Duty compels me to protest in the strongest terms and feelings, against the inhuman practice of taking the lives of the most industrious and comforting insects to the wants of the human family by fire and brimstone.

When bees have occupied one tenement for several years, the combs become thick and filthy, by being filled up with old bread and cocoons, made by the young bees when transformed from a larva to the perfect fly.

Bees always wind themselves in their cells, in a silken cocoon, or shroud, to pass their torpid and defenceless (chrysalis) state.--These cocoons are very thin, and are never removed by the bees. They are always cleaned immediately after the escape of the young bees, and others are raised in the same cells. Thus a number of bees are raised, which leaves an additional cocoon as often as the transformation of one succeeds that of another, which often occurs in the course of the season. Now in the course of a few years the cells become so contracted, in consequence of being thus filled up, that the bees come forth but mere dwarfs and sometimes cease to swarm. Combs are rendered useless by being filled up with old bread, which is never used except for feeding young bees. A greater quantity of this bread is stored up yearly than is used by them, and in a few years they have but little room to perform their ordinary labors.--Hence the necessity of transferring them, or the inhuman sentence of death must be passed upon them, not by being hung by the neck until they are dead, but by being tortured to death by fire and brimstone.

It is obvious to every cultivator that old stocks should be transferred. I have repeatedly transferred them in the most approved manner, by means of an apparatus constructed for that purpose; but the operation always resulted in the loss of the colony afterwards, or a swarm which would have come from them. When it is necessary to transfer a swarm, insert drawer No. 1 into their chamber in the spring, say the first of May. If they till the drawer, let it remain there; if they need to be changed to a new hive, they will recede from the lower apartment and make the drawer their winter quarters, which should remain until warm weather has so far advanced as to afford them bread. Then they may be removed to an empty hive, as directed in the Rule. Now the drawer contains no bread, and should remain in the old stock until the bees can provide themselves with a sufficient quantity of that article to feed their young bees with; for bread is not collected early enough and in sufficient quantities to feed their young as much as nature requires. If the bees fail in filling the drawer, one should be used that is filled by another swarm.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.

The reader might have expected many things demonstrated in this work, which are omitted by design.

The structure of the worker is too well understood by every owner of bees to need a particular description. So also of the drone; and the Queen has already been sufficiently described to enable any one to select her out from among her subjects. If any further description is desired, the observer can easily satisfy himself by the use of a microscope.--Every swarm of bees is composed of three classes or sorts, to wit: one Queen or female, drones or males, and neuters or workers. The Queen is the only female in the hive, and lays all the eggs from which all the young bees are raised to replenish their colony. She possesses no authority over them, other than that of influence, which is derived from the fact that she is the mother of all the bees; and they, being endowed with knowledge of the fact that they are wholly dependent on her to propagate their species, treat her with the greatest kindness, tenderness and reverence, and manifest at all times the most sincere attachment to her by feeding and guarding her from all danger.

The government of a hive is nearer republican than any other, because it is administered in exact accordance with their nature. It is their peculiar natural instinct, which prompts them in all their actions. The Queen has no more to do with the government of the hive than the other bees, unless influence may be called government. If she finds empty cells in the hive, during the breeding season, she will deposit eggs there, because it is her nature to do so; and the nature of the workers prompts them so take care and nurse all the young larvae, labor and collect food for their sustenance, guard and protect their habitations, and do and perform all things, in due obedience, not to the commands of the Queen, but to their own peculiar instinct.

The drone is probably the male bee, notwithstanding the sexual union has never been witnessed by any man; yet so many experiments have been tried, and observations made, that but little doubt can be entertained of its truth. That the sexual intercourse takes place high in the air, is highly probable from the fact, that other insects of the fly tribe do copulate in the air, when on the wing, as I have repeatedly seen. That the drone is the male bee, is probable from the fact that the drones are not all killed at once; but at least one in each hive is permitted to live several months after the general massacre.

I examined four swarms, whose colonies were strong and numerous, three months after the general massacre of the drones, and in three hives I found one drone each; the other was probably overlooked, as the bees were thrown into the fire as fast as they were examined. But there are many mysterious things concerning them, and much might be written to little purpose; and as it is designed to go no further in illustrations than is necessary to aid the apiarian in good management, many little speculations have been entirely omitted in the work, and the reader is referred to the writings of Thatcher, Bonner, and Huber, who are the most voluminous and extensive writers on bees within my knowledge.

Bees are creatures of habit, and the exercise of caution in managing them is required. A stock of bees should be placed where they are to stand through the season before they form habits of location, which will take place soon after they commence their labors in the spring. They learn their home by the objects surrounding them in the immediate vicinity of the hive. Moving them, (unless they are carried beyond their knowledge,) is often fatal to them. The old bees forget their new location, and on their return, when collecting stores, they haze about where they formerly stood, sad perish. I have known some fine stocks ruined by moving them six feet and from that to a mile and a half. It is better to move them before swarming than afterwards. The old bees only will be lost. As the young ones are constantly hatching, their habits will be formed at the new stand, and the combs will not be as likely to become vacated, so as to afford opportunity to the moths to occupy any part of their ground.

Swarms, when first hived, may be moved at pleasure without loss of bees, admitting they are all in the hive; their habits will be formed in exact proportion to their labors.--The first bee that empties his sack and goes forth in search of food, is the one whose habits are first established. I have observed many bees to cluster near the place where the hive stood, but a few hours after hiving, and perish. Now if the swarm had been placed in the apiary, immediately after they were hived, the number of bees found there would have been less.

Bees may be moved at pleasure at any season of the year, if they are carried several miles, so as to be beyond their knowledge of country. They may be carried long journeys by travelling nights only, and affording them opportunity to labor and collect food in the day time.

The importance of this part of bee-management is the only apology I can make for dwelling so long on this point. I have known many to suffer serious losses in consequence of moving their bees after they were well settled in their labors.

Bees should never be irritated, under any pretence whatever. They should be treated with attention and kindness. They should be kept undisturbed by cattle and all other annoyances, so that they may be approached at any time with safety.

An apiary should be so situated, that swarming may be observed, and at the same time where the bees can obtain food easily, and in the greatest abundance.

It has been a general practice to front bee-houses either to the east or south. This doctrine should be exploded with all other whims. Apiaries should be so situated as to be convenient to their owner, as much as any other buildings.

I have them front towards all the cardinal points, but can distinguish no difference in their prosperity.

Young swarms should be scattered as much as convenient during the summer season, at least eight feet apart. They should be set in a frame and so covered as to exclude the sun and weather from the hive.

It is not surprising that this branch of rural economy, in consequence of the depredations of the moth, is so much neglected.--Notwithstanding, in some parts of our country, the business of managing bees has been entirely abandoned for years, I am confident they may be cultivated in such a manner as to render them more profitable to their owners, than any branch of agriculture, in proportion to the capital necessary to be invested in their stock. They are not taxable property, neither does it require a large land investment, nor fences; neither does it require the owner to labor through the summer to support them through the winter.--Care is, indeed, necessary, but a child, or a superannuated person can perform most of the duties of an apiarian. The cobwebs must be kept away from the immediate vicinity of the hive, and all other annoyances removed.

The management of bees is a delightful employment, and may be pursued with the best success in cities and villages, as well as towns and country. It is a source of great amusement, as well as comfort and profit. They collect honey and bread from most kinds of forest trees, as well as garden flowers, orchards, forests, and fields; all contribute to their wants, and their owner is gratified with a taste of the whole. Sweet mignonette cannot be too highly recommended.--This plant is easily cultivated by drills in the garden, and is one of the finest and richest flowers in the world from which the honey-bee can extract its food.

The Vermont hive is the only one I can use to much advantage or profit, and yet there are some other improvements, which are far superior to the old box. In the summer of 1834, I received in swarms and extra honey from my best stock, thirty dollars; and from my poorest, fifteen dollars. My early swarms afforded extra honey which was sold, amounting to from five to ten dollars each hive; and all ray late swarms which were doubled, stored a sufficient quantity of food to supply them through the following winter.