The Apiarian, Or, A Practical Treatise on the Management of Bees: With the Best Method of Preventing the Depredations of the Bee Moth

Front Cover
Hitchcock & Stafford, printers, 1840 - Bee culture - 48 pages
 

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 16 - ... to the consistence of the honey, and to the health of the brood. They therefore use all the little arts and advantages they possess, to prevent any one from exposing them to the injurious influence of these active powers. , When a queen bee ceases to animate the hive, the bees are conscious of her loss ; after searching for her through the hive, for a day or more, they examine the royal cells, which are of a peculiar construction and reversed in position, hanging vertically, with the mouth underneath....
Page 16 - There is no need of adding superhuman powers to an insect, when the simple facts show such singular sagacity. The truth is, that the queen or mother bee lays the neuter eggs in certain cells of a particular construction ; in fact, the eggs are laid, at least many of them, as soon as the foundations are begun, before the cells are built. The bees know, from the peculiar shape of the egg, that it is to have a cell of certain dimensions. When the neuter and drone eggs are deposited, the royal cells...
Page 16 - If no eggs or larvae are to be found in these cells, they then enlarge several of those cells, which are appropriated to the eggs of neuters, and in which queen eggs have been deposited. They soon attach a royal cell to the enlarged surface, and the queen bee, enabled now to grow, protrudes itself by degrees into the royal cell, and comes out perfectly formed, to the great pleasure of the bees. Now this in itself is curious and wonderful. There is no need of adding superhuman powers to an insect,...
Page 17 - ... having room to expand, it perishes and is dragged out in the nymph form, as soon as the bees discover that animation is extinct. If, during the progress of the egg from the larva to the nymph state, the mother queen dies, and there are no eggs in the royal cells, then the bees have recourse to the queen eggs that are laid in the common cells. By enlarging the entrance, and by attaching to it a cell, which hangs vertically, they continue the life of the larva, and a queen bee is formed. Here is...
Page 21 - ... seized them by the antennae, the limbs, and the wings, and, after having dragged them about, or, so to speak, after quartering them, they killed them by repeated stings directed between the rings of the belly.
Page 17 - It is wonderful that instinct is so competent to direct these changes ; but it would be more than wonderful, if, in addition to this instinct, the bee had the power to construct new organs, as it does different cells, and thus to endow the insect with a different nature. The third point unsettled, and which is likely to remain for ever a secret, is, whether the eggs of the queen are hatched after the manner of the eggs of fishes, whether they simply are animated by incubation, or by the care and...
Page 13 - ... subservient to the safety and comfort of the mother of the brood. She is, in their estimation, as much a part of themselves, as an eye or a limb. Their care of her is a kind of self-preservation, a law implanted in every living thing. After rejecting all the fanciful and marvellous speculations...
Page 24 - Independently of the reliance that can be placed on observations of this kind, we have confirmation derived from strong probabilities. The average number of a hive or swarm is from fifteen to twenty thousand bees. Nineteen thousand four hundred and ninety-nine are neuters or working bees, five hundred are drones, and the remaining one is the queen or mother...
Page 16 - The bees know, from the peculiar shape of the egg, that it is to have a cell of certain dimensions. When the neuter and drone eggs are deposited, the royal cells are then filled, for abundant observations prove that the queen eggs are laid last. If the royal cells are not sufficient to hold all the queen eggs, they are laid in the common cells, and in the course of the regular business of the hive, these cells are attended to with the rest. When the larva is of a size to fill the cell, a covering...
Page 17 - ... to endow the insect with a different nature. The third point unsettled, and which is likely to remain for ever a secret, is, whether the eggs of the queen are hatched after the manner of the eggs of fishes, whether they simply are animated by incubation, or by the care and nourishment bestowed upon them by the working or neuter bees. On this point experiment has proved nothing. The greatest diversity of opinion exists. There are upwards of a thousand writers on the history and policy of the bee,...

Bibliographic information