The Queen Bee

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Section four of The American Bee Journal, Volume one, number three,
March eighteen sixty one. This is a LibriVox recording. All
LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information
or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Read by
Candice M. The American b Journal, Volume one, number three,

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March eighteen sixty one, by various The Queen B. The
Queen B, this most important member of the busy commonwealth,
has been appropriately called the mother b. Laying all the
eggs in the hive, she is truly the parent of
the entire population drones as well as workers. The ancients, indeed,
having an imperfect knowledge of the internal economy of these communities,

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misnamed her King, conceiving it to be the office of
so distinguished a personage to regulate and govern the masses.
This erranous notion has perpetuated itself in various countries even
to our day, and we not unfrequently meet with bee
keepers who receive it with implicit faith. Yet, whatever the
special opinions of some, the large majority of intelligent apiarians

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everywhere concur in assigning to her the character she can
justly claim that of being the common mother of the family.
So long as she is present in the hive, all
the eggs found therein are laid by her. The truth
of this may readily be ascertained by introducing an Italian
queen among common bees. All the young subsequently hatched from
her eggs. Both workers and drones will wear the livery

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of the foreign race, and the old stock will gradually disappear,
none of their own kith and kin being thenceforward produced.
It is thus rendered certain that all the eggs originate
with the queen. But as the cells in which the
drones are bred differ in depth and diameter from those
which cradle the workers and drones are, besides, reared at
certain seasons, only the queen must evidently possess the ability

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to distinguish between the two kinds of cells, and to
lay male or female eggs at pleasure according to the
needs of the colony. That she has. Its ability is
an undeniable fact, however difficult it be to account for
or explain it. It baffled numerous observers till in eighteen
forty five, Zearsen submitted a hypothesis which, though at first derided,
is now acknowledged to be correct and sufficient to explain

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in the simplest manner the mysterious phenomena which had so
long perplexed the shrewdest inquirers. The essential part of this
hypothesis is that in the egg maturing in the ovary
of the queen, sexuality is as yet undetermined, the germ
being simply vitalized. The determination of sex is an after process.
Among insects, the males occupy and altogether suborded in station,

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and for their production fewer or less potential conditions are
required than for the production of females. Hence, in the
case of the bee, nothing more is needed for the
development of a male germ than the same natural or
maternal influence which suffice to vitalize the egg, and this
is rendered efficient by the passage of the egg through
the overduct, Whereas for the development of a female germ,

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the cooperative influence of male sperm is indispensable, and this
is effected during the passage of the egg through the overduct. Accordingly,
drones or males owe their existence exclusively to the queen
or mother. The workers or females, on the other hand,
or theirs immediately to the queen, butmediately also to the
drone by which she was vecundated. The feasibility of all

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this results from the further circumstances that, in the act
of copulation fertilization does not extend to the ovaries of
the queen. For the million of eggs which a fertile
queen may lay during her life are not then at
most more than in cootly present, if indeed they may
be conceived of as rudimentally existing at the time, and
that which does not potentially, perhaps not even rudimentally exist,

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cannot be susceptible of fertilization. The fact, as ascertained by dissection,
is simply thus. In copulation, a small sack or vesicle
called the spermathica, situated on the overduct and connected with it,
becomes charged with the male sperm and constitutes the reservoir
from which the supplies are drawn as needed. Eggs, which
in their passage through the oviduct become impregnated with the

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male sperm as they pass the mouth of the spermatheca,
produce workers, and eggs not so impregnated on their passage
produced drones. This fully accounts for the apparent anomaly that
certain queens which were either restrained from copulation, or having
no spermatheca, were incapable of fecundation, or whose spermatheca has
in time become exhausted. If they do lay eggs, lay

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such only as produced drones. A healthy fecundated queen can
lay both worker and drone eggs at pleasure the mere
exertion or non exertion of muscular action, sufficing to impregnate
the egg during its passage through the overduct, or suffering
it to pass uninfluenced by male sperm. It was objected
to this hypothesis that life cannot originate without sexual concourse. Yet,

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in defiance of all a priori reasoning, the indubitable fact
existed that drones are produced where no such concourse occurred,
and it was a fair inference that whatever does actually
occur must also be possible, whether we can explain it
or not. The objection, however, had to be abandoned as
no longer tenable, when it was ascertained that non sexual
generation unquestionably exists as a regular mode of reproduction in

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various other classes of insects. Professor von Sieboldt has placed
this beyond doubt, and his treatise on parthenogenesis in bees
and butterflies, so that much as they dislike the doctrine
as contravening long cherished notions, the most distinguished physiologists now
concede its truth. To what extent it may prevail among
the lower orders of animals is not yet known, but
it has since been discovered that it obtains also among

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numerous classes of plants. From every female or worker egg,
a perfect female or queen can be reared if it
be developed in a wider and longer vertically placed cell
supplied plentifully with the requisite jelly. It is, not, however,
indispensable that the egg should be originally deposited in such
a cell. The bees can transform a common worker cell
to a royal cell even after the larva therein is

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several days old, by widening that portion not yet occupied
by their larvae, supplying it lavishly with jelly, and then
lengthening it downwards. It is remarkable, too that the queen,
though more fully developed than the worker, yet emerges from
her cell three days sooner. She usually leaves the cell
on the seventeenth day after the egg was laid. If
hatched in what the Germans call a pre constructed cell,

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but she will issue from what they call a post
constructed cell, sometimes as early as on the eleventh, though
more commonly on the twelfth day, after the bees began
to transform the worker cell in which the egg was hatched.
If a populous colony be deprived of its queen, a
swarm with a young queen undoubtedly reared after the deprivation
will issue, occasionally on the thirteenth, but more generally on

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the fourteenth day, counting from the day of removal. The
queen usually leaves her cell on the day before the
swarm issues, and if the swarm comes on the twelfth day,
it is manifest that the bees must have chosen for
the royal embryo a larva six days old. Consequently, the
notion hitherto prevalent that queens can only be reared from
larva not more than three or at most four days old,

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cannot be correct. We may rather assume as truth that
any work or larva is capable of being developed as
a queen, so long as the bees have not begun
to cap the cell which contains it, though commonly younger
larva are selected by them, If just prior to that time,
the cell be widened, lengthened, and supplied with jelly. A
perfect queen can still be reared, for the sexual organs

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are formed latest and are certainly not fully developed to
the larva assumes the nymph state. When selecting a larva
for the purpose of rearing a queen, the choice seems
to be determined by the location of the cell. It
must be so situated that it can be conveniently widened
and extended downwards without involving the destruction of brood, though
when absolutely necessary, broods situated in lower cells will be sacrificed.

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Cells on or near the edges of the comb or
on the margin of interior passages are usually preferred. The
royal cell is used only once for rearing a queen,
the bees subsequently destroying it in whole or in part.
Where a number of such cells have been constructed and
a mature queen emerges from one of them, the rest
are demolished and the embryo queens cast out. If the
colony does not contemplate swarming. In such cases, the doomed

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cells are torn open at the side and the crisp removed.
A mature queen liberates herself by cutting around the base
of the cap with her mandibles, and then emerging through
the circular orifice thus formed at the apex of the cell.
If we would preserve the supernumerary royal cells from destruction,
they must be removed on or before the tenth day,
or we may find on the eleventh that the bees

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have ejected the embryo queens and begun the work of demolition.
After a young queen has been successfully reared, it is
still very uncertain whether she will become perfectly fertile. To
become so, concourse with a drone is indispensably necessary, and
for that purpose she usually leaves the hive on the
third day after emerging from her cell. Most writers are
of the opinion that unless she is fecundated within three

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weeks from the time when she begins to make her excursions,
she cannot produce worker eggs. Recent observations, however, render it
probable that the time is not in all cases so limited.
Though the colony in which she was reared have no drones,
she may still become fertile if drones from other colonies
are flying while she is on the wing. Drones and
queens appear to be attracted to each other by the

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sounds produced by their wings, and the meeting sometimes takes
place at a great distance from the hive to which
the queen belongs. This is evident from a production of
hybrid brood in one instance in an apiary situated three
miles distant from the nearest Italian stock. After a queen
has become fertile, she never leaves her hive, unless when
accompanying a swarm. That this is so may easily be

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ascertained by clipping her wings. When she has begun to lay,
she will thereafter always be found in her own proper hive,
and as such a queen continues fertile during life, it
is certain that she has no occasion to repeat her excursions.
An Italian queen fecundated by a common drone produces during
life either pure Italian or hybrid workers and Italian drones exclusively,

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thus demonstrating that the male eggs are not impregnated. If
from accident or disease, a queen loses her ability to
lay worker eggs, she never recovers it. Queens are sometimes
lost during their exp recursions, being exposed to numerous risks
while absent from their hives. Occasionally, also, they are attacked
and killed by their own bees on their return, having
probably contracted an offensive odor while absent, which causes them

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to mistake her for a stranger. This, however, is an
exceedingly rare occurrence. Xearsen says it has happened only twice
in his knowledge. In his apiary. They are more frequently
killed when entering some other hive by mistake, or on
their return from nuptial excursions. This is apt to happen
when the hives in an apiary are very similar in size,
shape in appearance, or stand close together. A young queen

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may likewise have her wings injured in a conflict with
the arrival, so as to be unable to fly, and
will then be lost when leaving the hives to meet
the drones. In such case, the colony will inevitably be
ruined unless its condition be seasonably discovered and is once supplied.
It is therefore a useful precaution to furnish every colony
which has an unfecndiated queen with a comb containing eggs

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and larvae that they may have within reach the means
of providing a successor if the queen be lost. Such
a colony will exhibit greater industry than one not so supplied,
and the young queen will make her excursion earlier than
she otherwise would, because there is a higher degree of
temperature maintained in the hive, as the queen will always
commence laying in the empty cells of the brood comb
thus inserted, it should be placed in that part of

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the hive where it is desired to have the principal
brooding quarter. The lower and hinder part of the hive
are the preferable place, because the upper and interior portions
will then be reserved for storage room. It is also
advantageous to select a comb having brewed only in the
lower ranges of cells. To ascertain whether a queen which
has not begun to lay has made unsuccessful excursions, catch

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her and allow her to fly ten or twelve feet
in front of her hive, she will immediately return to
it if she was ever out before. An old queen
which made her excursions from some other locality will not
return to the hive, but seek her home elsewhere, which
shows conclusively that queens never leave after having become fertile.
There is a great difference in the degree of fertility

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exhibited by queens, some being much more productive than others.
This results from the more or less complete development of
the body and the condition of the limbs, especially of
the feet. A lame queen is slow, timid, and cautious
in her movements, hesitates to pass from one comb to another,
and reluctantly approaches the edges of the combs. Thus the
cells are irregularly supplied and brooding is repressed. Those queens

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are best which deposit eggs in a regular and uniform manner,
supplying cell after cell without leaving vacancies. The brood will
then mature at nearly the same time, and the queen
can resupply the combs without wasting time in search of
empty cells. Such queens should be preserved as long as
they remain healthy and vigorous, and such as are in
this respect irregular in their habits should be discarded without delay.

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The population of a colony and its productiveness depend greatly
on the fertility of the queen in the habit she
has of dispatching business Methodically fertile as the queens of
common bees are known to be, they are yet greatly
surpassed by their Italian rivals. Of two colonies equally populous
in the spring, the Italian will increase much the more rapidly,
and by its remarkable and indefatigable industry, will also surpass

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it in the accumulation of stores. It is an interesting
question how many eggs a queen may lay in a
given time under favorable circumstances. Zeers And estimates the number
of eggs laid by a vigorous queen during the swarming
season at three thousand per day, if the colony be
populous enough to cover the combs properly. This is certainly
not incredible, as queens have been known to lay from

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two hundred to three hundred in an hour. Kirsten limits
the number at two hundred per day at the most
favorable season, But as eggs are hatched and the brood
fully matured in twenty one days, if this were correct,
there could never be more than forty two hundred cells
occupied by eggs in brood. These could amply be accommodated
in a single comb nine inches square, whereas we not

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unfrequently find a dozen such combs in a hive filled
with brood at one and the same time. On the
whole we may confidently assume that a vigorous queen may
annually lay from two hundred and fifty thousand to three
hundred thousand eggs, or at least one million in the
four years which constitutes the average duration of a queen's life.
Many of these eggs, indeed may not be hatched or

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become fully developed, as the workers are apt to destroy brood,
especially when pasturage fails or the weather proves unfavorable. It
is of the utmost importance in practicab beculture that the
apiarian should possess full and accurate knowledge of the nature
and functions of the queen, as the most interesting in
may of the cell. He should know how she is produced,
how facndated, what are her habits, how she influences and

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is influenced by the workers, and how differently these treat
her before and after she becomes fertile. He who lacks
this knowledge will be liable to make many mistakes, whether
he relies on natural swarming or resource to artificial processes
for the increase of his stock. Thus, for instance, if
a first swarm from one hive and a second swarm
from another happened to issue at the same time, and

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unite he they must know which of the two queens
should be preserved and given to the United stock, if
contest among bees and consequent queenlessness are to be prevented again.
When an artificial colony is started and an unfecndided queen
is given to it, the result will in ninety nine
cases out of one hundred be a failure. The workers
accustomed to the presence of a fertile queen, have little

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regard for and no attachment to, one which does not
lay eggs, and will most generally destroy her if free,
or cripple her if confined in a cage. Bees will
accept an unfrecandided queen only after they have for some
time been conscious of their queenless condition, and then receive
her reluctantly for want of a better. Under such circumstances,
artificial colonies would succeed only if the workers have been

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taken from a colony deprived of its queen and which
has already built royal cells, or from one which sent
forth a swarm a few days before end of section four.