The Italian Alp-bee; or, The gold mine of husbandry: short and practical instructions to breed genuine prolific Italian queens; to multiply them by hundreds in a few months and how to change German hives into Italian — John Shaqi
The Italian Alp-bee; or, The gold mine of husbandry: short and practical instructions to breed genuine prolific Italian queens; to multiply them by hundreds in a few months and how to change German hives into ItalianHermann, H. C. (Heinrich C.)
Science
The Italian Alp-bee; or, The gold mine of husbandry: short and practical instructions to breed genuine prolific Italian queens; to multiply them by hundreds in a few months and how to change German hives into Italian
Hermann, H. C. (Heinrich C.)
Bee culture; Bees
The queen lays male and female eggs. The male-eggs she lays in
the drone cells, and the female-eggs in the small cells of the
working-bees. The queen requires, reckoning from the egg to her
creeping out ten to seventeen days, according to the weather.
§ 3.
THE WORKING-BEES.
The working-bees originate out of the female-eggs. There are in a hive
from 6000 to 70,000. They require from the egg to maturity eighteen to
twenty-one days, they then remain in the hive for ten or fourteen days
before they fly out.
The bees are able to bring up a queen out of every working-bee's eggs,
and also from the grub if it is not above three days old. In that case
they elongate and increase the width of the cell in the shape of an
acorn, and give more feeding-mucilage than they are in the habit of
giving to the working-bee.
To insure success in the cultivation it requires dexterity, and study
of the nature of bees. The queen requires from the egg ten to seventeen
days to her full development, when she will fly out about from one to
three days, after her creeping out of the egg, to be impregnated, and
then after the lapse of six or ten days more, she commences to lay
eggs. Then she will not fly out again unless with a swarm. The bees
always prepare several queen-cells at one time, which, however, do not
mature at the same moment. The queen is only once impregnated during
the whole course of her life which lasts from about three to five years.
§ 4.
THE DRONES
These are males. There are about 2,000 in a hive, and then only in
summer, for, as soon as the swarming and honey-carrying-time is over,
they are turned out as useless eaters. They serve only to impregnate
the queen. The drones require from the egg to maturity, twenty-one to
twenty-four days.
§ 5.
THE WORKING-BEES.
The working-bees mate probably with the drones, and are, therefore,
capable of laying eggs, but which produce only drones; and, generally,
a hive in which the working-bees commence laying eggs, is going to
destruction. It can soon be observed, as they lay often two, three, to
twenty eggs, without order, in one cell. In such a hive there is no
longer a queen, and it is best to separate it at once or to unite it
with a healthy hive, for such demoralised people generally kill a newly
added queen. Those, who dispute the mating of the working-bees with the
drones are in error. Only place young bees without a queen in a place
distant from any drones, and no eggs are ever discovered; but, as soon
as they are brought in the neighbourhood of drones, and they have no
queens, they lay drone-egg.
§ 6.
BREEDING OF THE QUEEN.
For that purpose choose the largest hive, for it is an old saying,
that "a large cow will produce a large calf."--From so fine a hive you
certainly have fine young ones.
As it is known that out of every working-bee-egg the bees can breed a
queen, and that they often prepare as many as from six to thirty at the
same time, advantage must be taken of that fact.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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