SAGACITY OF A QUEEN-BEE.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR...1 SIR,—As you sometimes insert incidents illustrative of natural history, the following may be interesting to some of your readers :—About three weeks ago I had a small cast of bees. Not knowing the hive from which they had come, and wishing them to find their own way back, I proceeded to adopt the usual method of capturing the queen. After throwing the bees on to the sheet three times, I succeeded in finding her and securing her between a wine-glass and a flat plate of glass. I liberated one by one the few workers I had inclosed with her. I then took her to my study, intending to destroy her with chloroform. However, in slipping the saturated tuft of cotton-wool under the glass, she was too sharp for me, darted out, and, making straight for the open window, escaped. My study is in the front of the vicarage, and the swarm were in the kitchen-garden at the back. I at once ran to them to see if she had returned straight, but found them in the state of wild confusion which indicates absence of a queen. After watching them for some time, I left them. Returning in about an hour, I found them still rushing about. I went to look at something else in the garden, and returned in about five minutes to find the aspect of affairs quite altered. The c,onfusioa. had ceased, and they presented every appearance of a newly hived swarm, some forming a small cluster in the place where they had originally swarmed (a beanstalk), and others moving calmly in and out of the hive. Next morning I found the hive empty and the cluster fully formed. Once more I hived them, and they are now going on steadily with every appearance of having a queen among them, though I have not thought well again to disturb them in search of her. Had she on escaping risen straight up so as to surmount the roof and beech-hedge interposed between her and the back garden, she would have been about eighty yards from the swarm. She took about an hour and a half to find them. But she did find them at last. I shall not lengthen my already too long communication by mentioning the several interesting conclusions to which the facts point.—I am, Sir, &c.,
USHER B. MILES.
Askham Richard Vicarage, York, July 30th.
Previous page
