I
Busy Bees
Ur. F. R. Jordan lin.s more Ilian
200,000.000 working for him.
They have I heir method of
operation systematized to a
high degree and produce
honey in large c|uanlities.
HOW doth the busy little hoc
improve each shining hour?”
We asked that question—
although not exactly in those words
— of Mr. F. R. Jordan, who lives in
the Castle Hnvne section of Now
Hanover County and who enjoys the
distinction of being the biggest bee-
grower in North Carolina.
Mr. Jordan enjoys another distinc¬
tion: he’s the biggest employer of
labor in the state. He lias one thou¬
sand colonies of bee*. At the heicht
of the season there are around 200,000
bees in each colony. That makes a
total of 200,000,000 boos that work
for Mr. Jordan every year,
lie told us a lot about bees.
In driving through the state, you
undoubtedly have seen bee-boxes here
and there. As a rule they're about two
feet square and two feet deep. In
each box are a dozen or so trays on
which the bees work, raising their
oung and changing nectar into
one.v. Soon as they’ve completed work
on these trays, the trays are taken
out and fresh one*, with artificial
honeycomb foundations, arc substi¬
tuted.
Three Classifications
We don’t know whether you know
it or not, but there are three classifi¬
cations of bees in each hive. In the
first place, there's the Queen bee. who
U also the king bee of the hive. She's
the big boss: somewhat larger than
the other bees and able to kill off
any of them who make her mad for
some reason or other. In the second
place, there are the workers. They're
the little chaps who leave home in the
morning and go out and gather nec¬
tar. All of them are females. In the
third place, there are the drones. All
they do is hang around the house
and help raise families. All of them
are male.
Now that we've got the population
of each hive straight, let’s watch them
as they go through a day’s work.
Shortly after daybreak the whistle
sounds and the Queen tells the work¬
er* that it’s time to get up and get
going. Maybe it isn't exactly a whis¬
tle, but they’re bound to have some
kind of a system for waking up all of
the 200,000 bees in each hive. Any¬
way, the workers kiss their hubbies
good-bye (each hubby has hundreds
of wives) and they sail forth into the
world. As a general thing, bees don’t
get further than
и
couple of miles
away from home. You see, they enn’t
stand too much flying, and if they try
to go long distanee* their wings wear
out on them.
Pumping Nectar
A bee's tongue works like a pump.
She settles herself on a flower, stick*
out her tongue and sucks up the nee-
tar into what is known as a nectar
sack. Soon as she get* this sack filled,
she heads for home. Getting inside the
hive, she “oops” the neotar out of the
sack and it is placed in the little cells
on the honeycomb.
We asked Mr. Jordan if a bee was
satisfied with making only one round
trip a day, but be said lie didn’t know.
“Only way you could tell that,” he
informed us, “would bo to mark one
of the bees and then sit down all day
and watch whether she
еотез
back
home and goes out again. Up to now,
I’ve always been too busy to do that.”
Suppose you were a stray bee and
saw a hive and decided to go in and
visit a while. . . . Don’t think for a
moment that you could do it. At the
front door of each hive are placed a
number of bees who act as guards.
When some of the l»ees from that par¬
ticular hive return from their journey
among the flowers, tho guards ask
them for the countersign or something.
If the bees can't givo it, the guards
jump on them and beat them to death.
Each bee, when he leaves home in
the morning, has to return to the same
hi vo when he comes back in the eve¬
ning. If he doesn’t, it's just naturally
too had.
Of course the whole business of go¬
ing out and getting nectar and then
converting it into honey is for the pur¬
pose of storing up food for themselves.
But just as soon as they fill a comb
The reason Mr. Jordan’s face looks
slightly blurred is because he is wear¬
ing a veil for protection. Those are
bees that you see on the tray which
he is holding.
with honey, the bec-kee|*er comes along
and swipes it all. Seems like a dirty
trick to play on the bees. No wonder
they get mad and sit down on you so
ha rd.
The Queen bee is the official egg-
layer of the hive. A good Queen, if
she ’tends to her knitting, can lay
3,000 eggs a day. The eggs are sealed
in the comb for eight days and merge
as larvae. It takes a working We 21
days to develop from that point on :
1514
'1ПУ-4
for a queen, and 2-1 days for
a drone — the lazy, good-for-nothing
things! The Wes get most of their
nectar during April, May and June.
The height of the season last*
about six weeks, but even at this time
of the year, some of the workers leave
the hives every day and forage around
to see what they can find.
A worker lasts only one season. Her
wings go bad on her and she can't fly
any more. It’s a condition somewhat
similar to flat-feet in humans. Any
( Continued on page thirty)
