An interesting note about queenlessness and orientation:

The bees are kept in cylinders in Cyprus, in Syria in long boxes, also in water-jugs and baskets plastered with mud. The lid at the large end of the cylinder is removed, the bees smoked to the other end, and about half the combs in the cylinder are cut away, the other half being left for the bees. The cylinders are placed in huge piles, and the bees enter at small oles in the front, the entrances not being a foot apart. I think a point in favor of bee houses can be brought forward, or, rather, one of their supposed disadvantages rebutted. 

I bought between 50 and 60 lots, and in no case was a colony queenless. The great disadvantage of a bee house is supposed to arise from the queen mistaking the entrance. If the Eastern queens can find their entrances thus readily in a pile of fifty to a hundred hives, they must either have better discernment (a point in their favor) than English queens, or this objection to bee houses is unfounded. ... The Cyprians and Syrians are, in my opinion, almost identical. They vary a little in color, the bees from the north of Cyprus being very dark.

T. B. BLOW. A Bee-Keeper's Experience in the East.
THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL.  May 24, 1882. 

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