EXPERIMENT STATION BULLETINS. 



303 



Weight of bees, Aug. 11 



Total weight, Aug. 11, 7 p. m.. 



" 22,7 a.m.. 



Gain in weight in ten days 



Total feed given. 



Honey extracted Aug. 22. 

 Loss in honey fed 



Gain in weight in ten days. 



Wax secreted by No. 1 



Pollen in combs at close. .. 



Total removed Aug. 22... 

 Error in work due to scales . 



Col. No. 1. 



35 

 46 

 11 



11% oz, 



10% 



6Vi 



21 



9 

 12 



11 



No. 2. 



43 

 62 

 19 



VA 



18 

 1 



8% 



21 



16V4 



4 l / 2 



19 



No. 3. 



mi 



61'/ 2 



mi 



4* 



22 

 1M 



5Ki 



21 



18 

 3 



209>i 



* Brood and pollen. 



7J£ lbs. honey consumed in secreting 11% oz. wax. 



This experiment seems to prove that it takes eleven pounds of honey 

 to secrete one pound of wax. Huber decided as the result of careful 

 experimentation, upon twenty pounds as the amount, while Viallon and 

 Hasty concluded that the amount was less than we have found in the 

 above. Of course, in such experiments, there will be errors, as the col- 

 ony is not kept in a normal condition. No brood-rearing can be allowed 

 and so a virgin queen must be given to the colony. Whether the bees 

 work with less vigor physically or physiologically when a laying queen 

 is replaced by a virgin, I can not say. We thought over the experiment 

 a long time and concluded on the above as the nearest approach to the 

 normal of any plan we could decide upon. The results from colony 

 number three, which was normal, show that the error was not great. 

 A repetition will make the conclusion more surely correct. 



DO WORKER BEES FEED THE DRONES? 



Several times in the past we have tried experiments to determine 

 whether the worker bees fed the drones, as they do the queen and 

 larvae, the albuminous portion of their food. We know that drones are 

 great honey consumers. It is reasonable to suppose that they are equally 

 great consumers of the albuminous food or bee-bread. There is little 

 or no doubt that the upper head glands of the younger worker bees 

 secrete the ferment that digests the pollen. These glands are large and 

 turgid in the young or nurse bees; shrunken and inactive in old worker 

 bees, and absent in the drones and queens. From anatomy, then, we 

 would reason that the queen, drones, and older workers, the bees that do 

 the outside work, as well as the larva?, are fed the digested pollen, which 

 is rich nitrogenous food. If this is true, and there can be no longer 

 any doubt, then we have double reason to reduce the number of drones 

 in the apiary, to save honey and pollen and also the energy of the 

 nurse bees. To prove this point, we repeated the previous experiments of 

 caging drones in the hive behind a single wire gauze, a double wire 

 gauze, the space between being more than .26 of an inch, which is the 

 maximum length of a worker's tongue, and a perforated zinc cage. 

 Honey was placed in each cage, in such a way as not to daub any bees. 

 In the first kind of cage the bees could reach the drones through the 



