240 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 



not now remember of having one queen-cell destroy- 

 ed in those colonies. Did you ever notice this pe- 

 culiarity in the Holy-Land bees? 



TWO NUCLEI IN ONE HIVE. 



There is one more ej^perimcnt 1 tried last summer 

 that proved successful, that does not agree with 

 other authority. I put a division-board iiito a hive, 

 making two apartments, but leaving it so that bees 

 could pass from one to the other. 1 then put a nu- 

 cleus colony into each depaitment, and gave each 

 one a queen-cell. Both queens hntched, and one 

 queen commenced laying before the other one did. 

 I took her out and gave them a queen-cell again; 

 after taking her out, the most of the bees went over 

 in the other department, where the other queen was; 

 but there would enough bees stay to take care of 

 the brood and queen-cell; but afterthe secondqaeen 

 commenced laying, and was removed and given a 

 queen-cell again, the bees would go back again; or, 

 to make a long story short, in whichever depart- 

 ment there would be a queen, especially a laying 

 queen, there is where the most of the bees would 

 be. 1 reared queens in that hive all summer, and do 

 not think I had one queen-cell destroyed, or one 

 queen killed. I. K. Good. 



Nappanee, Ind., Feb. 6, 188.2. 



I know the Holy-Lauds and Cyprians be- 

 have differently, but I have never tried 

 wintering a queenless stock of either. We 

 have seldom had trouble in giving a colony 

 with fertile workers either a queen or queen- 

 cell. I have had two nuclei in one hive, ex- 

 actly as you describe, with no division- 

 board at all. Each one occupied three 

 combs, and this left a space between them 

 equal to four combs. They did very well 

 until the honey-flow ceased, and then the 

 robbers made trouble. Brood was kept in 

 each side, of course, and they built queen- 

 cells, and had the queens fertilized, both 

 using one common entrance. Of course, 

 the entrance was the whole width of the 

 hive. Some strains of bees will mix thus 

 peaceably, while others will not. If we could 

 keep up one uninterrupted flow of honey, 

 the season through, it would be quite pos- 

 sible to rear queens in this way. Perhaps 

 the 100-acre honey-farm may do it, when 

 worked up to perfection. 



^.«.^ 



PAKTHENO - GENESIS. 



THE DZIERZON THEORY, AND QUEEN-BREEDING. 



M PRIL Gleanings contains a couple of articles 

 J^^_ of more than ordinary significance in their 



' bearing on the development and perpetuation 



of the " coming bee.** Partheno-genesis, literally, 

 beginning f rom a virgin, is an accepted fact, not on- 

 ly among intelligent bee-keepers, but among scien- 

 tiflc entomologists. It is not only characteristic of 

 the hooey-bee, but of several other tribes of insects, 

 and seems to be a provision of nature against their 

 utter e'xtinction. The study of it may well prompt 

 the exclamation, "Great and marvelous are thy 

 works. Lord God almighty." It was long ago ob- 

 served, " An undevout astronomer is mad,'* and the 

 same may be said of an undevout bee-keeper. No- 

 where in nature have I seen such manifest traces 

 of a divine hand, or felt such an impulse to adore 



the Infinite Wisdom, as in the wonderful economy 

 of the bee-hive. 



The Dzierzon theory, as I understand it, is distinct 

 from that of partheno-genesis, though to a certain 

 extent dependent on it. Parthcno genesis is the 

 ability o[ a virgin queen to produce, unaided by the 

 male, a drone progeny capable of begettiug worker 

 bees. Tho Dzierzon theory maint«iusthat the drone 

 progeny of a queen conforms perfect y to the nature 

 of the mother, even after her impregnation by a 

 male belonging to another race of bees. 



Mr. J. E. Pond, Jr., in an artie'e on p. 185 of April 

 Gleanings, calls this theory in question, and, I 

 think, with good reason. In another article, p. 187 

 of the same number, he says it is not the Dzierzon 

 theory he doubts, but a deduction from it. Is he 

 not comfounding partheno-genesis with the Dzier- 

 zon theory? What he questions is not, it seems to 

 me, a deduction from the Dzierzon theory, but the 

 theory itself, the essenceof which, I take it, is that 

 drone nature follows, with absolute identity, that of 

 the queen mother. 



The question, whether this is really so, is one of great 

 importance to bee-keepers, and I think Mr. Pond's 

 arguments from analogy go a long way toward dis- 

 proving it. There is no denying the facts he cites 

 from other departments of animated nature. Suc- 

 cessive colts bear the impress of the horse that first 

 impregnated a mare. Physiologists have shown that 

 this law operates even in regard to the human race. 

 If we can trace it all the way down from man to the 

 poultry tribes, is it not reasonable to suppose that 

 it extends to bees? It will perhaps be said, that par- 

 theno-genesis is peculiar to the bees, and may 

 counteract the law under consideration. It may, 

 and then again /nay not. '• Who shall decide when 

 doctors disagree?" The prf p )tency of a stallion or 

 bull is limited to one pregnancy, yet it affects the 

 nature of the female for a lo:.g time, and, perhaps, 

 ever afterward. The prepotency of a drone lasts 

 during the lifetime of a queen, as the result of a 

 single impregnati(jn. Might we not expect that so 

 powerful and lasting an influence would affect the 

 whole nature of the queen to a much greater extent? 

 All this, I know, is reasoning from analogy, but 

 that is good reasoning, and amounts at least to high 

 probability. It is strengthened by the fact, that in 

 every neighloraood where there are black bees, 

 there is a constant tendency to admixture of blood, 

 rendering frequent purchases of queens necessary 

 from large apiaries, in which the Italians are kept 

 in such numbers as to heighten the probability of 

 pure mating. 



If we are ever to have a fixed strain of bees that 

 shall, with absolute certainty, possess the qualities 

 we want to perpetuate iri our honey-gatherers, we 

 must in some way control fertilization. It is thus 

 that the qualities have become fixed in the various 

 breeds of horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, and fowls. 

 Until we find some way of securing fertilization of 

 queens by particular drones, we can not breed 

 "points," except bj' the isolation of selected colo- 

 nies. 



now FAR BEES C VN FLY. 



It is here that the other h ghly significant article 

 in April Gleanings comes in. I refer to that by 

 Mr. Marcb, p 181. You call it a " clincher this time." 

 I think it is. The whole bee-keeping fraternity owe 

 Mr. M. thanks for the persistent investigation he 

 made, and for the interesting account he has given 



