838 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Dec. IS, 1904. 



9 to 13 days, lively, active, young queens. This would indi- 

 cate that the larvse selected may be from 1 to 4 days old. b. 

 On actual observation as a queen-breeder for 5 years, aud 

 bee-crankosity for nearly 30 years. 



E. Whitcomb (Nebr.) — a. They would select the young- 

 est layed egg^s. b. The younger the egg or larva the better 



the queen they are able to rear from it. The value of the 

 queen during her life, and the amount of work she is able 

 to do, is entirely conditional on the time the bees have had 

 to treat the larva. Where 30 queen cells are allowed to 

 mature in a hive one can not expect the result to be as good 

 as where the energies of the colony were given to 4 or S. 



Eyes of Insects— Comb-Honey Falsehoods. 



BY PROF. A. J. COOK. 



I AM asked by " Reader " to give the structure and what 

 is known of the physiology of the eyes of insects. I 

 doubt if the general reader of the American Bee Journal 

 would be interested in a very minute description of these 

 organs, but a general description will surely be read with 

 interest by every studious bee-keeper. 



All imago or mature insects have compound eyes. These 

 •consist of many, often thousands, of simple eyes. Besides 

 these there are often one, two, or three simple eyes. The 

 honey-bee shows three of these ocelli or simple eyes. I do 

 not think that the difference of function of these two kinds 

 of eyes, whether of distance or acuteness, is known. I have 

 reason to think that the bee does not see very well anyway. 

 That is, were the bee a person we would not pronounce it a 

 very close observer. We would not say that it used its eyes 

 to a very good purpose. I certainly have detected bees 

 making some very curious mistakes, where we would think 

 that accurate observation would have brought different 

 results. 



The structure of each simple eye, whether one of the 

 ocelli or the parts of the compound eye, is much the same, 

 and suggests the structure of our own eyes and the eyes of 

 the higher animals. We find the form, however, quite dif- 

 ferent from the eye of vertebrates. Instead of being sub- 

 spherical it is cylindrical. In front we have the window, so 

 to speak, the clear transparent cornea. Some distance 

 back, as we should expect, comes the crystalline lens, and 

 farther back we find, as we should also expect, the retina. 

 The humors also remind us of the same in the eyes of the 

 higher animals. As is general in the eyes of invertebrate 

 animals, we find the retina quite different from the same in 

 the vertebrate eye. True, we find something like the rods 

 and cones, but they point forward instead of back, and so 

 the image is front instead of back. 



The most interesting thing is to find how these many 

 small eyes act. We know, positively, that our eyes act as 

 one, and the loss of one does not seriously impair vision, 

 except to make it more diflBcult perhaps to determine per- 

 spective. It seems now pretty well established that the 

 eyes of insects, that is, the separate eyes of the compound 

 eyes, act each separately, each seeing a part of the object, 

 and thus the object may be said to form a mosaic, or, to put 

 it differently, each little eye or facet sees its own part of 

 the object. Each is guarded by a sort of a diaphragm so 

 that it images only its own part of the thing mirrored in the 

 eye. We see, then, that if this view is the correct one, the 

 destruction of any of these simple eyes or facets would by 

 just so much impair the vision, or cut off so much of the ob- 

 ject looked at. Each of the simple eyes sees part of the ob- 

 ject, and that is imaged in none of the other facets. 



That the compound eyes are used for long range, and 

 the ocelli for near vision, or vice versa, is, I think, more 

 than we surely know. I think that the compound eyes are 

 the more important, as they are always present, while the 

 ocelli are frequently wanting altogether. The greater 

 development of the compound eyes would lead to the same 

 conclusion. 



SO-CALLED MANUFACTURED COMB HONEY. 



I was pleased at the emphatic way in which the Na- 

 tional convention took up the matter of the oft-repeated 

 falsehoods that comb honey may be, and is often, a fraud 

 or artificial make-up. The fact that honey is a superb food 

 element, one of the very safest sugars, should make us all 



jealous of its good name. The truth that it can not be fab- 

 ricated by any but the bees should be known by all. 



I have a suggestion to make, and that is, that we all 

 write the truth of this matter for our local and State papers, 

 so that the right of it shall be more widely known. I 

 propose to do this at once. Of course, these articles will be 

 more or less widely copied, and so the truth will be pretty 

 well spread, and the editor that is so far behind as to rehash 

 the nonsense will become as he ought to, a laughing stock. 



Let us scatter this important truth broadcast, in the in- 

 terest not only of the bee-keeper, but of the consumer of 

 honey. Every one ought to know that when he buys comb 

 honey he is surely getting a pure and most wholesome 

 article of food. Eos Angeles Co., Calif. 



A Report for the Season of 1904. 



BY WM. STOLLEY. 



ANOTHER summer has passed, and on this day (Nov. 

 10) the earth is covered with a 6-inch layer of the 

 " iDeautiful white snow " for the first time in the ap- 

 proaching winter. 



I finished the winter packing of my bees Nov. 7, and 

 everything in my little apiary of 42 colonies is in tip-top 

 shape now. 



Each colony has from 30 to 40 pounds of winter stores 

 in double-walled hives, and they will now repose undis- 

 turbed until the soft zephyrs of spring will recall them to 

 renewed activity. Generally, we have many fine days dur- 

 ing the winter in Nebraska, so the bees can have cleansing 

 flights, but it has happened that my bees had no flights for 

 105 days ; therefore I use all possible precautions to prepare 

 them always for the worst that may happen. 



I started in last spring with 40 colonies, spring count, 

 and obtained from 35 colonies 3130 pounds of extracted 

 honey, and from S colonies in New Heddon hives, 354 sec- 

 tions of nice comb honey ; and, besides, 350 pounds of honey 

 set aside in brood-combs for feeding next spring. 



Thus I got 3834 pounds of honey, of which 3484 are for 

 the market except whatever may be used for home con- 

 sumption. 



From cappings I got 54 pounds of nice wax. My aim 

 is to prevent increase as much as possible, and although I 

 had IS swarms issue from the 40 colonies, I have for winter, 

 only 42 colonies. All queens in the lower tier of my bee- 

 shed I keep clipped, but in the upper tier a few colonies 

 were allowed to have queens undipped. 



HIVING BEES WITH A SHOT-GUN. 



Now it happened that three swarms issued with queens 

 undipped, and these swarms proved to be high flyers, and 

 clustered in soft maple trees, about SO feet high. Being 73 

 years old, I did not relish the idea of climbing the trees 

 after them, but instead concluded to apply the " shot-gun 

 remedy ". 



They were fine swarms, with the best of queens, and, 

 as it happened, had clustered on twigs about one inch in 

 diameter. My Winchester repeater, loaded with No. 8 shot, 

 worked admirably, and brought down the clusters of bees 

 in every instance, right in front of hives properly adjusted. 

 Of course, the twig on which the bees .luster has to be shot 

 off if possible a foot, or two feet, above the cluster of bees. 

 It worked well. 



In thus hiving bees by means of a shot-gun, proper 

 caution should be taken to place the hive at the exact place, 

 so that the falling cluster of bees will laud in front of and 



