March 14, 1901. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



165 



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Report of the Proceeding's of the 31st Annual 



Convention of the National Bee-Keepers' 



Association, held at Chieag-o, 111., 



Aug-. 28, 29 and 30, 1900. 



BY DR. A. B. MASON, SEC. 



(Continued from page 133.) 



THE secretary's report. 



During^ the past year no complaints have been made to 

 me by any of our members of any trouble in obtaining pay- 

 ment for consignments of honey, but the case to which 

 reference was made at the Philadelphia convention last 

 year has not yet been adjusted. 



In 1899, Mr. W. C. Gathright, one of our members in 

 New Mexico, made a small shipment of comb honey to Mr. 

 H. P. Robie, of Sioux Falls, S. Dak., and failed to get his 

 pay. I wrote Mr. Robie twice regarding the matter before 

 I got a reply. He promist to pay, but wanted a little time. 

 After waiting a long time I wrote to him twice, but as yet 

 have no reply, and, thinking it advisable to collect the 

 amount if possible, I obtained his commercial rating, which 

 in part is, "He is running a small newspaper called the 

 Successful Farmer. Is of small financial means, and not 



known to have anything in excess of exemptions and 



can not be recommended for general credit dealings." 



I informed Mr. Robie of the objects of our Association, 

 and told him that unless settlement was made bee-keepers 

 would be informed as to his method of doing business, and 

 cautioned regarding their dealings with him. 



This is the only case in which, during the past five 

 j'ears, I have failed to make a settlement in the name of 

 the Association. A. B. M.\soN, Sec. 



Pres. Root — Are there any other matters to come up 

 before we adjourn ? 



Mr. Abbott — The Legislative Committee. 



Pres. Root — I will name on that committee Messrs. R. 

 L. Taylor, O. L. Hershiser and Herman F. Moore. 



Mr. Abbott — Let me say briefly that the purpose of that 

 committee is to look up the laws in the various States re- 

 lating to bee-keeping, and to draft such laws as are thought 

 proper in the interests of bee-keepers. Those laws will 

 then be submitted to the General Manager, and when you 

 want a law past in your legislature you send to the General 

 Manager to get a copy of that law, then each State will have 

 a uniform law, and you will have one drafted ready to push 

 thru. I have a man now in Missouri who says he will put 

 one thru our legislature this winter. 



Pres. Root — Is there anything further that should come 

 before this convention before we finally adjourn ? 



Dr. Mason — Nothing is yet known as to the time or 

 place of our next meeting ; we have been following the 

 Grand Army Encampment ; they have not decided where 

 they will meet : as soon as we have decided you will learn of 

 it in the bee-papers. 



Mr. Root — If there is nothing more, I think we may 

 consider ourselves adjourned, sine die. 



Owing to some misunderstanding no report has been 

 sent to me of the Wednesday evening session by the stenog- 

 rapher, and altho I have twice written about it, and it was 

 promist, it has not been received, and as Mr. J. M. Ran- 

 kin's paper on " Breeding for Longer-Tongued Bees " was 

 read at that session, I have been waiting the arrival of the 

 stenographer's report before inserting his paper in the re- 

 port, but as it seems probable no report will be made, Mr. 

 Rankin's paper will be inserted here. 



BREEDING FOR LONQER-TONQUED BEES. 



The subject which was assigned to me to discuss is one 

 which has but recently been considered by the public as an 

 important one. There are a few men who have been work- 

 ing along this particular line for years, but for some rea.son 

 or other they have neglected to inform the public as to their 

 results. It may be that they were afraid of being laught at 

 for working on such a crazy hobby, or it may be any one of 

 a dozen other reasons ; but the facts of the case are, that no 



attention has been given it by the bee-keepers until the 

 last three months. 



When beginning work of this kind it is always well to 

 stop and consider the probable advantages that would be 

 gained if we were successful in accomplishing it. And also 

 count the cost of bringing about the desired change. Then, 

 by mathematical calculation, as it were, we can determine 

 whether or not it is worthy of our consideration. The one 

 groat advantage in having bees with a tongue 8 or 9 mm. 

 long, would be that they would be able to gather nectar 

 from the flowers whose corolla-tubes are now too deep for 

 them to work on. There would be myriads of plants whose 

 honey deposits would be of easy access to our bees, which 

 at present are entirely useless except to the bumble-bee. 

 The principal one of these would be red clover. It is a 

 known fact that as the country becomes cleared away, and 

 the wild vegetation with the forests give way to the farm- 

 er's corn, potatoes, and hay, that the bee-keeper realizes 

 that it is time to move to better pastures. His crop has be- 

 come too uncertain to be profitable. 



If the honey-bee could reach the nectar in the clover- 

 heads, the bee-keeper would not find it necessary to move. 

 When there is onlj- an ordinary amount of honey in the 

 corolla-tubes, it is of no value to the honey-bee, because it 

 is out of her reach. She is compelled to wait until a moist 

 or favorable time, when the nectar rises to within 3 or 4 

 mm. of the top of the tubes. What a difl^erence it would 

 make in the honey-crop, in these old sections of the country, 

 where clover comprises half of the hay crop, if a bee could 

 work freely on it ! 



When beginning this work I sought the advice of sev- 

 eral scientific men. I received no help, and no encourage- 

 ment. One of the most prominent entomologists in the 

 country said that if I had nothing else to do for the next 

 hundred years, it would be a pleasant way to spend my 

 time in trying to accomplish something which was an im- 

 possibility. Had I been wise I should probably have taken 

 his advice, but I did not. I went to work to contrive some 

 way of measuring the tongues of the bees. After much ex- 

 perimenting I settled on a compound microscope with an 

 mc. scale, and a camera lucida attachment. The bee was 

 killed by chloroform, the tongue removed, placed on a slide, 

 and held in position by a cover-glass. The image of the 

 scale, as well as that of the tongue, was then thrown on the 

 desk beside the instrument. This, however, proved to be a 

 very unsatisfactory method, as it is a diflicult matter, and 

 requires the best of the day to make the adjustments of the 

 microscope. 



The method finally adopted was to place the tongue on 

 a slide which contained the mc. scale, then to hold the 

 tongue in place bj' a cover-glass, and place the whole on 

 the stage of a simple or single lens microscope. By this 

 method it is impossible to get the measurements down finer 

 than .1 mm.; but this is close enough for all practical pur- 

 poses. Many devices have been made to measure the 

 tongue while the bee is still alive. So far as I have found 

 none of these have been practical. The only fact that is of 

 value that I have obtained from them is that during life the 

 tongue can be stretcht to a certain extent, at the pleasure 

 of the bee. Just how much it can be stretcht I am not now 

 prepared to say. When I had found a way of measuring I 

 was glad to know that the tongues of a certain colony were 

 comparatively uniform, that is. that each strain had a par- 

 ticular length of its own. 



After securing the best stock it was possible to find, 

 queens were procured from this stock, and the selections 

 began. The idea that presented itself to me was to cross 

 and recross two good strains, thinking that we would in 

 time produce something much superior to the original 

 strain. It is by this method that all the improvements 

 have been made in live stock. 



It was right here that the difficulty presented itself, 

 namely : How should I control the mating of the queens ? 

 Every method imaginable was tried, with little success. I 

 have dipt the tips of the queens' wings, with the intention 

 of impairing their flight ; have taken off all the way from 

 a hair-breadth to half the wing, but out of 65 queens thus 

 treated only one was mated. 



I then tried the plan of cellaring the nucleus containing 

 the virgin queen, and also a full colony of bees containing 

 drones. Then I releast them towards evening, after the 

 drones ih the yard had ceast to fly. The results were little 

 better than those of the first method. 



The only plan which has given me satisfaction is to 

 keep a colony with drones queenless until toward the close 

 of the season, and after the otlier drones in the yard are 

 killed off. The virgin queens would generally be success- 



