180 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



March 21, 1901. 



interested in some paffH( or nun-patent <ir worthless liive or JixtHres. and 

 are broiling over with wrath against me, because the Controllable 

 Hive is steadily gaining in the estimation of all honest bee-keepers, 

 and the demand lor the thousand patent and non-patent worthless hives 

 is steadily on the decrease. A word to the wise is sufficient. 



We think further comment is hardly necessary, as no reader of 

 any of the present-day bee-papers would be caught by the successor 

 of the fraudulent " Lizzie." It is pretty safe to put it down as a rule 

 that when too much is claimed for a particular hive— especially if the 

 beautiful word ■' controllable " is emphasized rather strongly— the 

 whole outfit is a pretty good thing to let alone. 



I * The Weekly Budget. « l 



Hon. Eugene Secor helpt to entertain the Upper Des Moines 

 Editorial Association, Feb. 15th, at Forest City, Iowa — his home town. 

 From the local newspaper reports they had a jolly time. Mr. Secor 

 gave a reply to a toast, and of course did it in rhyme, something after 

 the Will Carleton style. If it weren't so long we would reprint it. and 

 to make extracts from it would spoil it. Mr. Secor knows how to en- 

 tertain, and also how to ".lolly "em up ■' with his poetical pen. 

 « ♦ « » ♦ 



Mr. D. H. Metcalf, of Calhoun Co., Mich., writes us that in his 

 article on page 158 we made him say that he " hunts bees for a living." 

 This must be quite an error, as he says that every pound of honey he 

 gets out of a bee-tree costs him ?1.00 ! The fact is, he puts In his 

 leisure time and vacations in hunting bees. He says, however, that 

 we may possibly be correct, after all, as to his hunting bees for a liv- 

 ing, as he believes it has prolonged his life, every bee-hunt giving him 

 renewed health and strength. 



AxsiVERSARiES AND BIRTHDAYS. — Recently we received the fol- 

 lowing from a reader who signs himself " Old Fogy :" 



Mr. Editor: — Pve become used to your new-fangled way of 

 spelling, and rather like it, but I don't know about your reform in the 

 meaninxj oi words.. Do Rev. A. B. Mettler and you (page 13'2 J mean 

 we shall pay no attention whatever to the dictionary, and just go by 

 your say so ? He was born Feb. 1, 1844, and you say each Feb. 1st 

 since then was an anniversary. The dictionary says such an anniver- 

 sary is a birthday, and according to that he has had a lot of birthdays, 

 and the first dayof next February will also be his birthday whether he 

 is then alive or not. Now, what do you say ? Shall we go by the 

 dictionary or take the Mettler-York plan ; Old Fogy. 



Seeing this is mostly Mr, Mettler's " funeral " — or birthday — we'll 

 let him wiggle out first, 



Mr, W, a. Fryal, of Alameda Co., Calif., wrote us as follows, 

 March 10th : 



My Dear Mr. York ; — You have no doubt been fully informed 

 about the splendid rainfalls we have had in this [central] part of the 

 State, They have been abundant. For about two weeks up to last 

 night, the weather was fine. At the latter time, without any warning 

 to mention, rain set in again and fell copiously thru the night and a 

 portion of the day. The prosi)ects are good for still more. 



There is already an abundant supply of flowers. In some places 

 the hills and the fields in the lowlands are yellow with honey-produc- 

 ing flowers. This is saying nothing of countless other flowers that are 

 in bloom, which includes the Australian blue-gum, acacias, willows, 

 alfiUaree, etc. 



Out by the side of the Pacific Ocean, whither I go when I have tlie 

 time (an electric car line a step from in front of our oflice runs direct 

 to Old Pacific in about 40 minutes^, and on the very edge of the ocean 

 1 find an abundance of honey -secreting flowers. Over home, where I 

 was a week ago, 1 found my bees working with a will. Some colonies 

 were on the point of swarming. As the apiary had not the atten- 

 tion last year that I used to give it when living on the old homestead, 

 I found that some of the colonies had gone the way that bees are apt 

 to go when not properly lookt after. It may be possible that I may 

 soon be able to give them some attention again, I like to look after 

 them. ■"•'• -^- PRtal, 



Please send us Names of Bee-Keepers who do not now 



g-et the American Bee Journal, and we will send them sam- 

 ple copies. Then you can very likely afterward get their 

 subscriptions, for which work we offer valuable premiums 

 in nearl)' every number of this journal. You can aid much 

 by sending in the names and addresses when writing us on 

 other matters. 



\ Contributed Articles. \ 



No. 1.— Drone-Bees and Their Utility. 



Can We, and Shall We, Control Their Pro- 

 duction ? 



BY C. I'. DADANT. 



THE discussion on the utility of the drones in the hive 

 under domestication, which was considered at length 

 at the Paris Congress, has led to the expression of 

 opinions from several bee-keepers in different publications 

 on this subject, and I have concluded to bring the matter 

 before the readers of the American Bee Journal with the 

 hope that it mav' lead to further investigations and experi- 

 ments. It is my intention, if permitted, to explain the sub- 

 ject at length, so that even beginners may see and under- 

 stand the importance of the proposition set forth. So I 

 will expect to develop the matter in two or more articles. 



That the drone is an idler we all know, even those who 

 have but a very faint knowledge of his physiology, for the 

 name " drone " is proverbial as designating a useless being. 

 As early as the beginning of the seventeenth century, 

 Butler, (a writer on agriculture and bees), described the 

 male bee as " a gross, stingless bee, that spendeth liis time 



in gluttony and idleness worketh not at all, either at 



home or abroad, and yet spendeth as much as two laborers." 

 We all know that the drone flies out only wlien the sun is 

 high and the weather warm ; that he does not go out in 

 search of honey, never goes into a blossom, but only roams 

 about for pleasure, and always comes home to eat. We also 

 know that he occupies a great deal more room in the hive 

 than his sister, the worker-bee, for the cells in which the 

 drones hatch measure four to the inch, while the worker- 

 cells measure five to the inch. Thus one square inch of 

 worker-comb can hatch between 53 and 55 workers, while a 

 square inch of drone-comb can contain onlj- some 36drones. 

 Altho Butler said that they eat as much as two of the 

 workers, it is not likely that they spend so much, but it is 

 probable that it costs as much food to rear and hatch the 

 drones in a square foot of comb as it costs to hatch the 

 workers that occupj' the same space. This looks to me 

 quite a reasonable presumption, and in the absence of 

 actual evidence we can take it for granted that 5,000 drones 

 cost as much food to become perfect insects as 7,500 work- 

 ers would cost. 



In his physiology the drone shows the purpose for 

 which he is made, by the differences existing between him 

 and the other inhabitants of the hive. Aside from the dif- 

 ference in the sexual organs, the drone shows a much 

 greater power of vision by the extraordinary number of 

 facets in his compound eyes, numbering, according to 

 Cheshire, as many as 13,000 on each side of the head, while the 

 facets of the composite eye of the worker-bee number only 

 abont 6,300. It is evident that the purpose of this extraor- 

 dinary vision is for the finding of the young queen while 

 on the wing, since it is of great importance that she should 

 be enabled to meet with a drone at her first flight, for the 

 life of the colonj' usually depends upon her successful 

 mating and prompt return. It is certainly also for this 

 reason that so many drones are reared in the hives during 

 the swarming season. If only half a dozen or so of drones 

 were reared, it would be very difficult for the queen to find 

 one of them, and several repeated flights for this purpose 

 would endanger her life the more. But the drone plainly 

 shows that he was not born for work, by the shape of his 

 legs, which have none of the pollen-baskets that serve the 

 worker-bee in bringing a load home, and by the shortness 

 of his tongue. His proboscis is not made to lap honey out 

 of the blossoms, but only to suck it out of the store-cell, so 

 the poor fellow is surely not to blame if he is lazy and 

 worthless. He only follows his destiny. But his faculty 

 for flight is remarkable, since altho his bulk is only one 

 half more than that of the worker, his wing-area is to that 

 of the worker as nine is to five. This is another instance 

 of his adaptability to the purpose of his existence. The 

 mating with the queen taking place only in full flight, it is 

 necessary that he should be able to overtake her, and the 

 natural law of intermixture between different families 



