232 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



April 11, 1901. 



in showing me, on his desk, a 

 copy of our French " Lang- 

 stroth Revised," with my 

 father's autograph. 



In one of these little vil- 

 lages, not far from the one in 

 the picture, I met a man who 

 used to drive a wagon for my 

 maternal grandfather, and 

 with whom I used to ride back 

 and forth, on school holidays, 

 when I was 10 or 12 years old. 

 This man, who was then about 

 32 to 35, is a bee-keeper, and 

 as such I certainly have a 

 right to introduce him to my 

 readers. I must, however, own 

 that he has none but straw 

 skeps, and is not very progres- 

 sive. When I went to see him 

 during my last trip, he was 

 out in the harvest field with 

 his hired servant and his wife. 



The servant was wielding the cradle, the woman was rak- 

 ing the wheat, and the old man was binding. He is now 

 upward of 70. I walkt up to him, he straightened himself 

 and stared at me as in wonder whether the strange visitor 

 was not out of his way. I askt, " This is Mr. V.?" 



" Yes, sir ; that is my name." 



"Well, I atn an old acquaintance," said I. 



"Oh, I believe you are mistaken, I never saw 

 before." 



Birthplace of Mr. Clias. Dadant — Vaux-Sous-Aubigny, France. 



you 



(Editio. 



No. 3.-A Review of 



of ISil-llOO.) 



A B C of Bee-Culture." 



BY PROF. A. J. COOK. 

 [Contiaued from page 197.) 



PAGE 277 — A word more about bees dying because they 

 have lost their sting. Several times I have had my 

 T , . „ , students secure bees that have lost their sting, it hav- 



ir arms "^ ' ^°^ "^ ' ''°" ''^ carried me jng been pulled out consequent upon use. These were put 



-nto a cage and fed. Other bees, uninjured, were put into 



in you 



"In my arms? You must have been smaller than you 

 are to-day." 



I gave him my name. The poor old fellow hugged me 

 as if I had still been the little boy he had known, and said, 

 " Is that you, my little fellow ? and did you come all the 

 way back from America to see your old friends ?" 



The harvest was dropt for that day. He took me back 

 to the village and we had a good visit, and you may think 

 how much we had to talk about. We went to look at the 

 bees, but did not stay long with them— we had too many 

 other things to see. 



Around that vicinity a new impetus is given to bee-cul- 

 ture, for they have an important bee-association, which 

 comprises what is called a " Department," a land division 

 covering about the space of one of the_small New-England 

 States. This association is beginning the publication of 

 a monthly bee-paper, " Practical Bee-Culture " (L'Apicul- 

 ture Pratique), which is very nicely gotten up. Whatever 

 they do, the Europeans are not behind in the number of 

 their bee-publications, for. in France alone, there must be 

 some 10 or 12 of them, publisht in diflFerent places. I have 

 nine of them on my desk now, and they are all wide-awake, 

 all bent upon taking the peasants out of the old rut as rap- 

 idly as practicable. 



But in these ancient places we saw some very queer 

 people, with very extraordinary ideas about America. A 

 friend in our city askt me to come with him to pay our 

 respects to a couple of old ladies who had kno%vn my folks 

 long before my birth, and who exprest a wish to see me. 

 They were between 75 and 80 years old. My daughter 

 accompanied me and we were heartily welcomed. But the 

 elder of the two ladies after the usual compliments, raised 

 her spectacles, and looking at my daughter with unfeigned 

 astonishment, said : " Why, your daughter is as white as 

 you are !" She had evidently imagined, that, living in that 

 wild country— the backwoods of western America— I had 

 married the daughter of some Indian sachem, some red- 

 skin Pocahontas. This amused my friend, as you may 

 understand, and he laught heartily, and went to great 

 trouble to explain to these good ladies that America was 

 not peopled with savages only, and that there were a few 

 families of the Caucasian race scattered over that great 

 wilderness. 



Now, Mr. Editor, I will close this too-long narration 

 which has been continued thru 14 numbers. I will ask for- 

 giveness of those bee-keepers who have followed me in the 

 hopes of getting a little bee-culture out of all this talk, for 

 they have been sadly disappointed. I will also express my 

 thanks for the many kind words spoken in private corres- 

 pondence by some who seem to have enjoyed my too-per- 

 sonal recollections of the most agreeable voyage I have 

 ever made. Hancock Co., 111. 



a cage and fed in the same manner. In two or three days 

 all the first bees were dead, and none of the others, nor 

 were the latter dead for days, even weeks. I would not 

 wish to be understood as holding the view that stinging 

 will necessarily kill a bee, as a slight sting would not pull 

 the sting out and might not do any serious injury. But I 

 believe that when the sting is extracted, it will always end 

 in the death of the bee. The time, however, will vary, 

 which argues that in some cases more injury is done to the 

 internal organisms than in others. 



Page 280 — I am a little skeptical as regards the queen 

 leading out the bees. I would not be sure that Mr. Root 

 was right in his conclusion. This may have been a normal 

 swarm and the queen may have followed them to the old 

 hive rather than have been led by them. In all my experi- 

 ence, I have never known a queen to lead a swarm. Her 

 presence, however, will have much to do in forming the 

 cluster, as every apiarist of experience knows. 



Page 357 — I think Mr. Doolittle is a poorer philosopher 

 than he is an apiarist. I should have great respect for any 

 opinion he might give in reference to bee-keeping. I am 

 not at all sure of his dictum with reference to swarming. 

 Surely bees do swarm out of their hive from other cause 

 than the instinct to increase. Indeed, I think the old idea 

 of instinct as being the unvarying and inerrant guide of 

 insects and other of the lower animals in their actions will 

 more and more be modified. I think now that our best nat- 

 uralists are giving it up. Is not all instinct the result of 

 previous acts guided by intelligence ? Acts, repeated 

 many times under volition, result in a habit in which 

 case action becomes almost automatic, hardly guided at all 

 by the will. Action that has long been habitual will after 

 a time become almost unvarying, and becomes, perhaps, 

 wholly automatic. The physiologist would call this reflex 

 action with the gray matter of the spinal cord as a center. 

 With man, and to a less degree with other higher animals, 

 the intelligence often interferes to modify habit and 

 instinct. I believe this is equally true with bees and other 

 lower animals. If I am correct, then swarming will not 

 always follow from the same cause. I think every apiarist 

 will recognize that varying conditions will very greatly 

 modify the habit, or instinct, if j'ou please, of swarming. 



Page 362 — I was surprised to note that Dr. Miller also 

 gives his authority in favor of bees not clustering in case 

 the queen does not go forth with the swarm. I have always 

 been surprised at such assertions. For many years, I prac- 

 ticed clipping queens' wings, which I believe is always 

 wise policy. I have had hundreds of swarms go forth 

 where the queen was dipt, and so of course could not join 

 them, yet I found it very rare that the colonies failed to 

 cluster. In such cases they will always return to the hive, 

 but in my long experience and observation, it will be 



