84 



GLEANINGIN BEESCULTURE. 



Feb. 1. 



the tent-living Arabs, the more you will find 

 that the description of the red Indian agrees 

 with the Arab or Bedouin, except that a real 

 Bedouin will never work in towns or villages. 

 If he does any thing at all, it is only in his 

 tribe. The Bedouins, as a nonaadic race, never 

 keep bees, though they are very fond of honey 

 and sweets. 



What were the results of your slumgum ex- 

 periments, p. 771. Oct. l.V? I came here with 58 

 lbs. of cappings from extracted honey. These 

 cappings were dripping with honey. I had no 

 time to wait till all the honey had dripped out, 

 so I proceeded to put them at once into two 

 small solar wax-extractors. We had none of 

 the huge California description. Our results 

 were as follows: 14}.^ lbs. of pure yellow wax; 

 24 lbs. of brown honey (by the sun); 11 lbs. of 

 residue; S}4 lbs. had evaporated. Total, .58 lbs. 



We use the residue for the fire. It gives con- 

 siderable heat, and goes a long way. I tried a 

 smaller lot of cappings, which were put on a 

 sieve; and after several days, when all honey 

 that could possibly get out had run off, I had 1 

 kilogram (38H' ounces) of cappings, and the re- 

 sults were: 9% oz. of pure yellow wax; 4J oz. of 

 brown honey; 12)o oz. of residue; the rest had 

 evaporated. 



A North-African drone was enjoying sun- 

 shine at about 11 o'clock, marking 64K° Fah- 

 renheit in the sun, Dec. 12. in my Nice apiary. 

 Ph. J. Baldenspekger. 



Nice, France, Dec, 1892. 



[We were not aware that any one claimed 

 that drones would fly 7 miles to meet queens. 

 If there is such a one. let him speak up. We 

 have recorded instances of where worker- bees 

 have flown 7 miles to an island in search of 

 honey. We have had reports also of how bees 

 were crossed with other bees 7 miles away. Or 

 perhaps it was this way: That it was not safe 

 to count always on pure races of bees when 

 another and a distinct race was within six or 

 seven miles. Perhaps Doolittle can help us. 

 The results of our slumgum experiments were 

 given on page 884 of our Dec. 1 number.] 



HEREDITY. 



IS IT THROUGH THE QUESIN OR THE WORKERS? 



The question of heredity is an important one; 

 and of late, in more than one quarter has there 

 been some discussion as to traits inherited by 

 bees. The matter is practical and important, 

 else I would not touch it, for I am not capable 

 of dealing with it as a scientist; but if I go 

 astray I have little fear but some one competent 

 will pick me up and set me back In the right 

 path. 



Probably all are agreed that it is important 

 to have bees with certain characteristics, and 

 that, by careful breeding, something can be 

 done in the way of weeding out, fixing, or in- 

 creasing qualities possessed by colonies under 

 treatment. For years almost entirely the queen 

 (the mother) has been considered in breeding. 

 All agreed that the drone (the father) had per- 

 haps an equal influence upon the offspring; 

 but the difficulty of controlling fertilization 

 made the queen practically the main one to 

 consider. If at times some one ventured to ask, 

 *' Is an Italian queen raised by black nurse-bees 

 as good as one raised by Italian workers?" he 

 was promptly answered that the nurses had no 

 influence on the character of the young queens 

 fed by them. 



Now, however, there are those who advance 

 the opinion, that from the workers, rather than 

 from the queen, come inherited traits; and 



these opinions come from such respectable 

 sources — notably among those who advance 

 them stands the able editor of the Revue Inter- 

 nationale — that they are not to be lightly set 

 aside. 



Mr. Bertrand, the editor mentioned, argues 

 somewhat after this fashion: The young bee 

 begins to feed the brood without taking lessons 

 in feeding: later she produces wax, and builds 

 combs without any apprenticeship therein; 

 finally, some fine day she starts out; and, hav- 

 ing marked the location of her home, goes to 

 seek water, honey, or pollen. These instincts 

 are possessed by neither father nor mother; 

 the queen has the single function of laying 

 eggs, and the role of the male is still more 

 restricted in spite of its importance. How can 

 the worker transmit these marvelous instincts, 

 since she never has any descendants? 



Then he asks if the worker does not transmit 

 traits of character through the food given to 

 the larva?. This food is the product of her 

 organs, secreted by certain glands, somewhat 

 as the milk of the nursing mother is produced 

 among the mammalia. 



Mr. B^i'trand fortifies his position by saying 

 that he and others have observed colonies 

 which, through a long course of years, have 

 preserved the same good or bad characteristics, 

 in spite of the introduction from time to time 

 of queens raised in other colonies. In tliis case 

 these characteristics must have been trans- 

 mitted by the nurse-bees. As to the practical 

 bearing, he says that, if this influence of the 

 nurse-bees upon the progeny really exists, then, 

 1, the introduction of a new queen will not of 

 itself succeed in changing the good or bad char- 

 acteristics of a colony; 2, the nursing of royal 

 larvtB should be entrusted to those colonies 

 whose workers show desirable traits. 



Careful practical observation ought to help 

 us to reach the truth in this matter. I think 

 most of us have been in the habit of thinking 

 that an imoregnated egg would produce the 

 same queen, no matter in what colony reared. 

 At the same time, we know very well that 

 external influences have much to do with the 

 quality of the queen raised. Hardly any one 

 would expect as good a queen from a very weak 

 nucleus late in the fall or very early in the 

 spring as from a powerful colony in a heavy 

 honey-flow. Moreover, we know that the food 

 is the main factor that makes all the difference 

 whether an egg produces a queen or a worker. 

 We know, too, that in the human race the child 

 is affected by the milk of the nursing mother. 



Besides, how can a queen transmit qualities 

 that she never possessed, and that none of her 

 ancestors ever possessed ? Here is a colony 

 remarkable for the great amount of nectar 

 gathered. Do they get that trait from the 

 mother? She never visited a flower in her life. 

 Here's a hardy race of bees from a cold, moun- 

 tainous region, made hardy, you say, by the 

 endurance of hardships and the survival of the 

 fittest through many generations. The hardi- 

 ness is an inherited trait, and it will take gen- 

 erations to breed it out. Let us see how that 

 hardiness could be gained, on the ground that 

 all transmission of traits must be solely through 

 the queen. On this inclement spot first settled 

 a swarm froth a milder region. Hardships, 

 such as they had not previously known, are 

 met by the workers, but the queen is kept in 

 the same comfortable warmth in the hive that 

 she enjoyed in the milder region. How can 

 she become any hardier? And if she is no 

 hardier, how can she transmit increased hardi- 

 ness? Or, suppose a colony becomes unusually 

 vicious, can the queen transmit that vicious- 

 ness, when she never uses her sting? But. as I 

 said before, practical observation ought to help 



