1896 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



597 



honey, comb, nor even foundation, when they 

 are placed in a hive that has sections partly 

 drawn out, and filled with honey, and some 

 bees on them, and if, also, they find founda- 

 tion or combs in the brood-nest, it may make 

 them feel as if they had made a mistake or 

 that they had not got to the place they desired 

 to go to.— Ed.] 



SKYLARK AND BEES IX THE YEAK A. D. 3000. 



I was sitting by the fire, watching the red 

 coals running into fantastic shapes as they 

 broke and fell apart. It was raining, and the 

 monotonous patter on the roof would have put 

 me to sleep if I had not been so much interested 

 in it. This rain, thought I, means honey, if it 

 keeps on long enough. Then my thoughts 

 ran into the secretion of nectar, and I called 

 to mind reading an article by a gigantic idiot, 

 claiming that the ground had not any thing to 

 do with the secretion of nectar— it was ail in 

 the atmosphere — it was all absorbed from the 

 atmosphere. Why doesn't it give us nectar, 

 then, in dry years? Why does it wait till there 

 is plenty of water in the ground and plenty of 

 sunshine in the sky? 



Then I wandered off into clipping queens' 

 wings, and breeding them entirely off— or breed- 

 ing queens without wings (as some bee-keepers 

 have claimed is possible), that the queen may 

 meet the drone in confinement. Then I wan- 

 dered again into a maze of fakes put forward 

 by bee-keepers for want of something to write 

 about. 



Finally I became conscious that some one 

 was standing beside me. I did not move till a 

 hand touched me on ihe shoulder. I started 

 up, and saw a man in light garments— a man of 

 commanding and noble presence, and yet he 

 was not man at all. As I looked into his face I 

 could distinctly see and read the map on the 

 opposite wall beyond him. 



"Come."' said he, in a hollow voice; "come, 

 and I will show you the great improvements 

 that have been made in bee-keeping during 

 the eleven hundred years that you were asleep." 



"Spirit or phantom, goblin from ihe nether 

 world, do you mean to say this is not the year 

 1896?" 



"Oh, no! this is A. D. ;W(X)." 



"Do you mean to say, then, that I went dead 

 more than eleven hundred years ago, and didn't 

 know it— that, I was not at home at the time ? " 



" I know nothing of that; but 1 know you are 

 almost an antediluvian in the knowledge of 

 bees." 



" You are a — a— phantom, and I can not re- 

 sent your insults." 



"And I come to show you what is now, and 

 to tell you how it all came to pass." 



"Phantom of the present, forgive me." 



"Come, we must away." 



We stood together in a little yard surrounded 

 by a fence 15 feet high, with sharp iron spikes 

 all around the top. There were just 15 little 

 boxes, S inches square, scattered over the yard, 

 which was about 20 x 50 feet. 



"This," said the stranger, "is your apiary." 



"Apiary!" I cried; "my apiary!" and I kick- 

 ed one of the covers off into the air. " My 

 apiary, indeed! Why, if they were mine I 

 would throw the whole posse of them over the 

 fence. Fallen Babylon! rehabilitated Rome! 

 they are nothing but bugs — they have no 

 wings." 



"Oh!" said the phantom; "no bees have 

 wings now. You can well remember in your 

 days, that men advocated breeding off the 

 queen's wings, arguing that there would be no 

 loss of queens in the wedding-flight. In the 

 latter part of the nineteenth century— the last 

 ten years of it— thousands turned their atten- 

 tion to this single object. After a tireless per- 

 sistence of 200 years the object was gained. 

 The queen never leaves her hive from the day 

 she is hatched until the bees throw her out of 

 the hive dead." 



"Except when she swarms," said I. 



" Bees don't swarm now, either. They bred 

 that out too. But, to go on. Finally, when 

 they had made a complete success in getting 

 wingless queens, it became a raging fever all 

 over the bee-keeping world. It mattered not 

 whether a man had one hive or five hundred, 

 he had to have wingless queens. In a hundred 

 years after the first wingless queen was hatch- 

 ed, there was not in the wide bee-keeping world 

 a queen which could fly a single yard. Then 

 as the years went on, the wings of the bees, 

 both drones and workers, grew shorter and 

 shorter each generation, just as the queens' had 

 done, until they disappeared altogether. You 

 can still see the stump of the wings on the 

 workers." 



Then he gathered up a handful to show me. 



" Have a care, spirit; they will sting you," I 

 cried, forgetting he was only a phantom. 



" But they have no stings now, either. They 

 bred off the stings also— those mighty Soions of 

 the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, who thought 

 they knew it all." 



" Phantom of the present and the past, forgive 

 me if I seem to doubt you. Let me see a large 

 apiary." 



The same finger beckoned me away. 



" Come and I will show you the largest apiary 

 on the Pacific Coast." 



We stood among 37 small boxes, exactly like 



