Vol. XVIII. 



JULYl, 1890. 



No. 13. 



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POLLEN FOB BEES. 



CAN BEES GET ALONG FOR ANY LENGTH OF TIME 

 ON NITROGENOUS FOOD? 



Some years ago I discussed, in Gleanings, P. 

 Schoenfeld's theory on the larval food of bees. 

 Mr. Schoenfeld has published in the Illustrterte 

 Bienemcituno some other very interesting articles, 

 which I am willing to reproduce in extenso. 



DRONES. 



About three years ago Schoenfeld Inclosed a 

 frame with new combs in a cage of double wire 

 cloth, so that the bees outside of the cage could not 

 feed those inside of it. The comb was filled with 

 100 gr. of sugar syrup, and then a number of drones 

 put inside of this cage, and the whole thing was 

 hung in a good colony of bees. At the end of the 

 third day the drones were dead. Two other experi- 

 ments on cold rainy days, when no drones were fly- 

 ing, had the same etfect. It is well known that 

 drones feed themselves on honey. If we cage them 

 and give them a few drops of honey so soon as they 

 are hungry, they eat this honey like the worker- 

 bees. Schoenfeld then caged some drones in the 

 same way, giving them honey instead of sugar syr- 

 up, and they died at the end of the third day. Next 

 he removed the outer wire screen, so that the work- 

 er bees could feed them through the single wire 

 screen, and they lived for weeks. Consequently, 

 drones can't live longer than three days, if not fed 

 with nitrogenous food by the workers. I will re- 

 mark here, that it is a well-known fact that drones, 

 as well as queens, feed themselves on honey, but 

 do not eat pollen, but are fed by the worker bees 

 with the same nitrogenous food which they give to 

 the larviB. These experiments prove this again, so 

 far as drones are concerned. 



These experiments indicate how the drones are 



killed by the worker bees in the fall or summer 

 time. It was supposed, till recently, that the work- 

 er bees drive them from the honey at first to the 

 bottom-board, and, when weak enough, they are 

 carried out of the hive. But the drones are not so 

 lazy and awkward that this could be done without 

 great tumult. It is much easier to explain, if we 

 know, that the drones get very weak soon after the 

 worker-bees stop feeding them nitrogenous food. 



But these experiments throw some light on an- 

 other question: Why do the bees kill the drones? 

 It was supposed that the drones are expelled as 

 soon as the swarming fever is over, and no mating 

 of young queens would be necessary; and because 

 queenless colonies keep drones, sometimes, over 

 winter, this doctrine seemed to be infallible. But 

 not to speak of the fact that such a knowledge is 

 far more than we can expect from the mind of an 

 animal, we know of some /ac<s against this theory. 

 If this theory were correct, the bees would kill the 

 drones as soon as the last swarm is cast; in many 

 localities they do not do so. Here in Texas the 

 bees swarm in March and April, in May and June 

 we have our main honey-flow from horsemint; as 

 soon as the horsemint is drying up (about July), the 

 drones are killed; in the fall we have some other 

 honey coming in, and other drones are raised; but 

 I never got a swarm in the fall. It would be inter- 

 esting if Mr. Poppleton would tell how the bees do 

 in this respect in Cuba. 



We can easily see that, as soon as the pollen in 

 the fleld commences to got scarce, the production 

 of the larval food is becoming more dilTicult by de- 

 grees. At first the drone brood is fed no more; 

 then the drones, which die in avery short time. This 

 is sometimes quite sudden, if in springtime a frost 

 or in summer a hail destroys all the blossoms. 



That queenless colonies keep their drones is not 



