June, 1916. 



American Vee Journal 



OUR JOVIAL HOST E. G. LE STOURGEON, AND HIS AUTO USED FOR 

 DELIVERIES AND OUTYARD BEEKEEPING 



or fall upon the ground to "temper the 

 wind." 



The mesquite country does not ex- 

 tend more than 30 miles north of San 

 Antonio and perhaps 60 miles east, but 

 to the south it extends beyond the Rio 

 Grande. The bees do well even within 

 a mile of that pretty city of a hundred 

 thousand. Why brush should be left 

 to grow undisturbed close to a large 

 city is explained by water shortage. It 

 is a semi-arid climate and only where 

 irrigation is easy can they depend upon 

 bountiful farm crops. Cattle and bees 

 may be kept and made to thrive with 

 but little trouble comparatively. I then 

 understood why so many bee associa- 

 tions exist within a few counties while 

 many others have none. 



Honey production is mainly "bulk 

 comb honey " throughout Texas. I 

 knew of it long ago, but did not know 

 that it was so universal. Ten-frame 

 hives, and half-story supers with frames 

 filled with thin-surplus foundation are 

 found everywhere. When the comb is 

 filled and sealed, it is carefully cut to 

 fit as closely as possible in tin pails or 

 cans. The few vacant corners are then 

 filled with extracted honey, of which 

 enough is produced for that purpose. 

 Sections of comb honey are rarely to 

 be found, not because the beekeepers 

 are unacquainted with the methods, but 

 because they say that bulk honey sells 

 best and pays best. To prove that they 

 are well informed in progressive bee- 

 keeping it is only neeessary to say that 

 in all our trip we did not see a single 

 box-hive. The Texas foulbrood law 

 empowers the State Entomologist "to 

 order any owner or possessor of bees 

 dwelling in hives without movable 

 frames, or not permitting of ready ex- 

 amination, to transfer such bees to a 

 movable-frame hive within a specified 

 time." The beekeepers of Texas seem 

 to be of the opinion that this is right. 

 In fact, this law was gotten up at their 

 urgent request and they are looking 

 after its enforcement. But more of 

 this later, for we will soon meet the 

 State Entomologist himself and we will 

 look further into the matter. 



The Texas crop of early honey ap 

 pears to have been good. A friend 

 sends us this item from Beeville : 



"The drouth has been a severe blow 

 to cattlemen and to farmers, but not so 

 with the bee-men. Already two car- 

 loads of honey cans have been received 

 here and they have gone like the pro- 

 verbial hot cakes. Three more car- 

 loads have been ordered. Each carload 

 has cans enough to put up 75,000 pounds 

 of honey. The apiaries of this section 

 are busy places now and we are glad 

 the bee-men, at least, have profited by 

 the drouth." 



[To be continued] 



The Senses of the Honeybee 



BY N. E. MC INDOO PH.D., 

 {/iitreau of Entomology. Washington. D. C.) 



IN this Journal, June, 1914, pages 197- 

 200, the writer gives an extract of 

 his first bulletin on the senses of 

 smell of the honeybee. A second bul- 



letin pertaining to the same subject 

 has recently been published in the 

 Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 

 Vol. G.5, No. H. This bulletin, entitled, 

 "The Sense Organs on the Mouth- 

 parts of the Honeybee," deals with the 

 sense of smell, taste and touch.. In or- 

 der that beekeepers may better under- 

 stand the various activities of their 

 bees, the writer will briefly summarize 

 the results in this second bulletin and 

 then add a few remarks about the uses 

 of the sense of smell and about the 

 other senses in the honeybee. 



Up to date the writer has found or- 

 gans of smell on the legs, wings, sting, 

 mandibles ("jaws"), tongue, labial 

 palpi and maxillre (appendages by the 

 tongue), on the "throat," in the cavity 

 leading to the mouth, on the sides of 

 head, and a few at the extreme bases 

 of the antenn;e (feelers). As an aver- 

 age a drone has about -3000 of these 

 organs ; a worker about 2800, and a 

 queen about 2200. Experiments showed 

 that drones smell slightly better than 

 workers and considerably better than 

 queens. 



Since drones have only one duty to 

 perform, it would appear that their 

 highly developed sense of smell is used 

 primarily in mating, and as a queen is 

 more or less an egg-laying machine, 

 such an acute sense of smell is not 

 needed, and compared with that of a 

 worker, it seems that her ability to 

 smell is somewhat degenerated. 



In the higher animals the senses of 

 smell and taste are not sharply sep- 

 arated, and in the honeybee it will be 

 shown that these two senses are not 

 separated at all. For this reason the 

 honeybee possesses a combined sense 

 of smell and taste. The mouth-parts 

 cannot be removed, nor can they be 

 covered with any sticky substance with- 

 out making the bees abnormal while 

 eating ; therefore, such operations are 

 useless in trying to find out how bees 

 distinguish differences between foods. 

 On account of the abnormal conditions 

 resulting from any kind of an opera- 

 tion, it was decided to find out whether 

 bees have likes and dislikes in regard 

 to foods and to make a careful study 

 of all the sense organs on and near the 

 mouth-parts. 



In determining the first point more 



BEES UNDER THE MESQUITE-APIARY OF B. M. CARAW.-¥Y AT MATHIS, TEX. 



