1901 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



901 



stomach of the bee, is fully identical with 

 the blood of the bee; the only difference is 

 that the latter has .^one, by osmosis, throng'h 

 the walls of the stomach. The j'oung- bees 

 prepare this chj'le, and feed it to the young- 

 larvie, to drones and queen, and sometimes 

 even to old workers. As long- as the num- 

 ber of young" bees is small compared with 

 the number of larvze, the bees will have 

 enoug'h customers for the chyle; but at a 

 certain state the queen will not lay euoug;h 

 egg's compared with the number of young- 

 bees; the chyle will remain longer in the 

 stomach; more of it g-oes throug-h the walls 

 of the stomach, and this causes a certain 

 extension of the blood. This causes at first 

 the wax-glands of the bee to secrete wax. 

 The material for the wax is, of course, 

 taken from the blood ; but no albumen is 

 necessar\' for it, consequent!}' the blood 

 will get richer in albumen, and hereby the 

 drone impulse is induced. At first, drone- 

 cells are built. As the same chyle is fed 

 to the queen she is governed by the same 

 impulses, and will lay eggs in the drone- 

 cells. But still more and more young bees 

 are gnawing out, while the queen either 

 has no room to lay more eggs or is not able 

 to do so. More chyle is accui-nulated, and 

 the blood is still getting richer in albumen, 

 till the svs'arming-impulse is incited, queen- 

 cells are built, and the queen will lay eg-g-s 

 in them, and a swarm is a necessity. That 

 is, theory teaches that the impulses of the 

 bees are. i^i-adafini, advanced from breed- 

 ing-impulses to wax-secretion, drone-im- 

 pulse, iind swarming-, by the different ex- 

 tension and chemical composition of tiie 

 blood of the bees. 



If, at the rig-ht time, a very good honey- 

 flow commences, the swarming-impulse will 

 not be incited, for different reasons. The 

 tirst one is, the bees gather less pollen, 

 which is the albuminous food of the bees. 

 The main reason, I think, is that a large 

 part of the youngs bees will be engaged in 

 chcinging the nectar to honey, as Doolittle 

 explained years ago, consequently thej' 

 can't prepare chyle. The old bees are bus- 

 iU' engaged in field work, and this needs 

 a good nourishment of the muscles with 

 blood rich in albumen. These old bees do 

 not prepare chyle, but the same is fed to 

 them by the young bees. We see now we 

 have jilenty of customers for the prepared 

 chyle, even if the brood is diminishing-. 

 The blood of the bees will get poorer in al- 

 bumen, consequently the swarming-impulse 

 is diminishing. 



It is easy to see, the faster the honey-flow 

 the more it will suppress the swarming- 

 impulse, and may even diniinish the desire 

 for brood. Miiny other astonishing actions 

 of the bees may be explained by this theorj', 

 for which we hiive have had no explanations. 



Converse, Tex. 



[Mr. Stachelhausen draws a distinction 

 between chyme and chyle, and very proper- 

 1}' so. Chyme is pollen partially digested. 

 Chyle is the fully digested product, and is 

 what is commonly known as " royal jelly." 



Chyme is fed to nearly full-grown larvae 

 just before capping, while chyle is probably 

 fed to the very young larvii up to three days 

 old. But this young larva in a queen-cell is 

 fed continuously with this rich food till the 

 cell is capped over. The theory advanced by 

 Mr. Stachelhausen, in a nutshell, as I un- 

 derstand it, is this: The swarming impulse 

 is incited by too much albumen in the blood 

 — that is, too much digested pollen food; 

 and as soon as a heavy honey- flow com- 

 mences, this rich food is diminished (for 

 lack of pollen), iind the surplus previously 

 stored in their chyle-stomachs is given off 

 to the field-bees to supply th rapid waste 

 incident to the flights to and fro with the 

 heavy loads of nectar from the fields. The 

 nurse-bees then do not have enough of this 

 rich food to bring about the conditions fa- 

 vorable to drone-brood rearing and queen- 

 cell building; consequently swarming will 

 cease. 



But there is one thing that this theory 

 does not fully explain. It will be remem- 

 bered that in Texas and Arizona the cessa- 

 tion of swarming is often followed by the 

 destruction of cells and of drones. The 

 cells that have been capped over, and the 

 drones that have been raised to maturity, 

 do not require the rich food, which is get- 

 ting short. Why, then, should this capital 

 (cells and drones i be destroyed «w/t'55 the 

 bees feel that swarming at a time of year 

 when honey is coming at its height will be 

 not only wasteful but a great loss in the 

 amount of honey secured? — Ed.] 



PURITV vs. GOOD WORKERS. 



"Hello, Doolittle! I came over this morn- 

 ing to have a little talk with you about the 

 purit}' of bees. Are your bees absolutely 

 pure ? ' ' 



"What do you mean, Mr. Brown, by ab- 

 solutely pure ? " 



"Well, I supposed you would know, and 

 so I asked you. I see in some old bee-pa- 

 pers I ran across that pure stock was the 

 best, and so I asked the question I did to 

 see if you had the best." 



"Much has been said during the years 

 that are past about a standard of purity 

 for our bees; and I ha-ve often been led to 

 ask myself the question, 'Can we, as apia- 

 rists of America, adopt a standard of puri- 

 ty that will always secure to us the best 

 working qualities in our bees?' " 



"And how did you answer this ques- 

 tion ? " 



"As doubtful." 



"But queen-breeders have a standard of 

 purity, do they not?" 



"Possibly some do; a standard which 

 they adopt as breeder of Italian, Caruiolan, 



