1889 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



493 



location after their hive was moved. But 

 with some colonies, especially;] full-blooded 

 Italians, it did not seem to make very much 

 difference. They would go back to their 

 old home, and cluster on a bush, even after 

 they had been carried back to their hive re- 

 peatedly. We have always taken combs, 

 bees and all, quietly from the hive, when we 

 wanted them to form nuclei. If unsealed 

 brood is carried with them, a great part of 

 them will be pretty sure to stay ; in fact, al- 

 most every bee will go home unless unsealed 

 brood, or, better still, a queen, is carried 

 with them. By taking the old queen from 

 the hive, and leaving her a couple of days, 

 most of the bees will usually stay with her. 

 Friend Doolittle described this plan a little 

 time ago. 



■WHITE ANTS. 



these terrible miners. In other words, these ants 

 love books— they are " book-worms." In all white 

 ants the differentiation of individuals is tar greater 

 than among bees. Thus there are both male and 

 female workers. The workers are simply abortive, 

 or partially developed males or females, as the 

 case may be. Then there are big-headed forms— 

 the soldiers. Like the workers, the soldiers are al- 

 so both male aud female, and also undeveloped. 

 Fig. 2 shows a soldier of T. flavi/pes, magnified four 

 times. 



ALSO SOMETHING ABOUT INSECTS RESEMBLING IN 

 THEIR HABITS WHITE ANTS. 



ip FEW days ago I received a letter from J. F. 

 ^ B , Columbus, Ohio, in which he stated that 

 K' some black insects, looking like ants, an- 

 ^ noyed him seriously each spring. They 

 came from the tioor of his office, which was 

 laid on sleepers between which he had packed coal 

 ashes before the floor was laid. The insects would 

 fly to the windows, upon which he had killed scores 

 of them. Some of them were sent, and proved to 

 be males and females of Termes flavipes, or white 

 ants, which are among the most interesting insects 

 we have in our country. 



I have just received the following from Henry 

 Wilson, Clinton, 111.: 



I send you some white insects, which are very 

 common here, and very destructive to almost all 

 kinds of wood. I have known them to attack the 

 sills under buildings, and to destroy fence-posts— 

 indeed, any wood that is connected with the ground. 

 1 send i wo kiuds. I suppose the one with wings 

 is a sort of queen. Please tell us through Glean- 

 ings what these are, and what can be done to de- 

 stroy them. 



FIG. 1.— FEMALEjWHITE ANT. 



Though these are called white ants, they are not 

 ants at all; though in their general appearance, 

 and in their life habits, they remind us not a little 

 of true ants. These insects are lace-wings, and so 

 are related to ant-lions, dragon-flies, etc. White 

 ants are very common, and terribly destructive in 

 the tropics. The one here figured (Fig. 1) is from 

 India. This great vital egg-sack is utterly power- 

 less to care for herself. She is said to lay 100,000 

 eggs daily. The drawing is natural size. The work- 

 er-ants not only feed her digested food, but carry 

 off the eggs, and I suppose occasionally turn her 

 over and scratch her back. These tropical ants 

 raise great mounds, and are said to entirely de- 

 vour wooden houses and furniture, except a thin 

 outside shell Thus a person sits down to a table 

 or on a chair, which looks all right, but which, like 

 the " deacon's one-hoss shay,'* sinks to nothingness 

 when touched. Humboldt said that a library was 

 impossible in many tropical countries because of 



FIG 2.— A SOLDIER WHITE ANT. 



The males and females of T. flavipes are black or 

 very dark colored. They possess wings, are one- 

 fifth of an inch long, and expand more than half 

 an inch. They come forth from their tunnels in 

 spring, often in swarms, settle to the earth, when 

 the males seize the females. Some think, however, 

 that mating does not occur till later in the season. 

 After their flight they shed their wings. 



This American white ant— the workers are small 

 and white— also likes books at times. It has seri- 

 ously Injured public documents in the State Libra- 

 ry at Springfield, HI. It has shown the same habit, 

 I believe, at Harvard College, where it is the fash- 

 ion to go through hooks. 



A few years ago the manufactory of Alvin Clark, 

 the celebrated telescope-maker, at Cambridge, 

 Mass., was attacked by this same white ant, and the 

 first story had to be replaced to prevent a grand 

 crash. Some years since, I received some of these 

 same termes from a greenhouse man in Grand Rap- 

 ids, Mich. The greenhouse was an old rotten wood- 

 en structure, and the ants not only attacked the 

 building but also the roots of the potted plants. 



The remedies are not hard to find. Kerosene oil, 

 gasoline, bisulphide of carbon, and boiling hot wa- 

 ter, will each and all put a quick end to the exist- 

 ence of these pests, if turned upon them. Circum- 

 stances will guide us as to the best specific. In 

 case gasoline or bisulphide of carbon is used, great 

 care must be exercised to keep all fire away till the 

 vapors are all goue, or there will be a grand explo- 

 sion. In case the ants are beneath the floor, as at 

 Columbus, the floor might be taken up, the sills 

 and all beneath saturated with kerosene oil, and 

 the floor relaid. This would surely destroy the 

 ants, and I do not think the oil would be disagreea- 

 ble, with a well-laid matched floor above. Each 

 person must decide as to which is the most desira- 

 ble remedy in his special case. 



In case of the greenhouse, I recommended pour- 

 ing hot water on to the earth about the roots of the 

 plants, and the painting of the woodwork with 

 kerosene oil. The advice was followed, and the 

 enemy at once disappeared. A. J. Cook. 



Agricultural College, Mich. 



I am greatly surprised to learn that we 

 have insects in Ohio that destroy furniture 

 in the way you describe. I have read of 

 them in the tropics ; but I supposed we 

 were never to be troubled in that way. Sat- 

 urating the woodwork with kerosene would 

 add sufficiently to its durability, probably, 

 to pay for all the cost of the application, 



