1908 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



803 



GLEANINGS FROM 

 THE PACIFIC COAST 



By Prof. A. J. Cook. 



"Man proposes, but God disposes." How 

 true of our honey harvest! 1 have always thought 

 since coming; here that California was in the lead 

 as a honey-producing State. We get such phe- 

 nomenal crops when the seasons are favorable that 

 this might be the bee-keepers' paradise except for 

 the too frequent off years. We thought till late- 

 ly that we had only to reckon with the season's 

 rainfall. We thought, as we would know of this 

 in the early spring, we could know of a surety 

 whether a golden harvest awaited us, and so we 

 would not have to provide for fixtures unless a 

 harvest was certain. With ten or twelve inches 

 of rain in winter we were sure of a great harvest. 

 Wi\h less rain we would not purchase supplies, 

 and would arrange to busy ourselves in other 

 ways than in working with our pets of the hive. 



We now know that we reckoned without our 

 host in this regard. I fear that we are behind 

 our brother bee-keepers of the East. With good 

 weather conditions for the season, they are quite 

 sure of a crop. We must have abundant rainfall 

 and a favoring season as well. For the past three 

 seasons our rains have been abundant and timely, 

 and we felt sure of a generous harvest. But our 

 springs have been cold, and we have failed to 

 realize our expectations. This works in three 

 ways to knife expectancy: It keeps the bees from 

 breeding in the months of February, March, and 

 April; it hinders flight when the time of harvest 

 comes, and it prevents the flowers from nectar 

 secretion at the time of the regular harvest. I 

 never knew a better season, so far as the rains go, 

 than this, yet I fear that the harvest will be as 

 light as that of two years ago. The weather is 

 delightfully cool. I once heard a physician say 

 that the time of which he was speaking was "dis- 

 tressingly healthy," so we may say here in Cali- 

 fornia, this spring, that the weather is distressing- 

 ly cool and delightful. 



FRUIT-BLOOM HONEY. 



We have just been eating a little honey that is 

 almost surely pure citrus honey. I presume 1 

 might say orange honey; but as the lemons are 

 also in bloom, and thickly planted close by the 

 bees, it is quite likely from both orange and 

 lemon. It is of delicious flavor, and we wish 

 that we might have more of it. I had the good 

 fortune in Michigan to secure, more than once, 

 fruit-bloom honey. It, too, was very delicious. 

 Of course, we can not usually get much of this 

 honey, for, like the honey from soft maple and 

 from the eucalypts here in California, it comes 

 when there are but few bees, and so can never be 

 important in the markets. It is of great value, 

 however, in stimulating brood-rearing. The 

 bees are also of equal or greater benefit in cross- 

 pollenating the bloom and so in augmenting the 

 crop. 



4f 

 a word regarding ants. 



Ants are insects that must interest every bee- 

 keeper. They are of the same order as the bees. 



the Hyminnpteni; in development they approach 

 nearest to bees; in habits and social instincts they 

 are very much like the bees, and in brain devel- 

 opment and functional differentiation they are 

 strikingly like our honey-bees. They also inter- 

 est us as enemies of bees. Indeed, in differenti- 

 ation of function, and in intelligence, they are 

 superior to our pets of the hive. Their habits of 

 slave-making and habits of division of labor are 

 wonderful indeed, and must challenge admiration 

 from any that study their ways and habits. 



We say of our bees that they are polymorphic, 

 for they are of three forms; while most species 

 of insects, and, indeed, of all animals, are of only 

 two forms, the male and the female. Ants eclipse 

 even bees in this respect. We not only find in 

 the formicary (the nest of ants) the queen, the 

 true female, whose sole function, in many cases, 

 is to lay eggs; the male bees, the ants that are 

 comparable to the drones of the hive, and the 

 workers, which, unlike the others just mentioned, 

 are wingless. But we find others with large jaws 

 and heads that are often called soldiers. These 

 do work to defend the home against intrusion. 

 Again, in some species there are more than one 

 kind of worker. These will be found of different 

 sizes, and with difference in the development of 

 several of their organs, like the mouth organs 

 and other parts of the body. 



There have been several theories advanced as 

 to the cause of this polymorphism. I think the 

 real cause is the one that is generally believed by 

 the wisest and best informed of our bee-keepers. 

 It seems that the same agencies that have worked 

 in the evolution of different individuals in Aphis 

 metlifera have also prevailed to modify the ants, 

 the white ant, and the wasps. It seems certain 

 that parthenogenesis, in all these cases, has differ- 

 entiated the males from the females. The males 

 come from eggs that have not been fecundated. 

 This is also called agamic reproduction — that is, 

 fecundation without males. It is strange that 

 eggs can and do develop without receiving the 

 male element, or sperm; but this is known to oc- 

 cur in other insects, like gall-flies and plant lice. 

 In some cases the result of such development is a 

 female and not a male. This is generally true of 

 the Aphids. In the bees, wasps, ants, and white 

 ants, it is, without doubt, true that the males 

 come always from unfecundated eggs, and so are 

 the fruit of parthenogenesis. We are greatly in- 

 debted to the great Dzierzon for the discovery of 

 this great truth. The generally accepted theory, 

 that the difference in the development of females, 

 so that in some cases we get a true, perfectly de- 

 veloped female, the queen, and that in others we 

 get the usually smaller workers, comes from dif- 

 ference in quantity and quality of food. That 

 there is in case of bees qualitative difference as 

 well as quantitative, is certainly true; but in case 

 of wasps and ants this difference is often wholly 

 quantitative; and so we may believe that the 

 cause of variation of development is principally 

 from difference in amount of food. A sort of 

 starvation process causes a stay in the development 

 of the ovaries. It is interesting that, in case of 

 other organs, there is greater development in the 

 workers than in the queen. We know that the 

 tongue of the worker is longer; and that the pol- 

 len-basket, or corbicula, is not developed in the 

 queen. There are tremendous puzzles to be 



