January, 1914. 



IM^rican Hee Jfonrnal I 



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the value of odors to them in determ- 

 ining their actions. However, some 

 observations of mine may be of inter- 

 est, and perhaps help others in their 

 work. 



Long ago, on discovering the true 

 way bees obtain food from each other, 

 which was exactly the opposite of what 

 was universally taught and believed, I 

 assumed that possibly some, perhaps 

 many other teachings were equally 

 wrong. As I was then particularly in- 

 terested in queen behavior and intro- 

 duction, I turned to the odor factor as 

 a promising field for study. I soon be- 

 came convinced that it did not play the 

 important part assigned to it, and there 

 followed the experiments which have 

 resulted in the new method of intro- 

 duction. From the already excellent 

 results achieved by others as well as 

 myself with that method, my unbelief 

 was not without profit. 



Finding that I could introduce any 

 queen to any colony, I proceeded to 

 test odors on queens thus run in. 

 Queens were anointed with all sorts 

 of odors — as had previously been tried 

 on marked workers and drones — and 

 such queens were introduced by the 

 above-mentioned method. Sometimes 

 a queen would be introduced to half a 

 dozen colonies the same day, and in 

 other cases a queen would be reper- 

 fumed and reintroduced to the same 

 colony several times on the same or 

 subsequent days. The results always 

 sustained my belief in the negative im- 

 portance of odor. Various perfumes, 

 essential oils, saliva, tobacco juice, per- 



spiration, odors from the skin of 

 horses and dogs and other things were 

 used, and so long as these things did 

 not cause physical discomfort to the 

 queen, the bees seemed to be uncon- 

 cerned by their presence on the queen. 

 Perfumes (alcoholic extracts) essen- 

 tial oils and some other substances 

 caused quite apparent distress to the 

 queen, the oils quickly causing death 

 e.xcept when used in the most minute 

 quantities. When distressed the be- 

 havior of the queens was not normal, 

 and as was to be expected their recep- 

 tion by the bees varied widely. 



Though bees possess a most acute 

 sense of smell it does not follow that 

 the odor of the individual bee governs 

 its reception by an alien colony. It 

 seems more reasonable to think that 

 the individual bee recognizes a colony 

 odor different from the home odor, 

 and is thereby caused to behave in such 

 a way as to invite attack. And yet 

 when some colonies have the combs 

 with adhering bees separated, ' the 

 combs being stood around against 

 convenient objects as trees, buildings, 

 etc., on being returned to the hive 

 again in 10 or more minutes, a violent 

 fight takes place between the bees of 

 all the adjacent combs, until some- 

 times a quarter or more of the whole 

 colony is destroyed. Surely, the home 

 odor had not evaporated from all those 

 combs and the new ones been absorbed 

 by them and the adhering bees. Odor 

 fails to explain there. 



Dr. Bruennich's theory of the ol'd 

 guardian bees being the trouble makers 



is not borne out in experiments, for 

 with colonies so long queenless as to 

 have laying workers, and with those 

 more rare cases where after C, 8, or 10 

 weeks of queenlessness no such egg 

 producers appear, and where, of course, 

 all the bees are of the guard class, 

 queens can be run in with perfect ease. 



I beg leave to interject here a bit of 

 advice to the novice who may read 

 this. To colonies so long queenless 

 give a comb or two of emerging brood 

 that proper nurses may be on hand to 

 feed well the brood soon to appear 

 from the eggs of the new queen. 



To what degree odor governs the 

 behavior of one bee to another we may 

 never know; but we do know that by 

 ignoring this factor altogether and by 

 merely getting the bees into a turmoil, 

 we can do with queens what we never' 

 could do when working on the odor 

 theory. 



I do not hesitate to introduce by the 

 new method any queen no matter how 

 valuable she is, and regardless of 

 whence she comes, either from near at 

 hand or from far away. So uniformly 

 successful is the procedure that I use 

 no other, and never have the slightest 

 anxiety as to the safety of any of them. 



Furthermore, I have found it possible 

 to successfully introduce queens to 

 colonies containing laying queens, and 

 usually the reigning queen is displaced. 

 Several factors are very evidently in- 

 volved here, for the results are not yet 

 uniform. I have been for some time 

 studying to determine what are the 

 factors, and I believe the time is near 



ViRiiiNiA Waterleaf Bloo.ming in Frank C. Pellett's Wild-flower Garden at Atlantic. Iowa. 

 The Waterleaf is a Good Honey Plant. Blooming in Early Spring. 



