(Entered as second-class matter at the Post-office at Hamilton. 111., under Act of March 3. i87g.) 



Published Monthly at $1.00 a Year, by American Bee Journal, First Natioaal Bank Building 



C. p. DADANT. Editor. 



DR. C. C. MILLER. Associate Editor. 



HAMILTON, ILL., JULY, 1914 



Vol. LIV.— No. 7 



Editorial ^ Comments 



. Golden Wedding 



On May 19, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas 

 W. Cowan, of England, celebrated their 

 golden wedding. Mr. Cowan is the 

 senior editor of that well-conducted 

 magazine, the British Bee Journal. Our 

 congratulations are most heartily ex- 

 tended. 



Porto Rican Beekeeping 



This is the title of Bulletin No. 15, 

 which has been issued by the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, price 5 cents. Do 

 not send stamps as they are not ac- 

 cepted by the Department. 



This bulletin gives an account of the 

 success of the late efforts to introduce 

 practical bee culture in Porto Rico. 

 Dr. Phillips spent several weeks in the 

 Island last year, and his report, ac- 

 companied by statistics and several 

 half-tones, makes very interesting read- 

 ing. 



Does the Queen Know the Sex 

 of the Bgg She Lays ? 



In " L' Apiculture Nouvelle " for May, 

 Mr. Ledoux gives the picture of a 

 comb in which there are both worker 

 and drone cells, but in which, however, 

 the queen laid drone-eggs in worker- 

 cells only. Mr. Ledoux holds that this 

 is an argument in favor of the opinion 

 that the queen does not know the sex 

 of the eggs she lays, otherwise this one 

 would have laid those drone-eggs in 

 drone-cells. The argument is plausi- 

 ble. A drone-laying queen does not 

 seem to have any preference of cells. 

 But it would seem probable that if she 

 knew the sex of the eggs which she 



lays, she would place them in the 

 proper-sized cells, when they are in 

 easy reach. 



Color Sense ot the Honey-Bee 



We are in receipt, from our able con- 

 tributor, Mr. John H. Lovell, of five 

 bulletins, reprints of articles written by 

 himself in "The American Naturalist," 

 "The Journal of Animal Behavior," 

 and the " Popular Science Monthly." 

 These extracts all touch the question 

 of the color of flowers and the color 

 sense of the honey-bee. 



It is out of the question to quote 

 these articles at length. The author's 

 conclusions are similar to those 

 reached by our leading bee writers 

 years ago, that " bees easily distinguish 

 colors, whether they are artificii-l or 

 natural colors. Bees that have been 

 accustomed to visit a certain color re- 

 turn to it habitually; they exhibit 

 ' color fidelity.' " 



Mr. Lovell tells us that color, al- 

 though it attracts bees, is not alone 

 sufficient to draw them, as many con- 

 spicuous flowers are never visited by 

 bees. But he shows that among the 

 numerous green inconspicuous flowers 

 only a few are honey producers, and 

 attract bees less quickly than nectar- 

 iferous flowers which are conspicuous 

 and agreeably scented. 



He shows that bees are, as a rule, 

 faithful to a single species of flower. 

 They exhibit "flower fidelity " as well 

 as color fidelity. However, this is cor- 

 rect only where there are great num- 

 bers of flowers of the same kind, as 



many of our beekeepers could testify. 

 But it is true that even entire colonies 

 show this fidelity to one kind of blos- 

 soms, and Mr. Lovell quotes the well- 

 known California apiarist, M. H. Men- 

 dleson, who reported that in 1884, one 

 colony out of 200 gathered honey ex- 

 clusively from mustard bloom, while 

 the 1S)9 others gathered from the sages. 

 We have ourselves seen, in seasons of 

 honey-dew production, some colonies 

 harvest their entire supply from that 

 source of dark honey, while some 

 others harvested freely from white- 

 clover bloom. 



He calls our attention to the well- 

 known fact that plants whose blossoms 

 furnish nectar only at certain hours of 

 the day, like buckwheat, are visited by 

 the bees only during those hours, in 

 spite of those flowers continuing their 

 color display and their sweet odors 

 during the rest of the day. He draws 

 from this the conclusion that " bees 

 are guided by the memory of past ex 

 perience in gathering nectar," and 

 soon abandon a search for honey in 

 blossoms which either have discon- 

 tinued their honey-flow or whose co- 

 rolla is too deep for them to reach the 

 liquid, as in red clover. 



The fact that bees remember the 

 hours at which they can find food was 

 proven to me, in 1885, by Mr. Lang- 

 stroth. During a visit which I paid to 

 him, we had seated ourselves near his 

 apiary, discussing bee culture. Towards 



4 o'clock in the afternoon I called his 

 attention to a little excitement in the 

 apiary. This apiary consisted of only 



5 or 6 colonies, and a number of bees 

 were flying about, at the rear of one of 

 them. " It is the hour of their feed," 

 said Mr. Langstroth, and going to the 

 kitchen, he returned promptly with a 

 pan full of syrup for which those bees 

 were evidently looking. They at once 



