ESTABLI5HEC 

 :0LDE5T BEE-PAPER 



r*aib2isJied Weeltly, at 91»00 jy^i' annum. 



Sa2np7e Copy sent on Aj>i>Ucatlon, 



36th Year. 



CHICAGO, ILL., JULY 23, 1896. 



No. 30. 



Bees Moving Eggs — Other Unsettled Questions. 



BY PROF. A. J. COOK. 



There are some thinRS which are taught in our bee-litera- 

 ture which I think need more proof before we accept them. It 

 is so easy for assertion — mere assertion — to be copied, and 

 after one or two such transcriptions they are often reported as 

 facts. 



One of these cases is the common statement that worker- 

 bees move the eggs or larvae from one cell to another. I am 

 aware that we often read of positive statement regarding the 

 truth of this matter. Of course, positive evidence, if valid, 

 counts for everything. 



To one who has closely studied the bee's egg it would 

 seem a pretty delicate operation to move it from one cell to 

 another ; nor do we find the bees possessed with any such 

 delicate tactile organs as we would think requisite to this re- 

 moval. But the student of natural history has so many 

 strange things constantly before him that he would not place 

 very much stress on any seeming impossibility; surely not in 

 the face of positive proof that the thing is done. 



I have tried by placing combs of eggs where the combs 

 were old and soiled in queenless colonies void of brood and 

 eggs, close beside clean combs in which bees are so ready to 

 start queen-cells. I could never persuade the bees to remove 

 any eggs. While this would prove nothing, as against posi- 

 tive evidence, yet It has made me skeptical. I have closely 

 observed for years, and have never yet seen a single case. 

 This fact has added to my skepticism. 



Thus I have come to look with some question upon state- 

 ments that such removal is ever practiced. There is so much 

 of wrong conclusion in this world because of lack of care in 

 studying the facts. I think we may say that such cases of 

 removal are very rare, and so exceedingly exceptional if they 

 occur at all. In case of exceptions of this kind, we should 

 always scan very carefully all the data from which the con- 

 clusion is drawn, and see if they are not accounted for on 

 some other supposition. In this case, who can say that a 

 queen may not have been in the hive. Queens often attempt 

 to go out with a swarm, and not infrequently return to the 

 wrong hive. In case the colony of this hive was queenless, 

 the queen might commence laying and afterwards be destroyed 



by the bees. Do those who believe that they know that such 

 removals have been made, positively know — can they know — 

 that no queen has been in the hive ? It seems to me that it 

 would be very difficult to prove that none had been there, and 

 until such proof was secured we are justified in keeping an ? 

 after all such statements. 



Rank or Poisonous Honey. — Again, it is often stated 

 that certain kinds of honey are rank in flavor because the 

 flowers or foliage of the trees have a peculiar odor — a case in 

 point is the so-called pepper honey of California. The beauti- 

 ful pepper trees are very common, are almost always in bloom, 

 and usually freely visited by the bees in case they can get 

 nectar from no other source. For the past few months our 

 pepper trees about Claremont have been alive with bees from 

 early morn till late nightfall. They must get some nectar or 

 they would doubtless fail to visit the bloom. As the pepper 

 tree Is dia?cious, that is, the trees bear only staminate or else 

 pistillate flowers, the bees cannot visit the pistillate bloom for 

 pollen. As I do not see that they are producing any percep- 

 tible honey, I think they get very little nectar. I cannot find 

 any honey that tastes like pepper, or is unwholesome. Is it 

 not more probable that the rank honey comes from honey-dew, 

 and not at all from the pepper ? The oaks are now attract- 

 ing the bees by honey-dew, I think, on their leaves. We know 

 that this often is the source of very rank, unpleasant honey. 

 I am more than half convinced that the pungent honey com- 

 plained of is so often at least from honey-dew and not from 

 pepper at all. Who knows positively that pepper honey is ever 

 pungent? 



As I have already stated in the American Bee Journal, 

 because we find bees working on plants with poisonous foliage 

 is no reason to think that the honey they would secure, as the 

 result of such gleaning, would be poisonous. So we need not 

 expect peppery honey because the foliage of certain honey- 

 plants is pepper-like. There would be more reason to expect 

 it if the flowers were peppery, as there might be in the nectar 

 elements that produced the peculiar taste. 



Drones from Impurely-Mated Queens. — Another prob- 

 able fallacy is that the drone progeny from a pure queen that 

 has been impurely mated, will be impure. In this case we 

 know that the eggs are not fecundated, and so if there is im- 

 purity it must come from the mere presence of the sperm-cells 

 in the spermatheca of the queen. This would seem to be im- 

 possible. I have tried very extensive experiments mating 

 pure Syrian queens with Italian drones, and yet every drone 

 was a pure Syrian with no taint of Italian blood obvious to 

 the vision. Thousands of such cases convinced me that there 

 was no bases of fact in this statement. I should have to be 

 convinced that there was no taint of blood in the queen in 

 case any such impurity showed in the drones. In most cases 



