1898. 



THE A3IERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



77 



Mr. Doolittle estimates that if one- 

 fourth of the bee-keepers of America 

 were to adopt the plain section, the 

 necessary change in supers, separators, 

 etc., would involve an expense of $1,- 

 000,000. Editor Root off-sets this with 

 the claim that if a like proportion were 

 to use but 5,000 plain sections each at a 

 reduction of twenty-five cents per 1,000 

 that a saving of $1,200,000 would re- 

 sult. 



By a recent letter from Fred L. Cray- 

 craft, of Havana, Cuba, we learn that 

 amid the rumblings of war he is still 

 extending his business there by estab- 

 lishing out apiaries; and that he will 

 extract from over 1,000 colonies next 

 season. P^red L. is one of the American 

 boys who have made a success of bee- 

 keeping, and he knows by years of ex- 

 perience in Cuba just what her capa- 

 bilities are in the line of honey pro- 

 duction. Readers of The American 

 Bee-Keeper will hear more of Mr. 

 Craycraft in the future. 



Can Insects Talk? 



JrT7HIS may, indeed, seem a strange 

 ^-^ py question to those who would lim- 

 ^^^ it the meaning of the word to the 

 capability of expressing ideas by means 

 of articulate sounds, nevertheless, a 

 little reflection will convince anyone 

 who is conversant with the habits of 

 these creatures that, though they may 

 have no tongues, they can expiess 

 themselves in some way or other 

 "with most miraculous organ." 



Various experiments might be quoted 

 in proof of this. Let us, however, select 

 one or two which seem to leave no 

 room for dispute about the matter. Any 

 one who finds himself in the vicinity of 

 an ant's nest may soon be convinced 

 that these industrious little laborers 

 are by no means destitute of the power 

 of communicating information to each 

 other relative to the affairs of theii 

 commonwealth. 



Let him, for example, place a heap of 

 food in the vicinity of the ant hill and 



watch the proceedings of its inmates. 

 A short time will probably elapse be- 

 fore the discovery of the treasure, but 

 at length some wanderer, in his morn- 

 ing's ramble, has the good fortune to 

 stumble upon it. What does he do? He 

 does not, like an isolated individual, 

 incapable of asking for assistance, be- 

 gin at once the task of removing the 

 heap, but, on the contrary, off he scam- 

 pers with the glad intelligence, and, 

 running his head against that of every 

 ant he meets, manages in some mys- 

 terious way, not only to intimate the 

 fact of the discovery, but also to give 

 information relative to the locality 

 where the provisions may be found, for 

 speedily it will be seen that troops of 

 porters, summoned at the call of the 

 first finder, hasten to the spot, and all 

 is activity and bustle until the store is 

 safely warehoused in the ant hill. 



Another still more striking instance 

 of the possession of a capability of 

 spreading intelligence, and that of a 

 somewhat obsy-use character, is fur- 

 nished by experiments that have been 

 made by Huber and others upon bees. 

 Every one is aware that the queen bee 

 is an object of the greatest solicitude to 

 all the workers of the hive, and yet 

 among so many thousands, all busily 

 employed in different and distant parts 

 of the colony, it would appear impossi- 

 ble for them to ascertain, at least be- 

 fore the lapse of a considerable time, 

 whether she was absent from among 

 them or not. 



In order to see whether bees had any 

 power of conveying news of this kind, 

 the queen bee has been stealthi,y and 

 quietly abstracted from the hive, but 

 here, as elsewhere, ill news was found 

 to fly apace. For some half hour or so 

 the loss seemed not to have been 

 ascertained, but the progressively in- 

 creasing buzz of agitation an- 

 nounced the growing alarm, until short- 

 ly the whole hive was in an uproar, 

 and all its busy occupants were seen 

 pouring forth their legions in search 

 of their lost monarch, or eager to 



