THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



393 



For the American Bee Jouma* 



Prime Causes of Bee-Diarrhea, etc. 



JAMES HEDDON. 



I would thank Mr. Stewart for his 

 kind word.s on page 343 ; I must also 

 insist that he is mistaken. Most 

 assuredly 1 have and always shall 

 own up to every mistake. 



I have a hard time to cet my op- 

 ponents clear, upon the pollen theory. 

 My admission is that cold will kill 

 bees entirely independentof diarrhea. 

 This has nothing to do with the pol- 

 len theory. That theory has to do 

 with the cause of bee-diarrhea, not 

 bee death. Bee-bread is always pol- 

 len, but pollen is not always bee- 

 bread. We get all mixed up. How 

 are we to account for the following 

 facts: 1. Bees winter nicely in very 

 <iamp, moldy places. 



2. They sometimes have diarrhea in 

 a high temperature. 



3. All diarrhetic excreta is mainly 

 pollen. 



4. They come through the winter 

 in nice condition, with almost no air 

 at all. 



5. They die of diarrhea, in dry re- 

 positories, with the best of ventila- 

 tion. 



6. They can be wintered success- 

 fully with only sugar syrup in the 

 hives in the same repository where 

 four-fifths die on natural stores. 

 They can, on this food (with no pol- 

 len in any form), be confined for five 

 months aud accumulate no percepti- 

 l)le fecal matter. 



Even if the dry-feces theory were 

 true, pollen is still the prime cause of 

 hee-diarrhea ; but only in letter, not 

 in spirit. Should that theory prove 

 true, I will admit that bees can be 

 ■wintered safely with not only bee- 

 bread in the combs, but honey replete 

 ■with floating pollen ; and that all this 

 long discussion upon the pollen 

 theory, and the costly experiments 

 made, have amounted to, is, that I can 

 now winter my bees with certainty, 

 and so can all who will feed sugar 

 syrup and keep the temperature up to 

 a proper degree; and if the confine- 

 ment is seven months, success is just 

 as certain. We have the problem 

 mastered. 



Mr. S. A. Shuck's fifth paragraph, 

 page .362, proves that neither cold nor 

 confinement is the prime cause of 

 bee-diarrhea. He can produce it, in a 

 few hours in summer, with the tem- 

 perature about G0°, by feeding diluted 

 honey or sugar syrup. I know that 

 be speaks truly. This shows the error 

 of Mr. Stewart, and the truth of the 

 pollen theory. I have seen bees fed 

 diluted or thin sugar syrup nearly all 

 winter, in a cellar of a temperature of 

 about -i(P, and no diarrhea. I know 

 of a bee-keeper who fed nearly 100 

 colonies thin sugar syrup so late that 

 hardly any of it was capped over. 

 He then placed them in a damp cel- 

 lar, and they wintered nicely. (If you 

 wish to get right, you must not ignore 

 these facts.) 



Now, why this fecal accumulation, 

 of which Mr. Shuck speaks, produced 

 in a few hours in summer V Let the 



pollen theory answer : Bees in sum- 

 mer are, from their continual activity, 

 all the time wasting tissue and par- 

 taking of nitrogen (bee-bread) to re- 

 place it. Such consumption demands 

 very frequent discharges. A few 

 hours' confinement loads the intes- 

 tines. If the dry-feces theory is true, 

 why do not Mr. Shuck's bees void dry 

 feces in their hives, and thus avoid 

 distension V They are warm enough, 

 and dry enough to suit the demands 

 of those who believe in the dry-feces 

 theory, are they not 'f 



The diluted syrup which Mr. Shuck 

 proposes to feed, while it distends 

 the honey-sac, it adds not one particle 

 to the fecal accumulation. If Mr. 

 Shuck will remove all pollen (in every 

 form) from his hive, place the bees in 

 a cellar of 4-5- temperature, and in 48 

 hours give them a cleansing flight, 

 then put them back after getting all 

 nitrogen out of them and their combs, 

 he may then place them in a tempera- 

 ture of .5.5^' or 60-', and try his diluted- 

 syrup-feeding experiment, and he will 

 fail to produce fecal accumulations. 

 A watery discharge, slightly colored 

 by waste tissue, is not bee-diarrhea, 

 nor a cause of sickness and death. I 

 have examined this phenomenon 

 carefully. 



MODERN TRANSFERRING. 



On page 364, Mr. S. Daniels says 

 that he is in trouble with the " New 

 method of transferring." How easily 

 we can err. He errs iii saying, " They 

 say ;" for Heddon does not. and did 

 not say, " Any time when the bees 

 are on the wing;" if he did he erred. 

 No, I guess Prof. Cook erred this 

 time. We are all a part of " Nature's 

 imperfections," so ably and amply 

 pioven recently by Mr. Pringle, and 

 we must cultivate charity for each 

 other's mistakes. Our objects are 

 good. 



Mr. Daniels says that he agrees 

 with Mr. Olute, "If the drummnig is 

 thorough, there will be no bees left to 

 care for the brood." As. Mr. D. asks 

 for a minute description of my 

 method, I will refer him to page 367 

 of the Bee .Journal for 1883. There 

 I nowhere use the word " thorough ;" 

 I say, " I drive the old queen and a 

 majority of the bees." At the very 

 head of the directions I say, "About 

 swarming time." I call this driven 

 one a " forced swarm." Did Mr. 

 Daniels and Mr. Clute never make 

 colonies by division y Did they never 

 form nuclei 'f Could they be reckless 

 enough to drive all the bees from the 

 brood and set it aside to perish be- 

 cause Heddon or Prof. Cook were un- 

 derstood to so direct ? 



Sure enough the Professor does 

 carry the wrong idea. Mr. Clute and 

 Mr. Daniels must have taken his 

 directions, not mine. This shows the 

 difference between writing from actual 

 experience and theory or literary 

 knowledge. It is something like my 

 writing about foul brood ; or a native 

 of the far South, about bee-diarrhea. 

 Ah, I see that Mr. Clute does not 

 speak of his personal experience, but 

 that of a neighbor novice. Prof. Cook 

 did not get my idea, and Mr. Daniels 

 and Mr. Clute's neighbor took their s 



from him, no doubt. I believe that 

 none who have worked from mv arti- 

 cle on page 367 (1883), have failed. 

 Dowagiac, P Mich. 



The Strength of Insects. 



Mr. Robt. Corbett, of Manhattan, 

 Kans., sends us the folio wing. article, 

 taken from the New York Sun, which, 

 doubtless, will be interesting to many: 



"If you want to see muscle," a 

 naturalist said, "take a glance 

 through this glass," pointing to a 

 seat before a powerful microscope. 

 The drop of Croton water was fairly 

 alive with little round or oval bodies. 

 There was nothing specially remark- 

 able about them ; but soon a wonder- 

 ful creature rolled upon the scene 

 from a different part of the drop. In 

 appearance it resembled a crystal 

 bell. The edges were ornamented 

 with a delicate fringe, and the entire 

 mass was as transparent as glass. The 

 mouth of the bell was evidently the 

 mouth of the animal, because the 

 observer saw it rush along like a 

 scoop and, turning down, fasten its 

 edges to the bottom, as if to secure 

 some minute animal that ■n^as resist- 

 ing, and a second later some object 

 could be seen passing up into the 

 body. 



"If you had the strength of, that 

 animal," the naturalist said, " in pro- 

 portion to you size, you could take 

 Trinity church by its steeple and toss 

 it over into New Jersey. There are 

 animals in this drop that we cannot 

 see with this powerful glass. Sup- 

 pose there was this same difference 

 in size among the higher animals; 

 elephants would be as large as the 

 State of Rhode Island. If this bell 

 animal was as much larger than man, 

 as it is than these little creatures it is 

 eating, we would see a gigantic scoop 

 of jelly larger than the Forty-second 

 Street reservoir coming down on us, 

 whirling in the water and causing 

 such a suction that a regiment of men 

 would, if in the water, be hurled and 

 twisted, and then encompassed by it. 

 The strength of the creature can be 

 imagined when it is known tlrat the 

 smallest section of the finest hair that 

 could be cut seemed like a mountain 

 beside it ; yet the microscopic crea- 

 ture moved the end of an entire hair 

 placed over the glass. In moving 

 about it threw aside bits of algie and 

 mud. That could be compared to the 

 act of a single man striking down one 

 of the giant trees of California, or 

 kicking over a block of honses. I am 

 devising an instrument to measure 

 the power of these microscopic giants. 

 You see, among the lot, there are al- 

 ways a number that seem, from no 

 special cause, to be in great terror, 

 rushing about wildly, stopping at 

 nothing, passing through masses of 

 weeds and mud in direct lines. Now, 

 the force with which they bring up 

 against a barrier is certainly the 

 maximum of their strength ; so I 

 arranged a machine after the plan of 

 one that I have seen to measure the 

 velocity of a shot, the latter striking 

 a frame, and the force of the blow 



