AuR. 10, 1905 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



567 



4- Contrtbutcb -f 

 Special Clrticles 



^ 



Not More Colonies, But More from Each 



BY GRANT STANI-EV 



THE question uppermost in the mind of many a beekeeper 

 is likely to be. How many colonies can I handle and 



make each colony turn out a good profit to the owner? 

 There is scarcely any doubt, however, but that many bee- 

 keepers are keeping'more colonies than they can successfully 

 handle, laboring under the impression that it is hives of bees 

 rather than bees in a hive that is to bring ultimate success. 



This article has no reference' to the specialist or to the 

 experienced bee-keeper who counts his colonies by the hun- 

 dred, but rather to the majority of bee-keepers as we find 

 them the country over. 



Let us look at the farmer for instance. We know very 

 well that there is scarcely a farmer that is large enough for his 

 farm — he has so much land chat he is "land poor, " so to 

 speak ; and if every farmer would put the manure and labor 

 on SO acres he now puts on 100 he would produce as much, 

 while the reduction in taxes would be no small concern. If I 

 mistake not, there are few farmers in Holland with more than 

 40 acres of land, and yet the best butter and cheese in the 

 world is produced there. We can see from this that it is not 

 so much in numbers as it is in making each number turn out 

 the highest possible percentage of profit. 



I am afraid too many bee-keepers are trying to over-reach 

 in the increase of colonies instead of working to obtain the 

 maximum result from the minimum number. It is not so 

 much the number of colonies as it is in making each colony do 

 its utmost in storing surplus. Any colony that does not store 

 a high percentage after careful manipulation should be broken 

 up, or change the queen. It surely does not pay to furnish 

 hives, fixtures, and possibly labor, to run an apiary of 75 col- 

 onies when 50 can be made to secure the same profit. The 

 " not how much but how well " principle will apply fully as 

 well to bee-keeping as to any other line of business. 



The queen may be from the most prolific strain in the 

 world, and the hive simply a ne plus ultra, and yet without 

 the constant attention on the part of the bee-keeper the 

 highest results will not be reached. It must be the harmoni- 

 ous working of both bees and bee-keeper all along the line in 

 order to bring all this about. 



At present we hear a great deal about keeping more bees. 

 If it refers to more bees in a hive, all right ; but if it means 

 more hives of bees, my views are somewhat different, and 

 they are in tune with the highest principle of science — to ob- 

 tain the best possible results from a minimum investment of 

 capital. 



Bee-keepers, above all others, have no time to sit at the 

 corner grocery or post-office. If a few moments of leisure 

 time manifest themselves he has perplexing questions which 

 have so presented themselves that he needs to sit down and 

 think them out. Remember, no business will run itself, and 

 if we do not get behind it and shove it along it will not go. 

 The more effort is put into any business the greater will be 

 the success. Lycoming Co , Pa. 



The Sense of Smell Among Bees 

 Experiments 



-Some 



TranslalrtI from " The Bulletin de la Societe Romande D^Apicnltun ' 

 BY C. I'. DADANT 



IN .July, iy02, while sojourning a few weeks in the Cevenuf- 

 I was perusing some old journals found in the sittiii- 

 room of an inn, while I was seeking to kill time in a loni: 

 rainy day, and the following lines fell under my eyes. I fom 

 them in the '• France Agricole and Horticole " for April. V>v» 

 and the title was, "Ants Kecognize One Another l>\ tl 

 Smell." 



"The ants," said this article, "recognize one anotlp 

 very readily. When an ant enters a colony which is not it 

 own, it is almost immediately put to death. ■ A German n;a ■ 

 alist, Mr. Alorecht Kethe, of tStrasburg, has sought to nc. 



nize by which sense could be exercised so subtle a recognition, 

 and has ascertained that it was a question of smell. Mr. 

 t'ook had already observed that if an ant touched water, it 

 was infallibly attacked by its sisters at its return home, and 

 he had concluded that the washing causes the ants to lose a 

 special property enabling thi^m to be recognized by one 

 another. Then Mr. Forel('The Ants of Switzerland.' page 

 263 and following) had confirmed this hypothesis, by showing 

 that ants from different nests may be put together if pre- 

 viously their antennie, which are the olfactory organs, have 

 been cut off. 



"Adding to these considerations a new proof, Mr. Bethe 

 crushed a few ants, and with the juice thus obtained he 

 painted an ant which he then introduced into an ant's nest. 

 When the ant was perfumed with juice of ants from this same 

 nest, it was well received ; in the contrary case it was at once 

 attacked. 



"A larva, washed in alcohol at 35 degrees, then put back 

 in its nest, was similarly attacked as a stranger. Put aside 

 24 hours before being returned to the nest it was on the con- 

 trary well received, that lapse of time having been sufficient 

 to allow it to reproduce its family smell. It seems, therefore, 

 most likely that in the phenomenon of recognition it is the 

 sense of smell which is in action." 



These lines have impressed others besides myself, for I 

 have found them reproduced in L'Apiculteur, of June, 1900, 

 as well as in divers other agricultural or apicultural publica- 

 tions. 



The thought has come to me, while reading them, that 

 that which applies to ants is applicable to bees whose cus- 

 toms and instincts differ but little from those of the former. 

 I therefore resolved to repeat with bees the experiments of 

 Mr. Bethe as soon as I would return home. But time failed 

 me, and the entire year passed before I could make the pro- 

 jected experiments. 



Last year, in April, as I was classifying some notes, the 

 above quoted lines came back to daylight and reminded me of 

 my projects. I happened to have a few days of quietude, the 

 season was propitious, and I decided at once to make a few 

 trials. 



All the experiments made upon ants by Messrs. Bethe 

 and Forel, with the exception of that on cutting the an- 

 tenn;c, repeated by myself upon bees, ended in the same re- 

 sults : they no longer recognized their sister taken away half 

 a minute before, when she had been washed in diluted alco- 

 hol. They accepted without difficulty the drones and the 

 workers of another hive than their own when they had been 

 previously painted with juice from crushed drones from their 

 own hive. A few larvio daubed with diluted alcohol were 

 found thrown out a few minutes later. Returned the next 

 day with their sisters, those bees that had been washed with 

 diluted alcohol and had been held long enough away from the 

 hive to permit this odor to evaporate, were again well received 

 in their home. 



In the presence of these facts of which several experi- 

 ments giving constantly identical results evidenced the value, 

 I was led to en()ulre whether bee-keepers could not take 

 advantage of this to open their hives and handle their bees, 

 by giving to their hands the odor of the hive which they want 

 to examine. I conducted my experiments in this direction, 

 and will give you further the obtained results which I copy 

 almost literalfv from what I pompously call "My Apiary 

 Journal." ' L. Forestier. 



(To be continued.) 



Retailing Honey— Glucose, Etc. 



BV F. STROHSCHEIN 



CONSIDERABLE has been said and written about educa- 

 ting retailers to care for honey properly, and there is some 

 ground for it, too, as I shall presently show. 

 Some time after the early honey harvest two summers 

 ago I entered a small country store, and at once spied a case 

 of como honey upon the counter. This, of course, interested 

 me, so while the merchant was doing up the articles which I 

 had ordered, I tried to raise the cover of the case. This was 

 not an easy thing to do, for it was covered with other things, 

 among which was a cigar-box full of tobacco. When I did 

 raise the cover enough to get a jieop inside I saw quite a good 

 deal of tobacco among the sections. I saw that case for weeks 

 with only a few of the sections removed, and it was no great 

 wonder that the honey did not se)I. for if consumers purchase 

 honev with a tobacco Havor I'l^v haven't much desire for 

 more'. If they did not see the tobacco they possibly had an 



