Vol. XIII 



MARCH, 1903 



No. 3 



OBSERVATION. 



The Bee Still Affords a Rich Field for the Stu- 

 diously Inclined. 



(Arthur C. Miller). 



IT MAY sound pedantic to say that 

 knowledge of bee life is as yet in 

 its ABC but be that as it may 

 and at the risk of calling down upon 

 myself a deluge of denial and counter 

 assertions. I here make that statement 

 and will give some of my reasons, hop- 

 ing thereby to stimulate observation, 

 to the end that light may be shed on 

 many at present unsolved problems of 

 practical apiculture. 



Thanks to the patient labors of such 

 men as Cowan, Cheshire and others be- 

 fore them we have a very full knowl- 

 edge of the anatomy of the honey bee, 

 of the functions of some organs and an 

 inkling of the use of some others, but 

 of still others we have no idea at all 

 of the part they play in the bees' life 

 and work. 



Many plausable but unsupported 

 statements of the internal life of the 

 hive are accepted without question. "It 

 is so because the text books say so." 

 But who informed the author of the 

 book, or how came he by his knovvl- 

 edge? Only too often he has taken it 

 from some prior work or seeing in 

 some magazine a plausable statement 

 by some popular or temporarily promi- 

 nent writer, has copied it as fact. An 

 example of this is the belief that bees 

 use their head to ram the pollen into 

 the cells, a notion too absurd to de- 



serve attention were it not for its wide- 

 spread acceptance. 



As the pellets of pollen are dropoed 

 on the floor of the cell bj^ the gathering 

 bee, a mere ramming in by the head 

 of any bee would pack it very unevenly, 

 much at the lower side and little or 

 none at the upper, a consideration 

 which heretofore seems never to have 

 atracted attention. Also as every or- 

 gan is adapted to its particular func- 

 tion we should expect to find the front 

 of the bee's head hard and smooth, if 

 it was intended and used for this pur- 

 pose, whereas it bears a pair of deli- 

 cately articulated antennae, and simple 

 and compound eyes protected by a mul- 

 titude of fine hairs, surely anything 

 but a battering ram. As a matter of 

 fact, the pollen is packed by the bee with 

 its mandibles and is a process of push- 

 ing, kneading and spreading. The work 

 can often be found in an incomplete 

 stage and the pollen will then be found 

 thickest at the low^er part of the cell, 

 but it does not remain so. for that, or 

 the next lot will be worked into the 

 upper part making all even. 



While investigating the storing of 

 pollen I discovered that bees are decid- 

 edly fond of the freshly gathered ar- 

 ticle, licking it up and biting it ofif from 

 the dropped pellets as well as from the 

 legs of the laden bees, an action to 

 which the latter always object. The new 

 pollen is readily taken up by the pro- 

 boscis and passes directly into the 

 mouth. Just how it gets from the 

 mandibles to the mouth I do not know, 

 but it is done rapidly and in most sur- 

 prising quantities. 



We sav that nectar is converted into 



