'HE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



133 



Our house has cost us as follows : — 



Stones for the wall, delivered S4 oO 



Laviii'4' sanie 4 50 



Bricks S2 SO, mortar $2 4 80 



Lumber for frame 29 98 



Shingles 8 00 



Roof boards 3 60 



Siding- and ceiling, best quality, inside 



and outside r. 40 40 



Carpenter 22 davs, at $2 25 49 50 



7 loads sawdust, 62 14 00 



Ventilator, galvanized iron 6 50 



Painting 18 00 



Eave spouting 5 00 



N"ails, door fastening, &c 7 35 



$196 13 



We may add one weelc's personal supervision, 

 $24,00, were we not afraid that it would flavor 

 of Horace Greeley's tui-nips, that cost him 61 12 

 each; thougii he thinks tliat by more careful 

 management, next year, he can raise them for 

 $1 each. 



If you find this too tedious. Mi-. Editor, or 

 that you have matter of more value on hand, do 

 not let anything of importance be crowded out 

 to raalie room for Novice. 



I [For the American Bee Journal.] 



Parthenogenesis in the Honey Bee. 



[For the American Bee Journal. 



Honey Emptying Machine. 



On page 87 of tlie Ajvierican Bee Journal, 

 Mr. Thomas C. Hill criticises somebody's de- 

 scription of a honey emptying machine in tlie 

 February ISTo., and says that wlien he attempted 

 to make one, he found it would be necessary to 

 bore an inch hole tlu-ough a three quarter incli 

 stick, and divers other tilings just as impractica- 

 ble. He then goes on to give a liill of stoclv to 

 make one of his own invention, but does not say 

 a word about how to put it together — whether 

 we must bore an inch hole tlu-ougli a three 

 quarter incli stick, or a lialf inch hole through a 

 quarter inch stick. 1 think if a man were to 

 undertake to build one from the bill of stock 

 given by Mr. Hill, without any directions as to 

 how to put it together, he would find it an up- 

 Hill business. 



Come, friend Hill, tell us how to put it to- 

 gether. I am anxious to have a machine, as 

 many of my bees have too mucli honey to win- 

 ter well, and I have not empty combs enough to 

 exchange witli them. I therefore want a'ma- 

 chine to empty some of them. But, for my life 

 I cannot see how to put your machine to^etlier. 

 I am somewhat of a meclianic, and hav^ put to- 

 gether many sorts of machinery, but alwaj's had 

 some drawing or directions to go by. Consider, 

 it is not an easy task to take twenty-tive or 

 thirty pieces of different dimensions and mate- 

 rials, and put them up so as to make a thing hke 

 something never seen before. How is it to be 

 turned? You said something about any gear- 

 ing, or crank, or cord, to turn it with ; or is your 

 machine so constructed as to extract the honey 

 without any nv>tion ? 



H. JSTesbit. 



Cynthiana, Ky., Nov. 1869. 



Wlien Herr Dzierzou, the clever Geraian Bee 

 Master and JSTaturalist, first called attention to 

 this extraordinary doctrine of true parthenogen- 

 esis, or production by the queen, Avithout hav- 

 ing any intercourse with the male or drone Bee, 

 he raised such a swarm of opponents, in nearly 

 all the Naturalists in Europe, who scouted the 

 very idea of such a production, and raised such 

 a liost of objections against sucli a tlieory being 

 true, that Dzierzou liimself began to doubt the 

 correctness of what lie had seen ^\\\h his own 

 eyes. A nranber of them set to work to prove 

 the fallacy of such a statement, but every ex- 

 periment that was properly conducted only con- 

 firmed tlie correctness of Dzierzon's theory, and 

 Professor Theodor Von Siebold (one of the most 

 distinguished German Naturalistss and Physi- 

 ologists) fully conflrnTed tliis doctrine, after a 

 laborious dissecting and microscopical investiga- 

 tion, he discovered a set of voluntary muscles 

 for imparting some of the male element which 

 is stored up in the spermatheca, to every worker 

 ngi^. during its passage thi'ougli the common 

 ovifUiet. He also discovered lively spermato- 

 zoids in the semen of the drones, as well as in 

 tlie contents of an impregnated spermatheca, 

 and detected the same spermatozoids in worker 

 eggs, uliilst they were entirely wanting in those 

 eggs that would produce drones. 



Tills long and acrimonious dispute was at last 

 conclusiveiv settled ; all lionor be to Herr Dzier- 

 zou for liis laborious oljservations, as it has ex- 

 plained many of tlie mysteries of the hive, in 

 which the great King of Bee-Masters, the illus- 

 trious Huber, after discussing the effects of re- 

 tarded impregnation, exclaimed, "It is an abyss 

 Avlierein I am lost." All other great Bee-mas- 

 ters have been equally lost in this abj^ss, until 

 Dzierzon discovered the doctrine of true parthe- 



1 nogenesis, and it is now a confirmed fact that 

 the queen has the power at will to lay ch'one or 



j unfructified eggs, or fertilized worker eggs. 



I It has been stated by a number of "writers on 



I bees, that the queen has to lay worker eggs a 

 certain length of time, and then a quantity of 

 drone eggs. But I have seen the queen in my 

 glass observatory hives lay worker eggs, then a 

 few drone eggs, and immediately worker eggs 

 again, all in a few minutes ; and I saw these 

 worker and drone eggs hatched out into perfect 

 bees, which conclusively proves that the queen 

 has the power to fructify the eggs or not, at will. 

 I always like to confirm or not, all these theo- 

 ries about bees, by my own experiments. So, 

 having received some beautiful Ligurian queens 

 direct from Switzerland, on the 22d day of Sep- 

 tember, I thought a few days after that it would 

 be a very coiiclusive confirmation of this won- 

 derful doctrine if I could raise a queen so veiy 

 late in the season, as every drone had disap- 

 peared several weeks before. So, on the 7th 

 day of October I examined the combs in one of 

 the stocks, to which I had joined one of the 

 imported I^igurian queens, on the 23d day of 

 September, a'nd found a very large quantity of 

 eggs laid in three combs. I removed one of the 



