THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



April, 



be a most peculiar and yet perfectly- 

 normal case under the circumstances, 

 for those vvho may wish to study 

 the problem which it involves. 

 Norwich, Conn. 



MARCH MEETING OF THE 



WORCESTER COUNTY, 



(MASS.) BEE-KEEPER'S 



ASSOCIATION. 



BURTON N. GATES. 



THE MEETING was called to 

 order at two o'clock, Pres. 

 Gates in the chair. After a 

 short business meeting, the speaker, 

 Dr. James P. Porter, of Clark Uni- 

 versity, was presented. The address 

 was illustrated with the lantern. 



Dr. Porter is authority on behavior 

 of the lower animals or as it is term- 

 ed, authority on comparative psychol- 

 ogy. He has made a special study 

 of ants, published a paper on the ac- 

 tivities and variation in spiders, and 

 is well read in the investigations of 

 the Europeans on bees. In his ad- 

 dress, he gave much of the best recent 

 investigation in Europe. 



NATURAL HISTORY ADDRESS. 



In the first place, he illustrated and 

 traced the origin of the honey bee 

 from the lower, solitary bees. Rough- 

 ly speaking, all bees are divided or 

 may be grouped under two heads, 

 those in which the mother or the 

 queen Jives to see the brood appear, 

 as is the case in the higher bees, the 

 honey bee, the bumble bee, and the 

 mosquito-bees or stingless bees (mel- 

 iponinae.), and into those in which 

 the mother dies before the brood ap- 

 pears. The speaker showed pictures 

 of these various bees and their nests, 

 explaining their life habits. 



Having shown the high level to 

 which the domestic bee has evolved, 

 the lecturer described the sense or- 

 gans of bees in comparison to the 

 organs of ants and even in vertebrate 

 animals. He described the function 



of the special organs of the antennae 

 and the activity of bees in finding 

 flowers. Forel, a Swiss naturalist, 

 following the work of Plateau, has 

 shown conclusively that the eye plays 

 the largest role in the way that a bee 

 finds a flower of any sense which the 

 bee has. For example, a dahlia was 

 covered up in part; in some cases 

 the rays were left exposed, in others 

 the disc was uncovered, but what- 

 ever was left exposed, was sufficient 

 for the bees to locate the nectar by. 

 In other instances, the experimenter, 

 _ covered up the flower with a leaf, as 

 a grape leaf, and not until a bee 

 stumbled around underneath the foli- 

 age and ran against the covered 

 bloom, did they succeed in finding 

 the nectar. 



A slide of the section of the brain 

 of the ant, worker, drone, and queen, 

 showed a direct corelation between 

 the structure and the functions of the 

 respective individuals. For instance 

 in the drone, the optic parts are well 

 developed in connection with the ne- 

 cessary sight in finding the queen in 

 mating. 



Dr. Porter's address was exception- 

 ally instructive. 



WINTERING EXPERIMENTS. 



Mr. Herbert F. Gary, of the old 

 firm of W. W. Gary and Son, of 

 Lyonsville, Mass., was present and 

 upon invitation, spoke on the problem 

 of wintering, with special reference to 

 his personal experiment. In part, Mr. 

 Gary said: 



"For my locality, for New England 

 weather, where there are sudden 

 changes, and long periods of extreme 

 cold as we have experienced this last 

 February, cellar wintering is by far 

 the most satisfactory and safest. 

 Twenty pounds of honey will surely 

 carry a colony through in the cellar, 

 while thirty or more are necessary out 

 of doors. Out of a hundred colonies 

 put in the cellar last fall, I have taken 

 out over 12 to 14 quarts of bees thus 



