1900 



TEE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



43 



you will carefully keep for future refer- 

 ence. Do this same thing again when 

 3-ou mistrust that new flowers are yielding 

 nectar, and so continue on till you have 

 a list of all which yield nectar and the 

 time of their opening. Now you have a 

 data on which to base your operations in 

 all the years to come as long as you stay 

 in that location, when you can exhibit ' 

 your "^skiir'' by making all of your oper- 

 ations with the bees conform with this 

 knowledge you have of your location. 

 Borodino, N. Y., P'eb. loth 1900. 



Robbers and Queenless Colonies. 



BY M. F. REEVE. 



1f| H.'\D a recent opportunity of testing 

 1^ the soundness of the theory that a 

 -^ queenless colony is liable to become 

 the prey of "robbers," and that they will 

 hesitate before plundering a colony having 

 a queen. Having an overflowing colony 

 which had a good breeding queen, I con- 

 cluded to divide, to prevent swarming, 

 early in June. I removed four of the 

 eight frames of honey and brood from 

 the main hive, leaving the queen, and 

 substituted four frames of foundation. 

 The four frames taken out were placed, 

 with adhering bees, in a hive body, and 

 the same plan of alternating pursued. 

 This bod}' with its eio.ht frames was set on 

 top of the old hive and the cover put on. 

 Still the bees were uneasy and made a 

 couple of attempts at swarming. The 

 upper body was then lifted upon a new 

 bottom board with a new cover, the en- 

 trance closed with a strip of wire cloth, 

 and moved to a new stand fifty feet dis- 

 tant the bees being imprisoned all day 

 and night until next morning. The wire 

 gauze gave them plenty of ventilation. 

 The wire was removed, and the bees 

 began flying at once. Robbers quickly 

 discovered that the colony had no queen 

 and began raiding it in clouds. A zinc 

 entrance guard was set on, and the in- 

 mates made a bold defense behind it, 

 chasing the interlopers away. The same 

 day I sent to Delaware for a virgin queen. 



which was introduced two dajs after- 

 wards and adopted at once without any 

 trouble, and ever since that time the 

 garrison has been able to repel all at- 

 tempts b}- neighboring foragers to carry 

 out its stores. The robbers were stran- 

 gers as I easily established by ''flouring" 

 them from a dredging box as they 

 swarmed outside ol the zinc guards, and 

 then watching the entrances of my six 

 other hives. Not a "floured" bee re- 

 turned to them. 

 Rutledge, Pa. 



The Dickel vs. Dzierzon Theories. 



BY C. THEILMANN. 



^T a convention of bee-keepers held 

 at Salzburg, Austria, irrefutable 

 facts were brought out by Prof. 

 Dickel in oppcsition to the fallacious non- 

 sperm, in drone eggs, theorj' of Dr. 

 Dzierzon. 



Prof. Dickel gave the bee-keepers a very- 

 simple method by which each might con- 

 vince himself of the correctness of his 

 premises. 



For nearly fifty years the Dzierzon 

 theory, based upon his own observations 

 and supported by Prof. Siebold's micro- 

 scopical investigations, was that queens 

 possess the ability to lay either an impreg- 

 nated or unimpregnated egg at will; from 

 the former, queens and workers develop, 

 and from the latter, drones only; and 

 whoever dared to write or say anything to 

 the contrary was either passed unnoticed 

 or laughed at. The American Bee Jour_ 

 nal says, quoting from Deutsche Illus. 

 trierte Bienenzeitung, "The Dzierzon 

 theor}' so far stands as solid as a rock, and 

 it will require more proofs than have yet 

 been brought against it to budge it in the 

 least." 



The formula given by Prof. Dickel is 

 this: Take eggs from a drone comb, laid 

 by a normal queen, and insert them into 

 worker cells in a colony that has been 

 queenless long enough to become some- 

 what apathetic. The bees will not ac- 

 cept transferred eggs, but will tear them 



