244 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



[May, 



to the sheets of honey and brood, as if deter- 

 mined to defend their stores behind the walls of 

 their castles. The bee-keeper who has used the niel- 

 ipult well knows what an objection this is to the 

 Italians as a class, and he who has attempted to 

 " drum " them out, knows they are too stubborn to 

 drive ; while the American bee, in all its varieties, 

 if it fights at all, is willing to come out of its 

 entrenchments, and when subjugated it can be 

 driven about at pleasure. On that account, I would 

 prefer the native bee. Many of them show no more 

 disposition to sting than do the gentlest of the Ital- 

 ians, and if it can be shown that they vary to as 

 great an extent in productiveness, I believe a more 

 desirable breed could be produced from them. 



At the last meeting of the North American Bee- 

 keepers' Society, the opinion was expressed that the 

 existence of the bee depended on their stings, and 

 they could not be entirely deprived of the instinct to 

 use them. This assumption can hardly be admitted 

 as true, for all of the indigenous species of bees of 

 America, North and South (that is, the Meliponas 

 and Trigonas), are stingless, and many races and 

 varieties of them have not even the protection of 

 a hive, gum or hollow tree, to shield them, but hang 

 their combs and stores on the limbs of trees. Still 

 they have continued to exist and prosper. I not 

 only believe that it is possible, but I would have no 

 fears of their becoming extinct, even had they no 

 stings. Physiologists tell us that the horns of cattle, 

 the tusks of elephants, and nearly all the weapons 

 with which animals are armed, are imperfections or 

 deformities. Some breeds of cattle, as the Galloway, 

 are without horns, and others have only the rudi- 

 ments of them, merely attached to the skin, and not 

 sheathing a bony core. And so easy is it to alter 

 the shape and size of the horn, that in the finer 

 breeds of cattle, breeders can do so to suit their 

 fancy, or can obliterate them enterely. 



In one instance, I had a natural swarm of bees to 

 come out, whose queen's wings were clipped. She 

 could not fly, but crawled off in the grass. Some of 

 my children, barefooted, were assisting me in hunt- 

 ing her. A great many of the bees were crawling 

 about in the grass. I asked the children if the bees 

 did not sting their feet. They said they did, but 

 that it did not hurt. In parting the grass, I had a 

 number of them to sting me on the hand, and found 

 that what they said was true. On examination, I 

 found that their stings were very small, and many 

 of them so soft that they would not penetrate the 

 skin. It is very likely that if wide and careful ob- 

 servation was made, this would not be an isolated 

 instance of a tendency to get clear of a useless 

 appendage. 



About the same time I had another instance of a 

 similar variation in the bees of a colony, not as to the 

 sting, but at least half of the bees were produced 

 without wings, or with only the smallest rudiments 

 of wings. On looking into the hive, they could be 

 seen running about like monster ants. While young 

 they could build comb and nurse the young as well 

 as if they had wings, but when they became 

 old enough to go out to gather honey, of course they 

 were useless, and as but few could be seen crawling 

 around the outside of the hive, it is to be presumed 

 that they wandered off in the grass and were lost. 

 The mother of them had her wings clipped short, as 



it was my custom then. Whether the wingless con- 

 dition of the mother had anything to do with pro- 

 ducing the same condition in her offspring, is a 

 question worth considering in this connection, as, if 

 true, it would indicate a means by which the sting 

 might be removed by clipping the sting of the 

 queen. 



I have seen it stated, and have been told by per- 

 sons who said they had tried the experiment, that if 

 the tails of dogs be cut oft' for several generations, a 

 tailless breed may be established. We know that 

 there are families of dogs that are born without tails. 

 If it is the result of such treatment, why may not 

 the wingless bees have been the result of repeated 

 clippings of the wings of the queens ? And if one 

 appendage may be thus destroyed, why not another ? 



The supposition is not inconsistent with physio- 

 logical laws, for we have instances in the human 

 family where accidental deformities have been trans- 

 mitted from parents to children. 



Another undesirable instinct is that of swarming. 

 In a state of domestication there is not only no 

 necessity for it, but it is positively injurious. With 

 proper management it can be prevented, and if pre- 

 vented for a time, longer or shorter, and the neces- 

 sity for it removed, it would disappear as other wild 

 instincts do, under domestication. Swarming is 

 the result of abnormal conditions, such as I have ex- 

 plained in "Progressive Bee Culture," and in a 

 wild state is forced upon them by necessity, and in 

 pursuance of the law of adaptation, by which in- 

 stincts are developed or repressed so as to accord 

 with surrounding conditions. The eyes of fishes in 

 caves are never used, because the conditions will not 

 permit, and consequently they dry up, and the skull 

 openings are closed. Instincts are governed by the 

 same laws, and are repressed by non-use. 



When this much is accomplished, by way of 

 ameliorating the wild nature of the bee, 

 there would, perhaps, be one more difficulty to sur- 

 mount, and it is not improbable it would follow the 

 changes already suggested, without other aid. We 

 would then want to remove the antipathy that one 

 queen has to another, so that several could be kept 

 in the same colony. In modifying the temperament 

 of the bees, the queens would no doubt share in their 

 civilization, so that they would live together in 

 amity. 



Mr. F. Smith, of the British Museum, inclines to 

 the opinion that a colony of Trigona contains several 

 queens at a time, as "the multitudes inhabiting some 

 nests are too great to render it possible that one 

 female could produce them all. Mr. Stretch de- 

 scribes a hive that he saw that measured six feet in 

 length, occupying the interior of a decayed tree, and 

 the multitude of bees he compared to a black cloud. 

 M. Guerin found six females in a nest of Melipona 

 fulvipes. (Packard.) 



The Melipona and Trigona are indigenous to Mexi- 

 co and Central and South America. There are many 

 species of them. The colonies of many are very nu- 

 merous. They are stingless. Some build in the 

 hollows of trees, others in the ground ; some 

 suspend their nests from the limbs of trees, and at 

 least one species oonstructs its own hive of clay, it 

 being of very large size. (Smith.) 



If these tropical bees can exist under such cir- 

 cumstances, why could not our Apis mellificaf And 



