1873.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



79 



frames, whicli were 10x13 inches, inside measure- 

 ment, and, as each frame occupied \% inches, 

 the bees filled nearly 10,000 cubic inches. 



There may be a ditference in an abnorm-a^ity 

 and an abnormity, but as I did not use the 

 former word, and cannot find it in Webster, I 

 suppose it is a mistake of the printer. Webster 

 tells us that " the word normal has now a more 

 specific sense, arising out of its use in science. 

 A thing is normal, or in its normal state, when 

 strictly conformed to those principles of its 

 constitution, which make it what it is. It is 

 abnormal when it departs from those principles." 

 Now, I take the position that a perfectly 

 balanced normal colony of bees remains so 

 until something happens, or there are condi- 

 tions produced that destroy the balance, and 

 consequently threaten its destruction. The 

 colony is then in an abnormal condition, so far 

 as its perfect working is concernei; and certain 

 effects are produced which are the normal 

 results of the derangement. Those conditions 

 and their effects are attempted to be explained 

 in Progressive Bee-Culture; but, it would seem, 

 with poor success, when nearly every statement 

 I make is understood to mean almost the very 

 opposite of what I intended. 



The strongest instincts of all animals are 

 those through which they continue their species, 

 and are most strongly developed when extinc- 

 tion is threatened. Some authors even go so 

 far as to say that life is always, and only pro- 

 duced at the expense of life. 



Mr. Dadant says : " I cannot conceive how 

 the production of queens and drones is an ab- 

 normality or an irregular act. All beings that 

 belong to the animal kingdom are perpetuated 

 by the mating of both sexes." 



Does he mean by this to deny the organic 

 origin of the drone ? or does he mean to be 

 understood that the production is not irregular 

 in nature, and therefore it is a rule that all 

 male animals are produced without the inter- 

 vention of the male, as drones are ? Would he 

 call the production of drones, from worker 

 eggs, abnormal? When queens lay drone eggs, 

 " from disease or old age," is their production 

 normal? Is an infertile queen in a normal 

 state ? Are not all those conditions irregular, 

 and do they not always cause the bees to make 

 an effort to produce queens, and wten they 

 have no female eggs do they not often so far 

 err in their instincts as to attempt to produce 

 queens from male eggs ? 



Mr. Dadant quotes under the head of " Gen- 

 eral causes of the production of drones," from 

 my little book, but so garbles it as to destroy 

 the sense, and then gives certain facts, which 

 he says " destroys the whf^le of Mr. Adair's 

 arduous theories." First, he says a queen will 

 not lay drone eggs when there is no drone 

 comb, except in case of " disease or old age." 

 How does he know ? He says he uses a hive 

 that has eleven frames in it, and that he only 



fills eight or nine frames and puts in two 

 division boards, one on each side, leaving two 

 spaces for the young bees to lay around in till 

 they get old enough to go to work. If that is 

 the kind of hive he uses, I deny his right to 

 pass an opinion on the New Idea, for he has no 

 means of knowing whether it is true or false. 

 He furnishes this with worker comb, and as he 

 don't find drones produced in it, except when 

 his queens get old or sick, therefore they don't 

 lay drone eggs. Does he know that she does not 

 lay them, or do the bees refuse to nurse them 

 and destroy them? His second fact is, that 

 when he puts in drone comb, even as early as 

 March, the queens lay in them. I should think 

 they would, for such a hive is never in a normal 

 balanced condition when it has a prolific queen 

 in it ; and, instead of disproving my theory, is 

 a strong proof of its correctness, for the very 

 theory he is denying insists that such a result 

 would follow. 



He says : " We see, daily, colonies composed 

 of queen and workers, and therefore well bah 

 anced and normal, raising drones and young 

 queens, and swarming." 



And again, " By what Mr. Adair says, it 

 would apjjear that as long as a hive has no 

 drones it is well balanced, and will raise neither 

 drone nor queen cells. Therefore, a hive that 

 never had drones could never have any, and 

 could never swarm." 



I hardly know what to say in answer to these 

 two paragraphs. I do not like to say harsh 

 things, and will not therefore accuse my old 

 friend of willful perversion. It must be that 

 my incapacity to express myself clearly, has 

 again misled him. After occupying ten or 

 twelve closely printed pages in trying to tell 

 what I considered a perfectly balanced normal 

 colony of bees, I thought I had given a slight 

 glimmering of what I intended to say; but find 

 that I have conveyed a meaning entirely at 

 variance therewith. I said nothing of the sort. 

 I said anything else than " that as long as a 

 hive has no drones it is well balanced." I stated 

 so many conditions as necessary to a well bal- 

 anced hive that I cannot repeat them here, but 

 at the risk of being tedious I will make a 

 quotation : 



" With our present knowledge of the habits 

 and the instincts of the bee, we admit that such 

 perfection is seldom reached in the manage- 

 ment of bees, but we are sanguine in the belief 

 that it can be attained. To do so will require 

 that we should be thoroughly, intimately, and 

 ccu-rectly informed of the natural laws gov- 

 erning all the operations of the hive and of the 

 oflBces performed by all its inmates. We have 

 spoken of workers collectively, as if they were 

 all alike in capacity, when the fact is that they 

 are naturally divided into classes, each class 

 adapted to ceitain work, which the others are 

 as incapable of performing as if they were 

 different insects ; and when we speak of a per- 



