THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



235 



living creature is absolutely deaf or without 

 the power to detect sound. Some may 

 have no special organ for hearing, yet they 

 feel tiie effects "of sound if sufficiently 

 powerful to jar them. 



Entomologists give the bee no organ of 

 sound— at least not to my knowledge— and 

 some treatises do not even theorize whether 

 they can or cannot hear. Whether the fact 

 that they can hear or not will ever, as far as 

 utility is concerned, effect the success of 

 the apiarist remains to be learned. If a 

 little theorizing be in onler, 1 would say 

 that I believe if they can hear we will, after 

 learning the effect a pecidiar sound has up- 

 on them, be enabled to control many of 

 their movements, among which swarming 

 will be the most pi'ominent; the discarding 

 by intelligent bee-keepers of tin pans, bells, 

 etc., to the contrary notwithstanding. 



I regret to say as regards the investiga- 

 tion of this subject, that I have had no ex- 

 experience this season with absconding 

 swarms, but such other experiments tried 

 and observations made 1 will now briefly 

 give. In making nuclei I found, after 

 shaking bees into it and after they had 

 struck up a quick march around the hive 

 and were making the air vocal with the 

 music, by holding a card with adhering 

 bees, taken from the hive I was dividing, 

 directly over them, the bees on the cara, 

 though quiet before, would soon "come in 

 on the chorus" and make their way for the 

 line of march. I also found by going up 

 quietly behind a hive after dark and clap- 

 ping my hands several times near the hive 

 and out of their sight— supposing they can 

 see after dark— it had the effect of check- 

 ing the hum produced by ventilating the 

 hive, and for a couple of minutes all was 

 quiet, and the sentinels at the entrance 

 were reconnoitering to learn the cause of 

 the disturbance, when the hum was again 

 resumed. This I tried carefully and am 

 positive as to the result. I also tried the 

 experiment W. W. Lynch suggested, but 

 am not satisfied with the result. 



All experiments and observations that 

 give the bees an opportunity of coming in 

 contact with each other cannot be satisfac- 

 tory evidence that they can hear. My ex- 

 periments were made to avoid this. 



J. D. Kruschke. 



Beeton, Ont., Aug. 8, 1876. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Answer to Mr. McNeil. 



In the August number of the Amp:ijican 

 Bee Jouknal, Mr. J. W. McNeil says that 

 he thinks that some of his queens are not 



faire, because some of their workers in a 

 ew hives are black behind the yellow 

 rings, their abdomen being deprived of 

 hairs, while in some other hives all the 

 bees seem to be young. Mr. McNeil wants 

 from me and others some explanations on 

 this fact. 



As far as my knowledge of the purity of 

 the bees goes, I cannot think these bees 

 impure, especially if they are quiet on the 

 comi)s when the frames are out of the hives 

 and it the workers show more or less dis- 

 tinctly the three yellow rings. If some 

 workers in a few hives have their abdomen 

 shining black I am inclined to think that it 

 is because these workers are accustomed 

 to rob other hives. 1 have at several times 



remarked that robbers are soon deprived of 

 hairs, either because the hairs have been 

 glued by honey or pulled by the bees of the 

 robbed colonies. Everybody knows that 

 some colonies are mon; inclined to rob than 

 others. Of course some bees in these rob- 

 bing colonies will look older than in those 

 which have not such robbing propensities. 

 We have bail such in our home apiary. I 

 could more exactly say we have every year 

 some colonies which have accustomed to 

 look on the spoils of others as a means of 

 becoming rich. 



A few years ago we had a hive, it was 

 number 18, which was a confirmed robber; 

 as soon as some mischief was done, it was 

 by the bees of this colony, and of no other. 

 One of our neighbors came one afternoon 

 saying that our Italians were robbing one 

 of his black hives. It was late in the sea- 

 son, all our colonies seemed quiet. I point- 

 ed to him the hive No. 18. "If your bees 

 are robbed by ours it is by this hive." In- 

 deed, this colony was as busy as in a day of 

 full harvest. I closed the entrance and sent 

 my son to stop the robbing. He found that 

 there was neither brood nor queen in the 

 robbed hive and only a few hundred black 

 workers left. He saved the honey, but to 

 convince our neighbor that our Italians had 

 not killed his black bees was not easy; yet 

 as there were no dead bees in the hive and 

 only very few in front of the hive, my son 

 succeeded at last in proving that our' bees 

 had robbed the hive when there were not 

 enough bees to defend their stores. 



This colony with robbing propensities 

 was always very strong, but it was an 

 annoyance for us and we had to be very 

 careful in order to break up its robbing 

 habits, and we worked to this end for many 

 months; its young bees being taught by the 

 old bees how to rob, it was necessary to 

 have an entire generation passed to obtain 

 this desirable result. So after having given 

 them very little opportunity of finding 

 sweets outside of the nectariums of flowers 

 their robbing propensities disappeared en- 

 tirely during the honey season of the ensu- 

 ing year. We have always since remarked 

 that if robbing takes place it is always done 

 by the same colonies. To find these colonies 

 is easy when the robbing is prolonged till 

 night; the robbing colonies working when 

 all the others are yuiet. 



To my mind it is probable that the 

 colonies where some of these bald bees 

 exist are accustomed to rob. Can some 

 other bee-keeper give any other and better 

 explanation? Ch. Dad ant. 



An Essay on Bees. 



READ BEFORE THE GRANGE, WATERTOWN, 

 N, Y., JAN. 38, 1876. 



The honey bee from time immemorial has 

 attracted the attention and care of civilized 

 mankind. The scriptural allusions to them 

 are in connection with the highest kind of 

 living. The expressions, " with honey out 

 of the rock, will I satisfy you?" and, " but- 

 ter and honey shalt thou eat, thou that sin 

 not;" with many others give an idea of the 

 value the ancients set upon it as an article 

 of food. And when the psalmist says, "eat 

 thou honey for it is good," the most of us 

 will, I think, quite readily agree with him. 

 No farmer's home seems to me complete, 



