258 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



taken with an insect net. One should avoid 

 grasping them in the hand, as the powerful 

 proboscis is capable of inflicting a sharp 

 sting. 



But little is known respecting the prepar- 

 atory stages of these Asilus flies. The 

 larvse are footless and live in the ground 

 and such as are known are strangely 

 enough vegetable feeders. The larva of the 

 Silky Asilus {Asilus sericeus, Say) was 

 discovered by Dr. Harris, feeding upon the 

 roots of the rhubarb plant. C. V. Riley. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



"Ox-Cow" Queen Bees. 



Mk. Editok:— I was a keeper of bees,and 

 not without enthusiasm, for some 18 years, 

 from about the year 1840. I read every book 

 on the subject tliat I could obtain, and most 

 earnestly and carefully studied the ways 

 and habits of this fascinating insect, in my 

 dozen hives. Much less was then known 

 than now, and the hives tiien used were less 

 favorable to the investigator than those 

 with the movable frames, now attording so 

 satisfactory facilities to the apiarian stu- 

 dent and manipulator. Nevertheless, some- 

 thing was learnt by use of book and hive, 

 and the experience of others, and I ventured, 

 after a while, to write and deliver a lecture 

 on the "Habits and Management of the 

 Honey Bee." Auiong the places at which 

 it was read was the Representative Hall of 

 the State House in B<Jston, before the Mas- 

 sachusetts State Agricultural Society, a por- 

 tion of the lecture being devoted to the 

 anomalous. but now universally known fact, 

 that bees when deprived of their queen or 

 mother-bee will, by some process or means 

 as yet unexplained, so operate upon a worm 

 or larva, that left untouched, would become 

 a worker or barren female, as to render her 

 organs ot reproduction fertile, the change 

 produced even affecting her shape and size, 

 as well as her after habits of life. 



A writer in the Maine Farmer made a 

 report (though with some inaccuracies) of 

 my remarks, calling them "new, interest- 

 ing, and instructive;" but very soon after- 

 wards the editor of a Portland. Me., paper, 

 under date of April 11, 1S42, assailed both 

 lecture and lecturer with a savagely severe 

 and denunciatorv criticism, calling the 

 former "a bungling piece of nonsense, of a 

 contemptible sore, and full of absurd state- 

 ments," and declaring the latter to be 

 "wholly ignorant of the subject upon which 

 he undertook to enlighten others." Special- 

 ly severe was he upon my statement that a 

 queen bee can be manufactured out of the 

 worm of a working l)ee or neuter. "The 

 thing is as imi>()ssil)le," he added, "as it 

 would be to vuikf <i ciu) out of an ox," and 

 "nothing can exceed the contemptible folly 

 of book-worms in the silly stories of the 

 ancients about making queen bees out of 

 workers." What ancient writers treat of 

 this subject the critic did not say. I made 

 no reply to this onslaught, preferring to be 

 guided by Solomon's advice (Prov. xxvi. 4), 

 and to let tinu^ determine truth. 



Tills reminiscence came to my mind as I 

 stood, a few days since, in the apiary of Mr. 

 H. Alley, in Wenham, Mass., and witnessed 

 the wonderfully skilful and truly scienti- 

 fic operations ot this most expert bee-keep- 

 er. He makes a business of breeding 

 queens, selling them when ready for mar- 



ket, and sending them in little boxes adapt- 

 ed to the purpose, to purchasers in all parts 

 of the country. He and many other aniar- 

 ists are actually accomplishing the thing 

 declared to be "as impossible as to make a 

 cow out of an ox." He has, this very cen- 

 tennial year, sent to customers more than 

 750 of these " ox-cow" queens, and will sell 

 more before the close of the season. 



As is well known, the Italian bees, im- 

 ported into the United States about 1.5 years 

 since, are the favorite of very many of the 

 present bee masters. They were not known 

 here in my bee-keeping days (1840 to ia58), 

 we having the English bee imported by the 

 early colonists, a much more pugnacious 

 insect, and said to be less accumulative of 

 honey than the Italian, while the Italian 

 queen is said to be more prolific of eggs,and 

 therefore a hive of Italian is more densely 

 peopled than a hive of English bees. 



I well remember how difficult it was, m 

 former davs, for those who knew only the 

 English bee, to understand the poet Vir- 

 gil's description of the queen, he, however, 

 erroneously calling it the king. I trans- 

 late the passage from his Fourth (ieorgic: 



Glowing with yellow scales and dazzling 



hue. 

 His body marked with ooldkn bands we 



view— 

 If safe this King, one mind abides in all— 

 If lost, in diseord dire and fends they fall ; 

 Destroy their work, waste all their giithered 



store. 

 Dissolve all bonds, nor are a nation more. 

 If he but live, ruling the glowing hive, 

 All are content, the fertile race survive. 

 Him they admire, with joyful hum surround. 

 While labor thrives and honeyed sweets 



abound. 



Now we know that the poet's king is a 

 queen, or more truly a fertile mother-bee, 

 and taking the Italian bee, of which Virgil 

 wrote 2,000 years ago, she has a yeUoiohoay 

 and not a black one like the ordinary queen 

 of the English and American hives. 1 was 

 very much rejoiced when I first saw an 

 Italian queen, seeing by the facilities af- 

 forded in Mr. Alley's apiary more queens in 

 a single hour than I had seen in all my 

 own bee-keeping experience. It was a real 

 apiarian revelation, and I only regretted 

 that it had not come to me at an earlier dav, 

 when fitting boys for college, I encountered 

 this description by Virgil.^then wholly ob- 

 scure and inexplicable. I do not now re- 

 call any explanation of the difficulty by 

 any annotator of the Georgics, even Martyn, 

 the learned Professor of Botany in the Uni- 

 versity of Cambridge (England), in his ad- 

 mirable translation (1740-41), being wholly 

 silent on the subject. Now Virgil's des- 

 cription is intelligible, as well as wholly 

 accurate. Henky K. Olivek. 



Salem, Mass., Aug. 39, 1876. 



For the American Ree Journal. 



A Visit to a Michigan Bee-Keeper. 



I arrived at Dowagiac and enquired for 

 Mr. H's apiary. On my arrival there I was 

 met by Mr. 11., and was made welcome, as 

 soon as he found 1 was interested in bees. 

 By the way, Mr. II. is " chock full " of bee 

 notions and has some new and grand 

 scliemes for bee-keeping, which trom his 

 extensive experience he is confident will 

 become universally adopted very soon. 1 

 remarked you have a fine apiary here, Mr. 



