1894. 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 



169 



ing of the abdomen. Watch a tired 

 bee stop at the entrance before going 

 in, and you will see him pant away 

 like a tired horse. 



You know if a rubber tube is bent 

 short it will " kink." To prevent 

 this kinking in the suction hose of a 

 fire engine, a spiral wire is run be- 

 tween the outside and inside coatings 

 Man may invent, but he will find of- 

 ten that his inventions are very old 

 in God's patent office. Here in the 

 bee we find tubes just like your en- 

 gine suction-hose. Each trachea is 

 formed of threads wound close to- 

 gether. When the bee twists and 

 turns its body, how important it is 

 that the air tubes shall not kink, 

 hence the beautiful spiral construc- 

 tion. Could anything be more won- 

 derful ? In man the tracheal system 

 is not so elaborate as I before said , 

 and the blood in his case, performs 

 the functions of the multitudinous mi- 

 nute air tubes which permeate or tra- 

 verse every portion of the bee's anat- 

 omy. 



Take a good sized pill box and fill 

 it half full of wax. Catch a worker, 

 and kill it with ether, chloroform, or 

 alcohol, and permit the killing fluid 

 to evaporate. With a hair-pin heat- 

 ed over a lamp, make a little bath of 

 melted wax in a convenient spot in 

 the pill-box, and having clipped off 

 the wings and legs of the bee, drop it 

 on its back in the little bath afore- 

 said. The bee should not be more 

 than half immersed in the wax, which 

 is then allowed to cool. When cold, 

 which will be in about a minute, pour 

 water over the bee until it is covered. 



In a good light — say sunlight — 

 with a needle,knife, (made by heating 



the point of a coarse sewing needle 

 until red hot hammering it with a 

 tack hammer, on the face of a flat 

 iron, and after tempering by heating 

 cherry red and plunging in water, 

 sharppend on a hone, and inserted in 

 a match, for a handle), and a fine 

 needle inserted in another match, go 

 to work and cut away the under part 

 of the rings of the abdomen, and 

 carefully lift them off. If you have 

 good eyesight or if not, by aid of a 

 cheap lense (magnifying glass) of 

 good construction you will be as- 

 tonished at the sight before you. 

 There lie the honey sack, digesting 

 stomach, bile tubes, and intestines. 

 Running in all diretions, but starting 

 from the sides, you will note fine, 

 white tubes branching out into small- 

 er, and these organs into still smaller, 

 until lost to sight. These are the air 

 tubes I have been talking about, and 

 you will note that they not only en- 

 circle the digesting stomach, but are 

 wound around the other parts in sight. 

 If your lense be strong enough, and 

 you have not ruptured it in your dis- 

 section, you may find the nerve sys- 

 tem, which lies just under, or when 

 the bee is right side up, just over 

 the wax producing portion of the ab- 

 domen and which runs the whole 

 length of the bee from tail to brain. 

 You will find it composed of two 

 " cords" almost transparent, with oc- 

 casional bulgings in which the two 

 " cords " are joined. In and about 

 this very nerve system you will find 

 the fine breathing tubes before spok- 

 en of. Up into the compound eye, 

 with its thousands of lenses, run other 

 breathing tubes, every lense being 

 supplied with oxygen in this manner, 



