806 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Dec. 18, 1902. 



heres, by the dorsum, to the wet royal jelly, and probably 

 continues to take nourishment through a part of the skin." 

 (Page 243t. Here he touches the point for which we are 

 looking, but says nothing of an umbilical cord. 



I do not happen to have Prof. Cook's latest edition, I 

 think I loaned it to some one, but one of his former editions 

 is at hand and he says : " They [the larva;] have a mouth 

 with soft lips and weak jaws, yet it is doubtful if all or 

 much of their food is taken in at this opening. There is 

 some reason to believe that the honey-bees especially, like 

 many maggots, absorb much of their food through the 

 body-walls." 



Cowan, while repeating the same thing, or about the 

 same, on the intestine being blind and passing no dejec- 

 tions, adds that the larva absorbs the food " by the mouth, 

 and likewise by that portion of the body floating in it." 



If there is an umbilical cord — and there is one if Gallup 

 and Doolittle have not mistaken something else for it — it is 

 time that our scientists found it. This would not be the 

 first time that practical men had compelled a discovery by 

 pointing to it. The soft nature of the grub or larva renders 

 the study of its physiology rather difficult, and that is per- 

 haps why this has not been brought to light. But if there 

 is an umbilical cord, it surely exists in all the bees, and is 

 only larger or smaller, sooner or later destroyed in each one 

 of the insects. Thus of course the best queens would show 

 it best. I appeal to Prof. Cook, Prof. Benton, Prof. Gil- 

 lette, Mr. Cowan, and all our other microscopists, to investi- 

 gate this subject, and let us know what they find. Our 

 text-books must not ignore this if there is anything in it. 



Now as to the practical part of the arguments. 



There was a time when we reared queens for sale on a 

 large scale. The Italian beas were then scarce in America, 

 and the queens were in demand to supersede the black or 

 common race. We never attempted to rear queens in any 

 large quantity under the swarming impulse. Our queens 

 were reared by removing the queens from a large colony, 

 usually the strongest in the yard. When the cells were 

 mature they were removed and placed in nuclei in which 

 they hatched and became fertile. These nuclei were made 

 with two or three frames of brood and enough bees to keep 

 it warm. Some of the best queens that we ever had were 

 reared in this way. It would be a waste of time for any one 

 to tell me that our bees were inferior, for I know better. 

 The crops that we harvested were the evidence. If the 

 rearing of the queens in this manner had been an injury, 

 we should have had an inferior race to the common bee 

 whose queens were all, or nearly all, reared by the swarm- 

 ing impulse in box-hives of all sizes. But our Italians were 

 ahead of the blacks in every instance. A little later, we 

 know that a great many queens were reared that were in- 

 ferior, all through the country. I ascribe this fully as much 

 to the inand-in breeding resorted to, owing to the desire for 

 yellow bees, as to breeding in diminutive hives. The Ital- 

 ians were yellow, and every one wanted yellow bees. The 

 yellower they were the purer they were thought to be. Thus 

 quality was set aside for color. I believe my father was the 

 first to talk about leather-colored bees. These were better. 

 Why ? Not because of their color, but because they were 

 bred in reference to their producing quality, and not in re- 

 ference to color. 



Dr. Gallup speaks of queens living 6 years, and occupy- 

 iug 36 combs. Such queens are exceptions. I never saw 

 one. We used to clip the wings of our queens, and know 

 that the average is 3 or 4 years. Unless a queen's wing is 

 clipped it is next to impossible to assert that it is the same 

 one, from year to year. Dr. Gallup may say that we had 

 no such queens as he describes, because we did not rear them 

 under the swarming impulse. But he will surely acknowl- 

 edge that when one has had bees for nearly 40 years, one 

 has seen queens reared in the natural way by the bees under 

 the swarming impulse. It was the queens that had the 

 strongest colonies which we clipped, because we feared to 

 lose them. 



Now as to longevity of workers. I feel that I am in 

 very good company when I am with Dr. Miller on any point. 

 Dr. Miller often says, " I don't know," but that gives him 

 so much more strength when he says " I know." I hold, and 

 think that he will back me in it, that there is not a queen 

 in existence whose bees live from the first of May to the 

 first of September. I say this because I have in years gone 

 superseded many queens of the common variety with Ital- 

 ian queens — of course, had all been reared in the natural 

 way — and I make bold to say that not a single bee will re- 

 main on the first of September from eggs laid in April. 

 But if the queen is changed in August there will be many 

 bees still left on the first of April. I believe that nine-tenths 



of the bee-keepers who have tried it will agree with me. 

 This gives plain evidence that the main cause of short life 

 is in the wearing out of the wings and the accidents, 

 storms, rains, enemies of all kinds, etc. When there is 

 plenty of honey in the field the life is short and the queen 

 must be prolific to keep up the numbers ; but when there is 

 nothing in the fields, and the bees stay at home, they have 

 much more chances of long life. The bees of a queenless 

 colony will live longer, because they become apathetic and 

 stay at home. 



I am very free to acknowledge that Gallup is right 

 when he says that if we want long-lived queens we must 

 rear them in propitious conditions, and not have her stinted 

 and stunted by cold or want of food. I am also very free 

 to say that the Doolittle method is the very best that has 

 yet been devised, to my knowledge, for queen-rearing. 

 This is known not only here, but on the continent where 

 Doolittle's name will be fully as famous by this discovery 

 as by all of his numerous writings. If Gallup is properly 

 named, since he gallops ahead in spite of his 82 years, and 

 shows us the path, I must say that Doolittle has been given 

 the wrong apellation, and should be called " Domuch." But. 

 gentlemen, I cannot agree to condemn all queens that are 

 reared by other means, if they are reared with plenty of 

 food, and plenty of warmth, in a colony that is not suffer- 

 ing. 



Gallup says, on page 680 : " Mr. Dadant, Mr. Hether- 

 ington and Mr. Quinby, all successful bee-keepers, use large 

 hives, but they do not use hives four times as large as a 10- 

 frame Langstroth hive." Beg pardon, but my father, who 

 was always trying something new, did try hives with 24 

 Quinby frames, and found them too large. He had some 25 

 or 30 of these. Then he concluded that perhaps what the 

 queen wanted was a large sheet of comb, so as to lay eggs 

 uninterruptedly for twenty-four hours or more without hav- 

 ing to pass on to another, and he had us build hives with 

 frames 18x18 inches — a small barn. They were entire fail- 

 ures. No, Dr. Gallup, we are as much as any one the 

 champions of large hives, tut the man who expects anj' 

 queen, no matter what she is, to fill more than 13 or 14 

 Langstroth frames full of brood and keep them full at one 

 time, will find that he has to hunt for a very great exception. 

 Exceptions do not make rules, but confirm them. 



I beg to be excused for writing such a lengthy article. 

 This is not my practice, but I wanted to view the matter 

 from all sides. I will sum up by saying that in my opinion 

 we must rear our queens in good, healthy colonies, of good, 

 prolific stock, not breed too much from just one strain, try to 

 rear queens and drones from different mothers, and look to 

 prolificness rather than color in our selections. I cannot 

 see any other way than to breed from those colonies that 

 have given the best results. It is after honey that we are, 

 and the best queens will come from those colonies that have 

 produced the best crops. Hancock Co., 111. 



\ Our Bee-Keeping Sisters ^ 



»<i!?T^*i'w wT^'j^TT' frwTs'Tr' WTT >s'Tr'*r*rjr')t 



Conducted by EMMfl M. WILSON, Marengo, III. 



Our Sisters in Eng-land. 



" One of our most prominent bee-keeepers a year or two 

 ago wrote an article on our hobby as an occupation for the 

 gentler sex, and at the time I felt perturbed, as I dreaded 

 that a great and mighty Amazonian host might join the 

 ranks and oust all of us %vho are mere men. The lapse of 

 time, perhaps, or the discovery that affairs have undergone 

 no serious revolution, have soothed my nerves and enables 

 me now to view the matter with perfect equanimity, and I 

 feel no perturbation of spirit even when reading over the 

 list of new experts on page 381. Thirty-six ladies have ob- 

 tained the much coveted certificate, as against twenty-six 

 gentlemen. That must mean that the cult is extending 

 and finding special favor amongst women, or that those go- 

 ing forward give more attention to preparation for the oral 

 and written part, as well as the manipulation of hives, so 

 as to be better fitted forpassing the examination with credit. 

 I understand they are apt pupils, and, as might be expected 

 of their sex, readier to respond fully and promptly to the 

 questions of the examiner. They are tactful and full of re- 

 source in manipulation, and their smart and active, yet 



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