128 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



April 



The wires can be strung as tightly 

 as you desire and will stay tight. 



It can be done as quickly as bend- 

 ing the nails intq hooks, and it gives 

 better results, in my hands at least. 

 DR. J. E. AIGLEY. 



Illinois. 



The (Poor) Middleman 



By Fred Huchting 



IN the January issue of the Jour- 

 nal, under the topic of "Market- 

 ing," C. C. Baker tried to give 

 beekeepers an idea that they would 

 get a better price for their honey if 

 they sold it direct to the packers, 

 which I am absolutely opposed to for 

 the following reasons. First, if the 

 people would buy their honey direct 

 from the producer they would elim- 

 inate the middleman, who must 

 charge the people for his labor, ad- 

 vertising and profit, the latter usually 

 in excess. If the middleman is elim- 

 inated the beekeeper can get a bet- 

 ter price for his honey, save his cus- 

 tomer from 20 to 30 per cent and sell 

 more honey, because his customer 

 will willingly buy more when he is 

 not charged an enormous price for 

 it. Mr. Baker indirectly states, "Let 

 the middlemen get theirs." The Gov- 

 ernment is advising the people to buy 

 direct from the producer and thereby 

 beat old "H. C. L.," and any bee- 

 keeper with a little common sense 

 knows that is good advice. Mr. Baker 

 also states that the beekeepers 

 should send their customers to the 

 local grocer; but why not have the 

 beekeeper split the grocer's would-be 

 profit with his customer? Second, 

 the packers would put the beekeepers 

 in a fine position if they could con- 

 trol the honey market. They would 

 control it in the same manner as 

 they are controlling other markets 

 today. They would give us their 

 price for our honey and we would 

 have to accept it. Mr. Baker asks, 

 "How much did the farmer get for 

 his pork before the packer took hold 

 of it?" Well, Mr. Baker, is the far- 

 mer gaining anything when he sells' 

 his pork for 30 cents today when he 

 got 10 cents for it before the packer 



took hold of it, and when the farmer 

 wants to buy a harness today he 

 must pay $60, when he could get one 

 for $20 before the packers' time, or 

 in other words, selling his stock at 

 a 200 per cent profit and buying his 

 supplies at an increase of 200 per 

 cent. 



Wisconsin. 



Imperfect Mating of Queens 



By Prof. John ,A.nderson 



THE bee-mating e.xperiments car- 

 ried on on Duck Island by Mr. 

 F. W. L. Sladen last July and 

 recorded on page 424 of the Decem- 

 ber American Bee Journal, have re- 

 called to my mind some observations 

 made in Lewis in 1917. There I had an 

 island all to myself, so far as bees 

 were concerned, and I made a few 

 experiments. 



On July 5 a stock placed in isola- 

 tion gave off a swarm which formed 

 two clusters, thus suggesting the 

 presence of at least two virgins. The 

 two clusters were separately hived. 

 A few days later a third swarm was 

 observed and duly secured, so that 

 there were four stocks, all with 

 queens to mate. The only drones 

 within reach were those flying from 

 these four stocks, but it does not fol- 

 low that all the available drones 

 were half brothers of the virgin 

 queens. A few unrelated drones 

 might have joined the stock before it 

 was placed in isolation. Even so, it is 

 clear that the choice of the queens 

 was very limited. 



On July 23 eggs were found in two 

 of the hives, and the queens in the 

 other two had begun laying by Au- 

 gust 3 and 9, respectively. On the 

 last date it was noticed that one of 

 the two earlier swarms had worker 

 brood on 7 combs and no drone brood 

 at all. Two of the other three newly- 

 mated queens produced mainly drone 

 brood (in worker cells), each having 

 just a few scattered cells with worker 

 brood. The last queen to lay was in 

 the parent hive and produced mainly 

 worker brood, with a very few drones 

 (in worker cells). 



It occurred to me that the micro- 



H. C- Cook's boiler for cleaning frames from diseased colonics. Closed for boiling. 



scope might assist in finding the 

 cause of this abnormality in a 

 young queen, so on July 9 I killed 

 one of the two queens producing 

 mainly drones, and examined the 

 fluid of the spermatheca. To the 

 naked eye it looked as clear as water, 

 and my first thought was that I must 

 have been mistaken in supposing 

 I had seen any worker brood at all in 

 the hive from which this queen had 

 been taken. The microscope, how- 

 ever, revealed the presence of a very 

 few sperm cells, these being very ac- 

 tive and displaying movements which 

 were all the more evident and vigor- 

 ous because unimpeded by the usual 

 congestion. It was perfectly evident 

 that the preponderance of drone 

 brood in the offspring of this queen 

 was due to imperfection in the mat- 

 ing. For some reason or another she 

 had received only a small quantity 

 of sperm, and so was able to fertilize 

 only an occasional egg. 



It has been stated that a newly- 

 mated queen sometimes begins by 

 producing drone brood mainly or en- 

 tirely, and becomes normal after a 

 little practice. In such a case it is 

 probable that it has taken the queen 

 a little time to acquire control of the 

 mechanism of fertilization. In order 

 to give the second queen an oppor- 

 tunity to improve I let her remain 

 in the hive for some time longer, but 

 she continued to produce mainly 

 drones. Some worker offspring of 

 those abnormal queens had by this 

 time emerged and seemed normal. 



In the examination of this second 

 queen, on September 17, I associated 

 with myself Professor J. Arthur 

 Thompson, of Aberdeen University in 

 order that I might have independent 

 testimony to this peculiarity in a 

 queen. I burst the spermatheca of 

 a normal queen under the cover-glass 

 and directed the professor's attention 

 to the issue of a "milky fluid" as de- 

 scribed by Dzierzon, who could tell 

 fertile from unfertile queens by the 

 naked eye long before he called in 

 Leuckart and Siebold with their mi- 

 croscopes. Later we made an exam- 

 ination with the microscope and saw 

 a field filled with countless squirm- 

 ing threads, twisting, waving, heav- 

 ing, like a field of corn in the wind. 



When we repeated the performance 

 with the abnormal queen Professor 

 Thomson, observing the naked-eye 

 appearance of the burst sac, re- 

 marked that it was "quite different." 

 On looking through the microscope 

 his report was, "They are here, and 

 they are active, but they are very, 

 very few." 



Sladen, in Duck Island, Canada, 

 and Anderson, in the Outer Hebrides, 

 Scotland, have independently discov- 

 ered that queens mated under cir- 

 cumstances in which their choice of 

 a drone is very limited, are apt to be- 

 come producers of inadvertent or ac- 

 cidental drones (drones developed in 

 worker cells). Wc went a bit fur- 

 ther on this side and found that those 

 abnormal queens had secured an in- 

 sufficient supply of sperm when mat- 

 ing, and wc have now to consider 

 whether there is any probable reason 

 w'hy the mating act should be thus 



