1921 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



361 



more profitable to raise queens and 

 sell nuclei than to go into the busi- 

 ness for honey production. 



The only apiary I visited was near 

 Montgomery, and this man made a 

 business of raising queens and selling 

 the nuclei. The honey season is a 

 long one, from February until Novem- 

 ber, with a long range of blooming 

 honey plants. It seems to me this 

 should be a great field for honey. It 

 is a field, as I view it, that has scarce- 

 ly been touched. I saw few apiaries 

 in Montgomery and other counties. I 

 dare say Alabama could easily double 

 its production of honey. I am sure 

 this is true for Montgomery county. 



SIXTY YEARS AGO 



To show how easily people may be 

 led astray with theories, we here re- 

 publish extracts of contributions to 

 the American Bee Journal of 1861, the 

 first year of its existence. Mr. E. 

 Kirby, of Henrietta, N. Y., after read- 

 ing the different articles expounding 

 the Dzierz-on theory on the fertiliza- 

 tion of the queenbee, sustained a 

 theory of his own, in 4 or 5 different 

 issues. To quote Mr. Langstroth, who 

 gave a resume of his views in a criti- 

 cism, Mr. Kirby held that: 



"The workers in their flight with the 

 drones, alight on the drones' backs 

 and cause them to give off their 

 semen, which the workers lick up and 

 carry to their appropriate cells in 

 their hives, for the purpose of propa- 

 gating the young queens. . . . The 

 worker takes the semen thus obtained 

 and impregnates the embryo worker 

 larvae in royal cells, which fecundates 

 the ovary 'of the immature queen in 

 order to give life to her drone 

 progeny. She then comes forth fully 

 prepared to lay eggs that produce 

 drones only." 



In a word, Mr. Kirby held that the 

 royal jelly or pap which we now know 

 is given similarly to all larvae in the 

 three first days of their life, and to 

 the queen larva; during their entire 

 development, was the seminal fluid of 

 the drone and that this was the ex- 

 planation of the great number of 

 drones produced in natural conditions. 

 He said, also : 



"I do not believe that the food or 

 size of the cells have anything to do 

 with the formation of their se.xes. I 

 believe that the queen, worker and 

 drones are made such by impregnation 

 at particular times; first, to form the 

 queen; second, her ovary, to form the 

 drones ; third, the egg deposited from 

 the drones in the queen's sperma- 

 theca, to form workers." 



Again, farther along, he wrote : 



"My theory is that, to produce the 

 three sexes, there must be three dis- 

 tinct infusions of the semen. First, to 

 impregnate the ovary to produce the 

 drone; second, the queen infuses the 

 egg from her spermatheca to produce 

 workers; third, the workers infuse 

 the worker larvae in the royal cells 

 and the ovary of the young queen, 

 while yet in the cell, with the semen 

 of the drone. Her eggs, when she 

 leaves the cell, will produce only 

 drones, without further fertilization. 



In Ruber's time, he believed the jelly, 

 so-called, was of such fertilizing pow- 

 ers as to cause the ovaries of the 

 worker to become prolific. Dzierzon 

 also believed that the fertile worker's 

 eggs bad in some way been impreg- 

 nated, to cause them to produce 

 drones only. As it is proved by Dr. 

 Donlioff that it is the animal secre- 

 tion found in tlie queen's cell that 

 effects the physical change from a 

 worker to a queen, I do not doubt 

 that this goes far to substantiate my 

 theory. . . . Semen is retained in 

 the combs from the time the drones 

 are destroyed, at least until they ap- 

 pear the following season. ..." 



The very pretty arguments thus 

 given were set to naught and the 

 theory discarded, when the following 

 very positive reply by C. W. T., of 

 Hulmeville, Penna.. was published in 

 the December, 1861, number: 



"Mr. Kirby has at last got himself 

 and his theory in a tight place. He 

 says: Semen is retained in the combs 

 from the time the drones are de- 

 stroyed, at least until they appear the 

 following season. Here is a positive 

 assertion that Mr. Kirby has got to 

 prove, if he wishes to sustain his 

 theory, for in no other way can he ac- 

 count for the production of queens in 

 winter, or in the absence of drones; 

 that is, according to his theory. If 

 semen really e-xists in the beehive in 

 winter, stored up in the combs, the 

 microscope will show it, and I hope 

 Mr. Kirby will occupy some of his 

 spare moments, during the present 

 winter, in procuring the necessary 

 proof; for without it, his theory can- 

 not stand. 



"It seems to me that considerable 

 confusion must exist in the minds of 

 the advocates of the above theory in 

 regard to the different functions of 

 the organs of nutrition and of genera- 

 tion, or reproduction, and as to these 

 functions being in any way inter- 

 changeable. Here we have it asserted 

 that a substance, the semen of the 

 drone, taken into the alimentary 

 canal of the bees, and subjected to the 

 action of the organs of digestion and 

 assimilation, will produce a hybrid or 

 cross in the blood I Is not this some- 

 thing new under the sun? I know- 

 that there are some agriculturists on 

 a small scale, who believe in potatoes 

 'mixing in the hill.' This would be a 

 case in point, taken from the veget- 

 able kingdom, but the fact, like Mr. 

 Kirby's theory, needs proof. We are 

 also aware that there are thousands 

 of white children born in the South 

 every year who never know any other 

 nurses than negro nurses, and I would 

 as soon expect to account for the ex- 

 istence of mulatto children in this 

 way, as I would for an impurity in 

 the blood of the bee, by Mr. Kirby's 

 theory." 



one, on the theory, possibly, that some 

 people have, of "letting George uo 

 it," or "George can do it." 



Sometimes I like to differ from 

 other people (C. P. D., for instance) 

 just to draw them out, and to stir 

 them up a little. Mr. Dadant once 

 said to me that he thought opposi- 

 tion was a good thing, as it causes the 

 other side to bring out their best rea- 

 sons for their opinions. So here goes 

 on the "commercial" beekeeper ques- 

 tion: 



I would say that a "commercial" 

 beekeeper is one that keeps bees, or 

 produces honey, for the larger part of 

 his living or business. I would hardly 

 say that one who has only .'JO, or pos- 

 sibly 100 colonies, is a "commercial" 

 beekeeper. I think his bee business 

 .should occupy the major portion of 

 his time if he could claim to be count- 

 ed in the class of "commercial" bee- 

 keepers. 



I am just wondering if anyone run- 

 ning less than 200 colonies of bees 

 could rightfully be called a "commer- 

 cial 'beekeeper. It might be that a 

 queen breeder having less than that 

 number of colonies would be entitled 

 to a place in the "commercial" bee- 

 keeper class. 



I don't suppose that this question is 

 of very vital importance, and yet it 

 was asked in good faith by a Wash- 

 ington beekeeper, and deserves a sin- 

 cere reply, just as Mr. Dadant has al- 

 ready given it. 



I noticed somewhere that the State 

 of California claims to have 1,500 

 commercial beekeepers out of a total 

 of 8,000. Now, are we to under- 

 stand that these 1,.500 follow beekeep- 

 ing as a business? As California pos- 

 sibly has more commercial beekeep- 

 ers to the square mile than any other 

 State, I would like to hear from that 

 locality, as well as from elsewhere, if 

 ye editor deems the question of suf- 

 ficient importance to devote a little 

 more space to it. 



Washington. 



WHAT IS A "COMMERCIAL" BEE- 

 KEEPER? 

 By Geo. W. York 

 I have read the ^answer given to 

 the above question by the Editor, on 

 page 237. He seems to think I can 

 answer the question as well as any- 



QUEENS, AND OTHER THINGS 



By F. Dundas Todd 

 Having been gifted with a head for 

 figures, I have great pleasure in fac- 

 ing a lot of statistics and arranging 

 them in different ways to see what I 

 can learn from them. Well, a lot of 

 beehives provide just as much ma- 

 terial for this kind of recreation as 

 does any other line of human en- 

 deavor, so when I get my first lot of 

 averages worked out, which concern 

 the brood and honey consumption 

 during the winter, I like to see how 

 the various strains of queens have 

 comported themselves, also how age 

 tells on their egg-laying ability. So 

 far, I have not got to the stage where 

 I consider a queen is useless because 

 she has attained the age of one, two 

 or three years ; I go by her record as 

 exhibited in winter honey consump- 

 tion, spring brood raising an 1 honey 

 production. When I dispose of a 

 queen it is for a very definite cause. 

 For example, number 20 at the end of 

 April, 1919, was marked as being 

 short of stores, but it gave a crop of 

 35 pounds in .August. I then left 60 



