1921 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



443 



number of bees in each hive and the 

 amount of honey in each are as- 

 certained by a system of weighinff. 

 In the spring of the year they are 

 weighed again to determine how 

 much honey has been consumed duv- 

 irg the winter, and also to determine 

 whether each hive has gained or lost 

 ill its number of bees. The winter of 

 1920 was such an open winter that 

 the remark "There was no need to 

 pack this winter because the bees hai 

 so many chances to fly" was fre- 

 quently heard. Consequently, the re 

 suits of the spring weighing were 

 looked foiTvard to with more than or- 

 dinary interest, as they would eithi.-i- 

 prove or disprove the above quote 1 

 statements. 



In the fall of 1920, when the hives 

 were left for the winter, the one- 

 stoi-y unpacked hive, unprotected by h 

 windbreak, had 41,458 bees. On May 

 17, 1921, the spring weighing showed 

 that this hive had only 16,100 bees, 

 or 25,358 less than it had in the fall. 



The one-story unpacked hive, which 

 was protected by a windbreak, had 

 35,625 bees in the fall and 26,825 

 bees in the spring, or a loss of 8,800. 

 It will be noted that the loss of the 

 protected hive was only about om- 

 third as great as the loss in the hive 

 which was not protected by a wind- 

 b) eak. 



The two-story unpacked hive, un- 

 protected by a windbreak, had 42,375 

 bees in the fall, and 40,850 in the 

 spring, or a loss of 1,525. The two- 

 story unpacked hive which was pro- 

 tected by a windbreak, was one of the 

 weakest colonies in the fall, having 

 only 17,184 bees in the fall, but in 

 the spring it has 21,213, showing a 

 gain of 4,029. It will be noted here 

 that the colony in the windbreak win- 

 tered better than the corresponding 

 colony in the open, and the superior- 

 ity of the two-story hive over the one- 

 story hive for wintering is vei-y plain- 

 ly shown. 



The hive in the packing case, which 

 was in the open was blown over dur- 



The recording mechanism which makes a record of the change in weight 



ing a hea\'y wind and so seriously in- 

 jured that it cannot be considered in 

 these results. However, the packed 

 hive in the windbreak very plainly 

 shows whether or not packing paid. 

 It had only 26,250 bees in the fall, 

 but when the spring weighing was 

 made it was found that there were 

 73,825 bees in the hive, or a gain of 

 47,575 bees. 



The results obtained from the 

 packed hive showed that the packing 

 was more valuable during the open 

 winter of 1920 than it had been dur- 

 ing any of the four years during 

 which this experiment has been car- 

 lied on. 



The continuation of the evidence 

 showing the value of a windbreak, 

 plenty of stores, and the superiority 

 of the two-story hive over the one- 



story hive, indicates that those are all 

 valuable factors to be considered in 

 wintering bees. 



The internal mechanism of the scale 



THE HONEYBEE AND COLOR 

 VISION 



By Geo. D. Shafer 



Does the honeybee possess color 

 vision? In substance this question 

 has been asked many times by many 

 people — by practical beekeepers, by 

 botanists, by zoologists, and by physi- 

 ologists. Some have answered "yes" 

 to the question; others have answered 

 "no," and others still are of the opin- 

 ion that neither answer has yet been 

 made with certainty — with evidence 

 that is quite convincing. It might be 

 supposed that this question would be 

 of first interest to the beekeeper, the 

 zoologist, or the physiologist, but it 

 seems to have been a botanist wno 

 really published the first answer. 

 Chr. K. Sprengle, in 1793, expressed 

 the view that the insect is allured 

 from afar by the color of the whole 

 flower, and when it comes close to the 

 flower, that color stripes and flecks of 

 color on the petals or other parts 

 show the insect the way to the "honey 

 container" or nectary. Eighty years 

 ater (1873) Herman Muller said that 

 under similar conditions one kind of 

 flower was visited the more often by 

 insects the more pleasing it was to 

 them. He believed the flower per- 

 fume was a strong means of attrac- 

 tion, but he emphasized that insects 

 show a preference for colored flower,-;. 

 But it was not until 1876, when Dar- 

 win gave the weight of his great in- 

 fluence (and that of his experiments 

 v.ith bees on Lobelia) to this answer, 

 that it actually attracted much atten- 

 tion and began to obtain wide accept- 

 ance. In 1883 Lubbock published ex- 

 periments which he thought tended to 

 show that bees prefer blue to other 



