1S8(S 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Po 



to fomc out 1 would run and put a trap at the en- 

 trance, and by the time I could g-et my empty hive 

 in place with a lew frames of br<)()d from the par- 

 ent stock in it, and tlie foundation all ris'ht, the 

 bees would miss their (lueen and come back pell- 

 mell in search of her, and thus enter the new hive 

 at once. In about 23 minutes the bees were hived, 

 and went to work at once without further trouble 

 or ado, and I was back in the house with my sick 

 boy. In hiving- them thus T moved the old hi\e to a 

 new location, and put the new one in its place, and 

 let the queen run in with the bees. It was a beauti- 

 ful sig-ht to me, to see my golden Italians come 

 iwuring- in a stream, so to speak, from the top of a 

 tall elm-tree into their new hive, without any 

 climbing' of trees or sawing- olT limbs, thus saving- 

 ilisflg'uring- the symmetry and beauty of a favorite 

 shade - tree. I had no help, except a neighbor's 

 little boy. After doing- the chv)rcs at home he 

 would come over and stay a few hours in the mid- 

 dle of the day to watch my bees, and tell me when 

 they were swarming:. J do most truly and heartily 

 thank Mr. Alley for his invention, and I would 

 about as soon think of going- hack to the old g-um 

 hive as doing: without the combined drone and 

 fjuceu trap. We are having- a very mild winte)- so 

 far here in Texas. It has not been cold enough to 

 form ice worth speaking- of but once, and it all 

 melted long- before nig-ht. We had a nice rain this 

 evening-, with a little hail. Mks. S. E. Sherman. 



Salado, Te.vas, Jan. 1. 1«S(>. 



^Irs. S., I am very glad indeed to get this 

 report from friend Alley's drone -trap. I 

 know friend A. has spent a great amount of 

 time and money in experimenting, with the 

 end in view of getting a device that will do 

 jnst what you say his has done. 1 suppose, 

 too, you will excuse me for suggesting that 

 it was not an expert, either, or am 1 making 

 a mistakeV At any rate, my good friend, 

 you made the device work nicely, and surely 

 oiu" veteran bee-folks ought to be able to 

 do as well. 



EGG-LAYING OF QUEENS. 



SOMETHING KUKTHEli ON THE SUBJECT, BY ()L'1{ 

 GOOD FKIEND CH.\«LES DADANT. 



JN Gleanings for Jan. 1st, Prof. Cook writes 

 that the queens know what the sex of their 

 eggs is before laying, and that the dimension of 

 the cells has no influence on the sex, which de- 

 pends on the arbitrary will of the queen. He 

 admits that some j'oung queens lay drones in work- 

 er-cells, but he thinks that it is because they do not 

 know yet how to manage the delicate apparatus of 

 the spermatheca. To support his theory, he adds 

 that Sir John Lubbock has noticed that the female 

 wasps are provided with a wider knowledge, even, 

 than the bees; for not only do they know the sex of 

 their offspring, but they take care, also, to prepare 

 a greater number of spiders in the cells destined to 

 receive female eggs, than for male eggs, since the 

 female wasps are larger than the males. 



For at least twenty years I have practiced the rc- 

 l)laciug of drone comb by workercomb in the brood- 

 chamber. It is an easy matter now, since we ha\'e 

 the foundation; but before this invention 1 used to 

 buy all the comb of dead colonies, at my neighbors'. 

 The result was, that my colonies raised very few 

 drones. Occasionajly, and very exceptionally, a 



queen was found laying some drones in small cells; 

 but certainly more than nineteen queens out of 

 twenty did lay but vci-y few drones in some occa- 

 sional ilrone cells; yet these <iueens did not seem 

 dissatisfied with my depi-iving them of their option 

 of laying- dioneeggs. We have had a number of 

 (jueens which did not lay ;Mi drone-eggs in their 

 whole life: therefore it seems to me that a queen, in 

 good health, lays drone-eggs in drone-cells because 

 they ai-e greater; and worker-eggs in worker-cells, 

 because they are smaller; and that, if my queens 

 had had the volition of laying drones, they would 

 have lai<l drone-eggs in woi-ker cells, as some did at 

 limes. 



That llie <liniensioii (>\' the ceil has some intiucnce 

 on the se\ of eggs is so generally admitted, that 

 Mr. Cook himseir, in his scientiHe bee-book, i-ecom- 

 mends, with all the bee-writers, to replace the drone 

 comb in the brood - chamber with worker comb, 

 " not to get m.^ riads of those useless gormands." 



If the queens, while laying, were moved by the 

 desire to lay drones, as most writers pretend, our 

 replacing- of drone comb by worker-cells would be 

 useless. As for the young queens, I have often no- 

 ticed that, in the first weeks, some lay more or less 

 drone-eggs in worker-cells; but 1 have, every time, 

 noticed that thes-:^ young (|ueens were of small size, 

 and that this irregularity disappeared as soon as 

 they were fully developed. Therefore it was the 

 size of these .\oung queens, which, being too small 

 for the size or the depth of the cells, had compelled 

 them to lay drone eggs. The worker cells had acted 

 on these small queens as the drone-cells do towanl 

 large queens. Tlien in this case also the sex was 

 determined by tl'.e diinension oi the cells, and not 

 by the volition of the queens. 



IJiit there was a point which seemed to overthrow 

 all these infei-encts. The combs of the wasps have 

 all their cells of about the same dimensions; yet 

 the mother-wasps raise males and females; then 

 the dimension of the cells has no influence on 

 wasps, and the difference of the sexes may be the 

 result of the volition of the females. Such remarks, 

 which came several times to my mind, were a cloud 

 on the above theory, and Mr. Cook has just dis- 

 pelled it. 



The cells wliei-e the male wasps are -raised arc not 

 provided with as many spiders, hence they are not 

 so full as the cells where the females are raised. 

 Are Messrs. Cook and Lubbock quite certain that 

 such diflerence in the fullness of the cells, or in the 

 length of the vacant space in the cells, is not the 

 cause of the diffei-ence in the sex? 



When the eggs of animals are mature they don't 

 wait, but drop. Suppose that, when a mother-wasp 

 prepares a cell to receive her egg, the weather 

 ceases to be propitious for her hunt, or that the 

 spiders are not easily found; the cell is provided 

 with only half the spiders needed, yet the egg can 

 not wait, and has to be laid on these scant provi- 

 sions. Why not admit that such a condition of the 

 laying does not afford impregnation, and that the 

 result is a male wasp':" Who could say that this the- 

 ory is not as rational as the one which endows the 

 mother-wasp with the knowledge of her future off- 

 spring, and of its comparatively smaller or greater 

 needs? To sum up: As we can control thelayingof 

 our queen bj- replacing the drone combs with work- 

 er combs; as the young (jueens lay drone-eggs in 

 worker-cells as long as they arc undersized; as the 

 conditions of the cells in which the female wasps 



