260 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUllE. 



Apr. 



that they can build more cells. Yes, they can, and 

 will sometimes; but, once get them at work again, 

 and see to it that neither the queen nor bees get 

 out of room, and they will stay and give us such a 

 yield of surplus tis will pay for all the trouble we 

 have had with them. O. G. Kussei.l. 



Afton, Chenango Co., N. Y., Feb. 8, 1886. 



Many thanks for the valuable facts you 

 give, friend Russell. Something in regard 

 to this matter has already appeared in our 

 back volumes, but 1 believe we have never 

 had any thing as straight and direct as the 

 testimony you give. 1 have heard the drones 

 humming in the air, just the Avay you men- 

 tion, but I could not get a glimpse of them. 

 What astonished me at the time was, that 

 there seemed to be such a very great multi- 

 tude of them ; in fact, 1 could hardly con- 

 ceive how there could be drones enough in 

 several square miles to make such a roaring 

 as I heard, and I believe yon are rightabout 

 it. This makes it an easy thing for queens 

 to be fertilized quickly and surely, but it 

 also makes it a difficult matter to get pure 

 queens while there are bees in the woods, or 

 in apiaries, even several miles away. — Re- 

 turning swarms to the parent colony will 

 doubtless work well where there is only a 

 moderate yield of honey ; but where sw^aim- 

 ing gets to be a mania, I think it would only 

 complicate matters by making swarming 

 incessant. 



EGG-LAYING OF QUEENS. 



SOMETHING FUltTHEIl ON THE SUliJECT, BY FKIEND 

 CH.\RLES DADANT. 



TN answer to my article of Feb. 1, p. 9.5, Mr. Cook 

 j^ says that he doubts that animals drop eggs, " at 

 ^t just such a time, irrespective of surroundings." 

 -*■ Well, let him put a laying hen under a box for 

 34 houi's, and he will see her unable to prevent 

 her egg from dropping, although she would have 

 preferred to lay It in her nest. If aiien is unable to 

 keep her Ggg, how can a queen-bee, which, accord- 

 ing to Mr. Frank Cheshire (Becf^ and Dee-ltecping), 

 lays, in 21 hours, twice and even four times her 

 weight in eggs? 



For at least half a century, some French bee- 

 keepers, with straw hives, have been accustomed to 

 make artificial swarms bj' drumming out part of the 

 bees. In order to ascertain <he presence of the 

 queen in the swarm, they put it, for a few minutes, 

 on a black cloth. The white eggs, which the queen, 

 if present, has dropped on the cloth, are easily seen, 

 and show whether the operation has succeeded. 

 According to the theory of Mr. Cook, as accepted by 

 the leading bee-keepers on both continents, the 

 queen not only knows the sex of her eggs while lay- 

 ing, but she knows, also, that her sons will be larger 

 than her daughters; she knows I hat the colony has 

 no need of drones before the swarming season; and 

 she is endowed with such presence of mind ihat she 

 does not make any mistake — laying drone-eggs in 

 large cells, and worker-eggs in narrow cells. Yet, 

 according to Mr. Cheshire, the brain of the queen is 

 small, as is also the brain of the drone, and conse- 

 quently the queen is far from being as intelligent 

 as the workers, whose brain is comparatively large, 

 and which, by their building of comb, their gather- 

 ing and storing of provisions, their care of the 

 brood and of the hive, etc., show that this enlarging 



of brain corresponds with an increase of Intelli- 

 gence. Yet this intelligence of the workers is not 

 sufficient to enable them to discern a drone-larva 

 from a worker-larva, since they mak«, sometimes, 

 the blunder of trying to raise queens with drone- 

 larviP. Is it admissible, that, although less intelli- 

 gent than the workers, the queen would know bet- 

 ter the sex of her offspring? I think to be able to 

 explain the whole process of this laying of the 

 queens without resorting to imagination or the su- 

 pernatural, by referring only to a natural law. 



To keep e\ery thing in its place; to perform every 

 chemical change; to preserve the life of every be- 

 ing; to insure the perpetuity of every kind, nature 

 uses a single force, or power — attraction. It is the 

 same force which keeps the innumerable worlds of 

 the universe in their relative positions to each oth- 

 er; which keeps the earth and the planets revolving 

 around the sun, the moon around the earth, and 

 prevents uU the matter composing our planet from 

 dispersing into space. It is the same force, also, 

 which attracts the slim sprouts of a potato, forgot- 

 ten in the cellar, toward the dim light of the win- 

 dow; the same force which attracts the rootlets of 

 plants to the bits of manure scattered in the soil; 

 the same which directs the anthers of some flowers 

 to bend toward the pistil to sjn-ead on it their fecun- 

 dating dust. It is the same force which, under the 

 names of appetite, desire, love, instinct, etc., directs 

 the animals toward the acts which keep them alive 

 and perpetuate their kinds. All these acts are ac- 

 complished Llindly by the animals. Nature docs 

 not take the trouble to tell the cow, "You will 

 nurse your calf, to keep it alive and growing." Na- 

 ture' does not say to the calf, '• You will suck and 

 eat, to live and grow." She gave to the cow the 

 blind desire of nursing her calf; and she gave to 

 the calf the blind appetite for sucking and eating, 

 and she remunerates both with a pleasure. For not 

 only does nature use attractUrii to attain her aims, 

 but she remunerates with a sense of pleasure the 

 gratification of every desire. Such being the ivni- 

 vernal and unique Jaw used by nature to direct the 

 acts of all beings, lot us see how it works with bees. 



As soon as a queen experiences a desire to meet a 

 drone, she goes out of the hive. She does not think, 

 " I will have my spermatheca filled with spermato- 

 zoids, then I will use these spermatozoids, one after 

 another, to change the sex of my eggs; for I know 

 that, if not impregnated, they would hatch drones 

 only, and drones are not able to do the woik of the 

 hive." Such would be her reasoning, if we were to 

 adopt the theory of the free will of queens. To 

 meet a drone the queen goes blindly, excited by her 

 desire; and afterward she blindly impregnates her 

 eggs, experiencing, also, the desire of their impreg- 

 nation, and is remunerated with a pleasure. This 

 act of fecundation being double, the desire ought to 

 be double also. The desire for this impregnation is 

 easily proved by the fact, that, in earlj' spring, all 

 the eggs which a queen lays are worker, or impreg- 

 nated, deposited in narrow cells. The queen avoids 

 the large cells given by the beekeeper, who wants 

 drones. As her eggs don't mature very fast, she 

 takes time to select narrow cells. But later, when 

 the eggs drop at the rate of one every ten or fifteen 

 seconds, she is compelled to lay them as they come, 

 not having time to hunt for small cells, in which she 

 could more readily make the necessary motions to 

 impregnate her eggs. 



This desire also explains how a queen never com- 



