354 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 1. 



not create. Possibly the swarming instirct or 

 impulse can be bred out : probably it can not. 

 The possibility justifies trying. If it can be 

 done at all, keeping the bees from swarming 

 by dividing, etc., for years — for generations 

 and generations of bees till they " forget," so 

 to speak, the swarming idea, because not us- 

 ing nor needing it, would seem to be the 

 method to adopt in order to produce ' ' non- 

 swarmers." 



Higginsville, Mo. 



[The name above, S. P. Culley, seems to be 

 new. I looked over the index of several dif- 

 ferent bee-journals, but I did not find this 

 name as one of the contributors. Neverthe- 

 less he writes as one having authority — that is 

 to say, as one who apparently understands 

 ■what he is talking about. I have been almost 

 inclined to believe that he is an old writer un- 

 der a now, deplume. As he hails from Hig- 

 ginsville, Mo., the place where the Progressive 

 Bee-keeper is 'published, perhaps the editor of 

 that paper could tell me. I do not dispute 

 Mr. Culley 's statements ; indeed, what he 

 says appears very reasonable ; however, as he 

 so kindly offers to furnish us " ample proof," 

 we shall be glad to have him do so, as the 

 knowledge of the actual cause might lead to a 

 remedy. — Ed.] 



THE DRAGON-FLY. 



The King-bird the Most Destructive of all the 

 Enemies of the Honey-bee. 



BY A. J. WRIGHT. 



Considering that I have not "travel-stained" 

 the pages of Gleanings since the June num- 

 ber of 1898, I may, perhaps, be pardoned for 

 taking a little of your time and space. 



It is said to be a fearful thing to teach. It 

 certainly is a fearful thing to write. The 

 writer of any article invites adverse criticism 

 and comment. My article in defense of the 

 dragonfly, page 471, called out some criticism 

 and comment, but I was pleased to note that 

 the critics confined their observations to 

 southern localities, and thus my position that 

 the dragon -fly is not an enemy to bees in 

 northern latitudes remains good. Now, I 

 honestly think the truth is just this : The 

 male dragon-fly is migratory — going south in 

 vast droves in autumn, and returning in spring. 

 The change in locality causes a desire for 

 change in diet, and the dragon-fly that in the 

 North in summer has feasted on mosquitos, 

 flies, and moths, in the South may live almost 

 exclusively on honey-bees. We know this 

 peculiarity exists in many of our migratory 

 birds, and is supposed to account in part for 

 changes in the marking of plumage. 



Speaking of birds, I consider the king-bird 

 the most persistent and destructive of all the 

 enemies of the honey-bee, of which I have 

 any knowledge. I have a kindly feeling 

 toward all of God's creatures, and will not 

 needlessly inflict pain upon any ; yet I always 

 feel a degree of satisfaction when I succeed in 

 bringing down this feathered glutton. It is 



very irritating to the bee-keeper to see this 

 bird launch into the air and into the bees' line 

 of flight, and, before retiring to its perch, pick 

 up a dozen or more, and then, after throwing 

 up the casting — as is done by all birds of prey 

 — return to the attack with an appetite appar- 

 ently as keen as ever; and when one considers 

 that a single bird is capable of consuming 

 upward of 100 bees daily, and that usually 

 the family consists of the parent birds and 

 from four to six young, we can easily under- 

 stand that a family or two of king-birds in 

 the vicinity of the apiary may mean the daily 

 destruction of thousands of bees ; and when 

 we follow the flight of the bees to some dis- 

 tant pasturage, and find on the way several 

 families of king-birds, all doing a thriving 

 business, one is led to wonder how bees can 

 be produced in sufficient numbers to make 

 good the loss. 



I have before me copies of Gleanings from 

 March 1, 1898, at which time I first became a 

 subscriber, to the present. I have been look- 

 ing them over in a general way, and propose 

 to comment upon some of the articles, refer- 

 ring to them by the title, and the page on 

 which they appear in Gleanings, 1898. 



WHAT KILLED THOSE BEES? (page 626). 



The editor gives it up - — thinks they might 

 have smothered, but doesn't see how they 

 could in the wire-cloth cage. This cage is 

 just what killed those bees. Much of the 

 wire cloth now in use is painted with green 

 paint containing Paris green. The moisture 

 and gases from a quantity of bees closely con- 

 fined will soften this paint enough to cause a 

 portion to enter the delicate breathing-organs 

 of the bees, and cause death, and this is par- 

 ticularly true if the wire has been recently 

 painted, and some dryer used in the paint. 



HOW BEES WORK IN THE DARK, ETC. (pages 

 221, 393). 



Oh, my ! what a grand time is being made 

 over the idea that bees can see in a dark hive, 

 and the queen lay eggs on opposite sides of 

 the comb, bringing the brood back to back ! 

 On page 221 the Roentgen rays are suggested 

 as a solution of the problem ; also that the 

 bees have two kinds of sight ; and even the 

 editor has dropped into both ideas as the only 

 way of accounting for it. The latter idea is, 

 of course, correct in the sense that one kind 

 of sight sees in the light and the other in the 

 dark. 



The article on page 393 repudiates entirely 

 the idea of Roentgen rays, and tells us that 

 the bees do fancy work in the dark on the 

 same plan that the little sightless children do 

 fancy work in a blind-asylum, and that the 

 bees, are probably, to all intents and purposes, 

 as blind as the patients in the asylum, through 

 whose optic nerves no ray of light has ever 

 penetrated to the brain. 



The mental acrobatic performances of the 

 editor excite one's admiration ; for, after hav- 

 ing accorded to the bee the power of double 

 sight, he now indorses the idea of total blind- 

 ness when working in the hive. Now, this is 

 too bad. 



The organ of vision of the honey-bee is not 



