1900 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



579 



the apparatus cost ? I have made many observations 

 similar to yours from time to time. 1 can give you 

 some figures on the length of the tongues of different 

 strains, which may be as interesting to you as they 

 are to me. The Italians are much ahead of any blacks 

 that I have ever measured, and I have had bees from 

 all over the United States. J. M. Rankin. 



Mich. Exp. Station, July 5. 



There, friend Raukin, give me your hand. 

 If there are two of us crazy, then we will take 

 the consequences. I shall be glad to get your 

 report so that we may see what you have ac- 

 complished. Worth publishing ! Perhaps if 

 the report were given to the world it might 

 show the impracticability of the scheme more 

 than any thing else. 



About the glossometer, J. H. Martin, then 

 of Hartford, N. Y., made an instrument for 

 measuring bees' tongues ; but outside of this, 

 and a little device I sent you, I know of no 

 others in existence. I do not know how 

 Martin measured tongues, but it seems to me 

 the most practicable method is to kill the bees 

 with chloroform, stretch the tongues out un- 

 der the microscope, and then measure with a 

 micrometer scale. I have done something of 

 this already, and believe the scheme is perfect- 

 ly practicable. 



With regard to your report, if you send us 

 nothing more than your measurements, show- 

 ing the tongues of different varieties of bees, 

 that will be all we will ask for the present. It 

 will give us data to work from, and possibly a 

 point to strive at. I would suggest that mea- 

 surements be given in hundredths of an inch 

 instead of the French system, which is so little 

 understood by common people as a rule. 



-ACTUAL MEASUREMENTS OF BEES' TONGUES 

 AT MEDINA. 



Later. — Mr. J. P. Moore, a queen-breeder of 

 Morgan, Ky., sent me four cages of bees that 

 I might measure their tongues. I also mea- 

 sured the tongues of bees of a Doolittle queen, 

 and tongues of some black hybrids from our 

 own yard. I expected to find a very great 

 variation, but I did not find it. All the 

 tongues I measured would reach easily -^-^\ 

 inch. By exerting a little pressure on the 

 head of a decapitated bee just chloroformed I 

 could get most of the tongues to stretch to iVg. 



Mr. F L. Sladen, in 1887, as reported in 

 Gleanings for that year, measured some 

 tongues of the Apis dorsata bees, and he 

 found these to be 4 millimeters long, or -^^'^ 

 inch. He also measured the tongues of Apis 

 mellijica, and found them to be 'o%. millime- 

 ters, which would be j\,\,. The latter, I sus- 

 pect, were the common black bees of England, 

 and we have always supposed that the tongues 

 of the pure blacks were much shorter than 

 those of pure Italians. From this it would 

 appear that Italians have longer tongues than 

 any other bees we know of. I should be glad 

 to measure the tongues of other bees that may 

 be sent in, and render a report through these 

 columns. 



My modus operandi is this : I first chloro- 

 form the bees, when they will stick their 

 tongues out, as they will always do when suf- 

 focated. They are next decapitated, when 

 the head and tongue are laid down on the fine 

 gradations of a micrometer scale. The whole 



is then viewed under a strong magnifier, and 

 the hundredths can then be counted off after 

 the tongue is stretched out with a dissecting- 

 tool. 



BEES with long TONGUES ; REDCLOVER 

 HEADS WITH SHORT COROLLA-TUBES. 



The following letter from Prof. E. C. Green, 

 of the Ohio Experiment Station, Wooster, in 

 line with what I wrote in our last issue, has 

 been received, and will bear careful reading 

 on the part of every one of our readers in re- 

 gions where red clover is grown : 



Friend Rooi.-^ln the last Gleanings you give an 

 interesting talk on how tons of hoaey might be saved 

 if there were only bees with tongues long enough to 

 reach the nectar in the blossoms of red clover. Your 

 solution of the problem is simple if'xt can he done, 

 and it will, perhaps, be some time. But while work- 

 ing in that direction it seems to me as if there were 

 another way the problem might be solved; and that 

 i'^, to raise a .strain of red clover with corolla tubes 

 short enough so that the bees we already have can 

 reach the honey. Apply your glossometer to the red 

 clover as well as the bees' tongues. I believe I am 

 safe in saying that the structure of plants can be 

 more easily varied in a given direction than animals. 

 Although red clover is not ujually selected, as in 

 many plants, down to the individual plant, there is no 

 reason why it can not be done. Let some clo.se ob- 

 server watch closely a field of clover ; and when he 

 finds a head that bees work on freely let him save 

 seed, and perhaps from this he may develop a kind of 

 red clover that will be of use to the bee, and then let 

 the bee-keepers furnish this seed to the farmer, as 

 you have suggested seed could be furnished free to 

 the farmer withiu a mile and a half of the apiary. I 

 feel satisfied that the farmers would be glad to plant 

 such seed if it were as good as other clover for their 

 p irpose, and A. I would boom it in his very best style. 

 Now offer a prize for a pound of " short-tube" red clo- 

 ver, or whatever you have a mind to call it, and work 

 at the problem from the other direction. 



Medina, O., July 6. E. C. Green. 



I have read Prof. Green's article over with a 

 good deal of interest, and it strikes me he has 

 given us a lead that we may well consider. 

 We know that we have already accomplished 

 something in the way of long tongued bees, 

 and we feel confident that we can do some- 

 thing more ; but from what Prof. Green writes 

 I should be inclined to believe much more 

 could be accomplished in the shortening of 

 corolla-tubes of red clover. I hope this mat- 

 ter may be taken up at the Ohio Experiment 

 Station, under Prof. Green's direction, and in 

 the mean time I hope our bee-keepers will be 

 on the watch for red-clover heads with short 

 tubes. Mark these in some way so that they 

 can be distinguished when they go to seed. 

 Preserve the seed carefully, and sow them in 

 a small patch next year. From this patch se- 

 lect again the shortest tubes, and thus continue 

 on until a short-tubed clover is developed. If 

 this kind of clover could be secured, the bee- 

 keepers could well afTord to furnish the farm- 

 ers the seed free, and the result would be that 

 such seed would be disseminated all over the 

 country. 



L. M. H., N. C. — The ordinary bee-martin 

 and king-bird are the only ones I know of 

 that do any damage in the apiary killing bees, 

 and they do no particular damage where no 

 queen-rearing is being carried on. We should 

 not suppose that ordinary martins would do 

 any harm whatever. 



