386 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Apr. 15 



The bottle bee mentioned by Dr. Riley is 

 doubtless one of the stingless Melipotias, 

 numerous species of which are common in 

 the West Indies and South America. I 

 hardly think that it is the rule with any of 

 these species that "two or three, or even 

 five eggs are inclosed in each cell," but the 

 case in which this would occur is probably 

 under conditions similar to those in which 

 we find queens of Apis mellijera depositing 

 numerous eggs in a cell. 



It will be of interest, I think, to tran- 

 scribe from my note-book the memoranda 

 regarding these queens. They are as fol- 

 lows: 



curious records of queens. 



Larnaca, Cyprus, 1886. 



(1) June 9 caged in a nucleus a queen; emerged June 2. 

 June 10 released. 



June 20, maied. 



June 22. tratcd again. 



July 4, laying. 



July 9, queen is putting 8 or 10 eggs in each cell of 

 the ce'iter comb; none in side combs; even 

 puts eggs in where there are larvie. 



July 12, bees are sealing brood which looks like 

 drone brood 



July 21, finely marked workers emerging. 



(2) Juue2. emerged, 



June 16. avipears to have mated. 



June 2i, mated again. 



July 5, laving. 



July 12, bees sealing brood. 



July 25, finely marked workers emerging. 



The above are simply records made at 

 the time. A word or two of explanation 

 may, therefore, be appropriate. 



I remember distinctly that these queens 

 were watched from day to day, and their 

 development and every thing which took 

 place in the nuclei holding them was noted 

 and remembered, so that I feel positive there 

 was no error in the observations. When I 

 wrote of a queen that she had mated, I posi- 

 tively saw her return to the hive with the 

 drone appendages attached to her body. I 

 knew that it was time for her to mate, and 

 was on the lookout for it. After her mat- 

 ing I confidently expected to find, within 24 

 to 48 hours, that she had begun laying, as 

 all conditions seemed favorable; and when 

 this did not take place my surprise was 

 great. I therefore stimulated these nuclei, 

 since I wished by all means to have the 

 queens ready at the earliest possible mo- 

 ment for shipment, and I remember dis- 

 tinctly that orders were waiting for them, 

 therefore I was hastening the production of 

 as many queens as possible in a short 

 space of time. In the case of No. 1. numer- 

 ous daily examinations were made after 

 the first mating, so that the familiarity 

 with this queen, and with what was going 

 On in the nucleus, was quite the same as 

 though it had been under continuous obser- 

 vation from daylight until dark, and it was 

 positively the satne queen that mated ten 

 days later. The same may be said, also, of 

 queen No. 2. I regarded these two cases as 

 so remakable that it was my intention to 

 publish some account of them. Many things 

 intervened to prevent this, including my 

 removal from Munich, Germany, to Carnio- 

 la, Austria, and the establishment there of 



"The Carniolan Apiaries," and my final 

 return, four years later, to this country. 



The publication inGravenhorst'sZ?^;//f5cA^ 

 illustrierte Bienenzeitung iov August. 1893, 

 of the record made by Mr. Befort of the sec- 

 ond mating of a queen in his apiary recall- 

 ed to my mind the notes in my old book, and 

 I presented the subject at a meeting of the 

 Entomological Society of Washington, June 

 7, 1894. I have not at hand this moment 

 the record published by the German jour- 

 nal mei^tioned above, but recollect that the 

 account seemed clear enough to indicate 

 that Mr. Befort had not been mistaken in 

 his observations, although I confess that, if 

 they had not been corroborated by my ob- 

 servations made seven years previously, I 

 fear I should have looked upon thtm with 

 some doubt. As it is, nothing could now 

 shake my belief that queen- bees occasional- 

 ly mate the second time. 



U. S. Department of Agriculture, 

 Washington, D. C, March 24, 1904. 



ACTUAT. EYE-WITNESS PROOP" THAT A QUEEN 

 WAS FERriLIZED THREE TIMES. 



On page 286, near bottom of first column, 

 Mr. Phillips asks if any readers will have 

 the patience to watch for evidences of two 

 impregnations ol the queen. I have noticed 

 this evidence of two marriage- flights, but I 

 did not know it was an unsettud question. 

 Last summer I put into use a glass sided 

 one frame nucleus or observation hive. I 

 fixed it in a window- screen in a storeroom 

 or pantry adjoining the kitchen. Amjng 

 the many little things investigated (some of 

 which I do not find mentioned in the bee- 

 books) were the economies of subsistence 

 and reproduction. 



A young queen on her twentieth day of 

 age (she could not fly out sooner because of 

 daily rains) came back to the hive with 

 copulatory organs of full size protruding. 

 She was immediately siezed, pushed, and 

 buffeted by a large number of bees in what 

 seemed an unfriendly manner. They were 

 trying in two parties, pulling in opposite 

 directions to extract the appendage. I then 

 opened the hive, and with a blunt knife 

 held the parts, when the tugging of the 

 bees at her head and body brought relief. 

 They then soothed and stroked her; but her 

 actions showed she was nervous and had 

 been pained. In an hour's time things had 

 become largely norinal. Then the queen, 

 which still seemed somewhat excited, went 

 out, and in about three minutes returned 

 with the same kind of appendage, which, 

 like the first, had fully penetrated. I had 

 changed my position, and could now inter- 

 cept her and prevent her from entering the 

 hive. Without difficulty I caught her in my 

 open hand — she seemed too much surprised 

 to escape — and by firmly holding her at the 

 thorax I drew out the protruding organ. 

 She bit me on the thumb. An examination 

 of both organs showed that they had been 

 pressed empty. I released her at the en- 

 trance and she entered the hive, but seemed 



