Oct. 1. 1911 



585 



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At Borodino, New York 



BEE-STINGS. 



"Can you tell nie what becomes of a bee 

 after it has stung some one? I never stop- 

 ped to think about it until the other day, 

 when an old bee-keeper told me that every 

 bee which inflicts a sting is of no use after- 

 ward, for stinging causes it to die soon after- 

 ward. Then I thought of having seen the 

 poison-sac, and apparently part of the vital 

 parts of the bee, adhering to a sting which 

 was left in some mittens I w ear when work- 

 ing with the bees, and ho\v the sac was 

 working, contracting, etc., to pump all the 

 poison possible into the wound made by the 

 sling." 



" Until a few years ago most persons had 

 this idea, arguing that, in leaving the sting, 

 as a bee nearly always does when attacking 

 an animal or person, and with it part of the 

 intestines, poison-sac, etc., the result would 

 surely be the death of the bee. This seem- 

 ed so reasonable that for many years I felt 

 that the prevailing idea was true, until one 

 day, after a bee had stung me, leaving its 

 sting, it came to the attack again and again, 

 with all the fury and vengeance possible, 

 getting in my hair and angrily singing in 

 such a way as to make the cold chills run 

 up. and down the back of any but the most 

 hardened individual." 



"Yes, I know something of this. One 

 day toward night I was working with my 

 bees, with my veil and mittens on, when 

 the hired man approached to ask a question. 

 An angry bee, M'hich had been hovering 

 about, Hew into his hair just behind his ear. 

 He began to jump into the air, and then 

 started to run around the house. I thought 

 that, as soon as he reappeared, I would kill 

 the bee before it reached the skin and had 

 a chance to sting. I had hardly gotten to 

 where I knew he would come, before he was 

 there, shouting frantically, 'Kill him!' I 

 had my hand raised to find the bee, but he 

 could not wait to listen to that singing any 

 longer, and he jumped into the air again, 

 yelling more frantically, if possible, 'Kill 

 him! Kill him!' going around the house 

 with a more accelerated speed than before. 

 When he came in sight again he halted bare- 

 ly long enough to hear that sweet song once 

 more, when he was off on another circuit 

 around the house, yelling with every bound, 

 'Kill him! Kill him!' The next time he 

 halted, and I heard an agonizing groan or 

 two, and then, 'Oh! I'm stung!' when he 

 allowed me to capture the bee and take out 

 the sting. I do not know that I ever had 

 any thing amuse me as that did, even in 

 spite of my sympathy for him. I knew 

 something of how he felt; but the fact that 

 he did not stop for me to get the bee out of 

 his hair, and that he was, for the time, so 

 utterly bereft of any reason, just from the 

 siren song of one little bee, was too much 

 for me." 



"Yes, these experiences have an amusing 



as well as a pathetic side: but I want to tell 

 you more about the bee losing its life from 

 parting with its sting, and what pulls away 

 with it. As the bee to which I referred, 

 which was singing in my hair, ai)i)arently 

 had no thought of dying, I carefully disen- 

 gaged it and caged it with four or five others, 

 just as bees are caged with a queen for ship- 

 ment. At the end of a week there were no 

 dead bees in the cage, and, so far as I could 

 see, there was no difference in any of them, 

 as the white thread-like substance generally 

 left at the i)oint of the abdomen after a bee 

 parts with its sting had all become dried up 

 or absorbed by this time. 



"At another time, when putting up queens 

 to send to Southern Texas (a journey which 

 often takes a week or more) , a bee stung me 

 on the end of the finger, and immediately 

 ran into the cage. It occurred to me that 

 here would be a chance to test the theory of 

 the death of a bee from the loss of its sting. 

 Accordingly I marked this cage, and wrote 

 the person, to whom the queens were going, 

 about its contents, asking him to take par- 

 ticular notice of this cage to see if there 

 were any dead bees in it. In due time the 

 rejily came that the shipment reached him 

 in perfect order, without a single dead bee 

 in that jnirticular cage nor in any other. 



"Several times since then I have tried 

 similar experiments to see if such bees as 

 had lost their stings were in any way incon- 

 venienced thereby; and, so far as I can tell 

 by means of confining them so as to know 

 that I had the same bee, I can see no differ- 

 ence in longevity between such bees and 

 those which" have their stings. ^Yhelher 

 they are of any use as honey-gatherers, or 

 whether they are allowed to live in the hive 

 without their weapon of defense, is not 

 known. 



' ■ But before we part I want to say a word 

 about getting the sting out of the flesh as 

 soon as possible, so that all the poison in 

 the sac may not be pumped into the system, 

 thereby making ten times the pain and 

 trouble necessary. My way of extracting 

 the sting is to rub it out by a drawing mo- 

 tion against the clothing, if on the hands; 

 and by a sliding motion of the hand, against 

 and under the poison-sac, when on the face 

 or any other part of the body. These mo- 

 tions will soon become automatic if adhered 

 to, and the sting may be rubbed or pushed 

 out so quickly that very little i^ain will be 

 felt." 



Filed Pin For a Grafting-tool. 



On p. 738, Nov. l'i, 1910, I described my pin trans- 

 lerring-needle. Since then I have devised a better 

 one. The improvement consists in filing the pin- 

 head sidewise, and on the end, leaving two small 

 points. The trouble with the old one was in get- 

 ting the larva on the pinhead and also in getting it 

 olT. There is no trouble with the new one. Set the 

 pin in the end of a stick at a slant, with the points 

 standing crosswise, and then you can catch them 

 either way. 



Salem, N. J. 1Ie>-ry Bassett. 



