July, 1921 



G L P: A N I N G S IN BEE C U L T U R E 



431 



c 



Beekeeping as a Side Line 



Uf 



EA'^ERYONE 

 who takes 

 up beekeep- 

 ing for a side- 

 line must wish, 

 in a certain spir- 

 it of sturdy 

 curiosity, to 

 learn something 

 of bee anatomy, 



of the hidden intricacies of his pets, of 

 the way the little bodies do what they do. 

 And in the end, after having studied these 

 things, he is led thru the cool precision of 

 the scientific investigators to deep truths, 

 to marvels and mysteries and a glimpse of 

 endless processes; till the new knowledge 

 lifts his heartj even as poetry and beauty 

 have lifted it, to high places of reverent 

 wonder; provided, that is, that he learn with 

 his heart and spirit as well as with his 

 head. For the folding down of an array of 

 exact facts into few words is a prosy and 

 uninspiring affair; only a warm appreciation 

 finds the divineness within. 



Even the most careless observer knows 

 that the striped brownish little bee body is 

 made of a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. 

 But has the careless observer, who is often 

 a careless thinker, too, realized that the 

 little three-sectioned body has no skeleton 

 on which to hang its effective muscles — but 

 rather a hard outer cover to protect them? 

 And has he a clear-cut realization of what 

 inner organs and outer appendages each 

 part bears? And that the systems concerned 

 with digestion, nerves, circulation, and res- 

 piration run thru them all? 



The Head of the Bee. 



The head is triangular. On the toj) are 

 three simple eyes set in a triangle and at 

 the sides are two compound eyes, so large 

 that they round out the face and. in diones, 

 meet at the top of the head and force the 

 three small eyes down on the face near 

 where the delicate antennae are attached. 

 Down at the lower part are the mouth, lead- 

 ing to the oesophagus, and the various 

 mouth parts — mandibles that move sidewise 

 only, and the proboscis with its strange 

 complex parts that fold up out of the way 

 when not needed to take up liquid food 

 thru a central hairy tube with a tiny groove 

 on its under side. The brain is above the 

 oesojihagus. Then there are glands, salivary 

 glands and those other mysterious ones that 

 go on quietly functioning in their own ef- 

 fective way, while microscopes and chem- 

 ists and printing presses argue over their 

 use. Do these glands secrete the food fed 

 by the workers to the larvae Ttliey do, de- 

 clares one group) or does the larval food 

 come from the stomach of the workers (thus, 

 insists another group) ? It 's the war of 

 the Glands against the Ventriculus, and no 

 armistice yet, no victory for either — tho 

 right now the gland supporters seem press- 

 ing the enemy into a hotly-contested re- 



1 



Grace Alien 



^"^^^^^^^^ 



LJ 



treat. M e a n- 

 time, how well 

 the larvae are 

 being fed! 

 The Thorax. 

 Thru the in- 

 teiior of the 

 thorax on into 

 the abdomen the 

 oesophagus runs 

 its straight and narrow way; there are 

 nerves and air-sacs and blood; and on the 

 outside are legs and wings and the mighty 

 muscles that propel them. In the larval 

 stage the wings are mere thin little sacs; 

 then the sides grow together, the blood goes 

 back into the body and behold, the sacs be- 

 come dry membranes — two pairs of them, the 

 fore ones large, with powerful flight mus- 

 cles, the hind ones small, hooked to the edge 

 of the ones in front and moved by them. In 

 four directions they move, up and down, 

 forward and back. Strangely enough, the 

 flight muscles primarily change the shape of 

 the thorax, thus raising and lowering the 

 wings. (Yet, in spite of being dry mem- 

 branes with strange great muscles, wings 

 are forever wings!) 



As for the six legs, always when bees go 

 walking, moving two legs on one side and 

 one on the other, they have three legs left 

 to stand on, a goodly number indeed. All 

 these legs have claws at the ends, and be- 

 tween the claws is a sticky little pad to use 

 when walking on smooth surfaces, on the 

 sides of things or ujiside down. The legs 

 carry wonderful sets of tools: the front 

 legs have an apparatus to clean the an- 

 tennae; the middle ones an impressive-look- 

 ing spur to pry pollen off the hind leg; and 

 the hind leg itself the pollen baskets, be- 

 sides other handy appliances. Kach leg also 

 has a pollen brush. The front brushes take 

 the pollen from the head and mouth; the 

 second ones take it from the first and also 

 from the thorax; the third pair take it from 

 the second and also from the abdomen, and 

 then they pat it and push it and pack it 

 into the pollen baskets and bring it home. 



The Abdomen. 



The abdomen shows six segments plainly, 

 even to those who are quite unaware that 

 the head is made of se\eral larval segments 

 grown together, and that the thorax, not 

 content with the three that merged to make 

 it, has cooly annexed one abdominal seg- 

 ment, and that the abdomen itself has four 

 or five invisible ones modestly tucked out 

 of sight at the tip. The segments have 

 movable plates over and under them; on 

 the last four of these lower plates of the 

 workers appear the tiny drops of wax se- 

 creted by the wax glands. 



Within the abdomen are the same four 

 great systems found in the head and thorax, 

 the nervous system and those of digestion, 

 circulation, and respiration. Here are also 



