24 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jan. 1 



and find the work of his Hfe broken into by- 

 some Jack of all trades? To my mind there 

 is nothing more hurtful than the arguments 

 advanced by some writers in defense of this 

 species of brigandage. I think our associa- 

 tions should take some action on the ques- 

 tion, and, by severely condemning the prac- 

 tice of encroaching on the territory of those 

 who are already established, set a moral ex- 

 ample and a precedent. 



Another thing I wish especially to speak 

 of is the mating of queens in the so-called 

 baby nuclei. I myself have mated them in 

 small nuclei like those spoken of, but they 

 require a good deal of watching, and more 

 skill than the larger nuclei, and the young 

 queens can not be kept for a considerable 

 time without special care. I find it abso- 

 lutely necessary to keep queens on hand at 

 any time ready to replace a played-out or 

 poor queen with, and I think most bee- 

 keepers find it profitable to do hkewise. For 

 this class of bee-keepers the baby is not of 

 much value, and I am sure it is a mistake to 

 recommend it to any but those who possess 

 considerable skill in handling and rearing 

 queens— not that it can not be used to good 

 advantage by the large bee-keeper who has 

 the requisite patience and skill; but a great 

 many, indeed, can not hope to succeed vjith 

 it, and it is not right to urge this class to 

 waste time and money with it. I should not 

 have mentioned this, but I feel sure, from 

 the prominence given it of late, that a good 

 many will be induced to try it; and you 

 know as well as I do, or even better, that, 

 in many cases, failure is assured, and at 

 best it is of doubtful value to the honey- 

 producer who has no great skill in queen 

 breeding and mating. 



OBJECTIONS TO A BROOD-NEST TOO SHALLOW. 



Another thing I wish to call your atten- 

 tion to. In your footnote to my article in 

 the July 1st issue of Gleanings you say if 

 two bodies are used it would obviate some 

 of the objections; but you fail to state what, 

 in your opinion, the objections are. How- 

 ever, I presume that you imagine the queen 

 would lay in the sections, and that pollen 

 would be stored there, and, being too small 

 for a brood-nest, would cause dwindling of 

 the working force; and, indeed, this would 

 be the case if a good many of the fellows 

 who write had to manipulate the colony, 

 both before and after its preparation for 

 comb-honey work; but in my whole experi- 

 ence and practice it has never been the case, 

 even once. There might be something in 

 locality in this respect, but I doubt it. I 

 think there is more in the man and his way 

 of doing things. However, I can not ex- 

 plain in this article. 



Vigo, Texas. 



[If overstocking has been seriously advo- 

 cated in these columns, without a protest, I 

 did not know it or had overlooked it. I 

 have frequently said that, in many localities 

 I had visited, too many bees were plainly 

 responsible for cutting down the honey- 

 yields to an extent that was almost alarm- 



ing. As I said to friend Doolittle in our is- 

 sue for Dec. 1, such i-el'erences ought to be 

 accompanied by the page and issue of the 

 journal in order that we may see exactly 

 what is said. 



It may be that a caution is needed in re- 

 gard to the use of baby nuclei for keeping 

 queens. Our use of them has been confined 

 entirely to the matter of having them mat- 

 ed. As soon as they were surely laying 

 they were taken and another virgin would 

 be given them. We have never tried them 

 for keeping queens for any great length of 

 time. 



Regarding the use of two shallow brood- 

 nests, you in your last paragraph have an- 

 ticipated the objections I had in mind. In 

 some localities, and particularly with some 

 bee-keepers, the pollen difficulty is a serious 

 one. Even Dr. Miller has complained that 

 a brood-nest as deep as the present Danzen- 

 baker caused pollen to be forced up into the 

 sections. — Ed.] 



THE WINGS OF THE BEE. 



I.— The Evolution of the VeEation. 



BY E. F. PHILLIPS, PH.D. 



Careful students of insect life have recog- 

 nized that the veins of the wings of various 

 insects resemble each other ; and numerous 

 efforts have been made to refer the wings of 

 all orders back to a hypothetical type. Ac- 

 cording to the theory of evolution, all forms 

 of insects have probably descended from one 

 species; and the effort has been made to 

 discover, if possible, what the wings of this 

 primitive form were, so that we can more 

 nearly discover the relationships existing 

 between the forms living to-day. There are 

 certain features in the venation of the wings 

 of insects which occur in all the more gen- 

 eralized species, so that we are warranted 

 in regarding them as typical of all insect 

 wings, and therefore probably inherited from 

 the hypothetical ancestors of the insects 

 now living. Veins of the wings are of spe- 

 cial interest to the entomologist, since they 

 arc useful in so many cases in identifying 

 species; and for this reason the veins Jhave 

 been much studied. It is scarcely necessary 

 to add that we shall probably never know 

 very much about the ancestors of insects; 

 but any evidence which can be found by 

 comparing the forms now living are of great 

 value in studying new forms. 



Comstock and Needham, in the American 

 Naturalist for 1898, in a very excellent se- 

 ries of articles discuss the relationships of 

 the venations of the different insect orders; 

 and to these articles the reader is referred 

 for additional information. I can at this time 

 present only the changes which have taken 

 place in the evolution of the wing of the bee 

 from the typical form. 



The typical insect wing is supported by 

 the following veins, beginning at the anteri- 

 or edge: Costa, C; sub-costa, Sc; radius, R; 

 media, M; cubitus, Cu ; and several anal 



