DEVOTED TO SCIENTIFIC BEE-CULTURE AND THE PRODUCTION AND SALE OF PURE HONEY. 



VOL. XVII. 



CHICAGO, ILL., APRIL 13, 1881. 



No. 15. 



Mr 



Published every Wednesday, by 



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For the American Bee JournaL 



The Clover Experiment. 



E. E. HASTY. 



The kindly notice of myself in No. 7 

 of the Bee Journal moves me to give 

 its readers an account of wh it I am 

 trying to do. It is evident to all on a 

 slight examination that the red clover 

 secretes a large percentage of the honey 

 yielded by the entire flora of the North- 

 ern States. It is also evident that the 

 most of it goes to waste, because it lies 

 provokingly just a little further down 

 than the honey bee can possibly reach. 

 Bees work at red clover somewhat as 

 boys work at barrels of molasses, getting 

 a little taste while shut out from the 

 grand supply within. In the direction 

 of getting this immense store of choice 

 honey three different lines of effort are 

 being prosecuted. The tirst, which will 

 be immediate in its results if success- 

 ful, is that of Messrs. Jones & Benton, 

 of taming and importing the Apis dor- 

 sata. For this expensive attempt we 

 owe them a tribute of gratitude, whether 

 they succeed or fail. It seems, how- 

 ever, most likely that this effort will re- 

 sult practically in failure. The dorsata 

 is likely to refuse to live in a hive. That 

 difficulty being surmounted, it is still 

 more likely to perish, even in a hive, 

 during a northern winter. Even if suc- 

 cessfully wintered, it is still liable to 

 have demerits that will keep it from be- 

 ing of any practical use to us. 



Another line of effort is that of devel- 

 oping and crossing our present races 

 of bees with intent to produce a bee 

 with a longer ligula. The right man 

 and a sufficient number of years being 



tiven, something could undoubtedly be 

 one in this line. Our bees already 

 reach the bottom of some diminutive 

 clover tubes in the fall of the year ; and 

 every improvement would enlarge the 

 number that could be fathomed. Bees 

 also lick some honey from the inner 



surface of clover tubes, in which they 

 cannot reach the bottom, and every 

 improvement would enable them to get 

 more. But to get all the honey in the 

 present red clover the length of a bee's 

 ligula would have to be nearly doubled 

 —a practical impossibility, most likely. 

 We may suppose that nature has 

 already developed this organ pretty 

 nearly up to the limit its structure ad- 

 mits of. • 



One other line of effort remains. The 

 corollas of flowers are among those ob- 

 jects in nature that are most easily mod- 

 ified by human agency. It is probable 

 that we can produce a clover which 

 shall retain the good qualities of the 

 well known farm clover, and differ from 

 it by having a short-tubed flower that 



in their tube length. In June the av- 

 erage is about 42-100 of an inch, and the 

 extreme range about from 39 to SO. Late 

 blooms are somewhat shorter. A vig- 

 orous plant, with no bad points about 

 it, having flower tubes considerably 

 shorter than the average, must be ob- 

 tained and seeds gathered from it. The 

 initial difficulty to be sur.nounted is 

 this : Nearly all the seedlings from this 

 chosen plant will fail to have short 

 tubes like the present ; they will have 

 tubes of average or more than average 

 length. Just a few out of many seed- 

 lings will more or less resemble the 

 parent in the desired respect. One of 

 these must be chosen to raise seed from, 

 and the process must be repeated many 

 times until the tendency to long-tubed 



Linodendron tulipif era — often called Poplar, in the South. 



the bees can reach the bottom of. I do 

 not know whether I was the first to 

 suggest this plan or not. My first 

 printed article on the subject was pub- 

 lished in the August number of Glean- 

 ings for 1879. I had, the previous June, 

 spent considerable time in selecting 

 clovers in the fields, and had trans- 

 planted to the garden most of the ten 

 samples that form the basis of my pres- 

 ent kinds. It matters but little, how- 

 ever, who was the first to move in the 

 matter ; the idea has now spread 

 abroad among the bee-keepers in both 

 continents, and there is a fair prospect 

 that some substantial results will fol- 

 low. 



As to the mode of operating, the first 

 thing is to obtain a plant, or plants, to 

 start from. Clovers vary considerably 



flowers is bred out. From the most 

 tractable sample I now have, most of 

 the seedlings produced tubes percepti- 

 bly shorter than the average last sum- 

 mer. This is as far ahead as I have got 

 yet in the long but interesting task. 

 The plant of this sample chosen for the 

 parent of the next generation had a 

 tube length of about 36 — not quite so 

 short as the original plant, to be sure, 

 but some hundredths should be allowed 

 for the difference of circumstances. The 

 original was half choked and starved 

 by weeds and a poor soil, while this is 

 very luxuriant. While breeding out 

 the tendency to long tubes, from time 

 to time little positive gain can be hoped 

 for among the choicest seedlings. These 

 must be held and bred into permanence, 

 as at first, until the desired length is 



reached. If we can perfect a clover 

 that will have all its tubes as short as 

 32 we can no doubt improve the honey 

 bee up to that point. I once held a 

 clover head in my hand, the tubes of 

 which I had filled with syrup, and a 

 bee directly under my eye emptied one 

 to the depth of 32-100. I have four dif- 

 ferent samples of clover that have 

 yielded some heads with tubes as short 

 or shorter than 32. If, however, we 

 can perfect a clover having a tube- 

 length or not over 21, then all our bees, 

 good, bad and indifferent, can take 

 their fill. 



I think that every apiarist, possessed 

 of any taste or talent in that direction, 

 should give a little time and thought to 

 something in the way of improvement 

 for the common cause — some honey 

 plant, or some improvement of the bee, 

 or some new importation, or some im- 

 provement of things used in the apiary, 

 or some new method of apiary work. 

 No one can cultivate all the wide fields, 

 but each can cultivate some little nook 

 or corner. Inside the apiary I choose 

 the native brown bee for my corner. I 

 really don't think he has had a fair 

 chance as yet, and so I incline to let 

 others attend to the imported races. It 

 surely cannot do any harm to the cause 

 to try the effect of a little good breed- 

 ing on all the races of bees that come 

 to hand. 



Richards, O. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Stingless Bees— Meliponas, Etc. 



DR. WM. R. HOWARD. 



The Meliponas, according to Mr. F. 

 Smith, in a paper on Brazilian honey 

 bees, read before the Entomological 

 Society of London, March, 1863, "are 

 insects having wings shorter than the 

 abdomen, the latter being convex and 

 oblong ; their mandibles never being 

 denate ; while the Trigonas have the 

 wings more ample, and longer than the 

 abdomen, which is short and somewhat 

 triangular, while the mandibles are 

 serrated, denticulate, or sometimes ed- 

 entate. The Meliponas are restricted to 

 the new world, while Triyona extends 

 into Africa, India and Australasia." 

 " Gardner, in his travels, gives a list 

 of such species (of Melipona) as he met 

 in the provinces of Piauhy and Goyaz, 

 where he found them numerous ; in 

 every house he says, 'you find the honey 

 of these bees;' many species, he tells 

 us, build in the hollow trunks of trees, 

 others in banks ; some suspend their 

 nests from branches of trees, whilst one 

 species constructs its nest of clay, it be- 

 ing of large size. The honey, he says, 

 of this species is very good." (Smith.) 



" M. Griierin found six females in a 

 nest of Melipona fulvijies." 



In a nest of Trigona carbonaria from 

 Eastern Australia, Smith, of the Brit- 

 ish Museum, found from 400 to 500 dead 

 workers crammed in the spaces be- 

 tween the combs, but he did not find a 

 single female among them- the combs 

 are arranged precisely similar to those 

 of a common wasp. The number of 

 honey-pots, which are placed at the foot 

 of the nest, amounted to 250. Hill 

 states in Gosse's Naturalistic Sojourn 

 in Jamaica, " that the wax of these 

 bees is very unctuous and dark colored, 

 but susceptible of being whitened by 



