, OLDEST BEE PAPER 

 IN AMERICA 



ESTABLISH ED^XXfl" 



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



VOL. XVII. 



CHICAGO, ILL., JULY 27, 1881. 



No. 30. 



Published every Wedne?day, by 



The queen is seen to lay 3 or 4 eggs 

 per minute, and the apiarist, by add- 

 ing comb with empty cells, proves 

 that she may lay as many as 4,000 

 eggs der day. Aristotle was correct, 

 then, in calling the queen the mother, 

 and Virgil wrong in pronouncing her 

 THOMAS G. NEWMAN, ' to be the king Her hatred to rivals 



is easily shown by the certain combat, 

 fatal to one of them, when two queens 

 are placed together. This enmity in- 

 duces swarming, as bees rarely suffer 

 x plurality of queens in the same hive 



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Read before the Entomological Society. 



Relation of Apiculture to Science. 



PROF. A. J. COOK. 



I once heard a well-known profes- 

 sor and scientist, than whom there is 

 no better student of American agricul- 

 ture, remark, that the art of agricul- 

 ture was founded almost wholly upon 

 empiricism ; and that all it had to 

 thank science for was that the latter 

 explained what had already been de- 

 termined by the empiric method. 

 Whether this be true or not, the re- 

 verse is most certainly true of prac- 

 tical entomology. Economic entomol- 

 ogy rests almost wholly upon science. 

 Fear deters most people from bee- 

 keeping, unless a desire to study bees, 

 and to know more of the nature and 

 habits of these marvels of nature, 

 impels to that close association with 

 bees, which practical apiculture de- 

 mands. 



For this reason, there is no class of 

 men engaged in manual labor pur- 

 suits which possesses the intelligence 

 and enthusiasm which characterize 

 apiarists, or which practices so much 

 that is really scientific. The success- 

 ful apiarist of to-day must be able to 

 inspect every part of his hives ; must 

 be constantly familiar with the pre- 

 cise condition of every colony of his 

 bees ; must be possessed of quick and 

 accurate powers of observation. Thus 

 we understand why science has gleaned 

 so much from practical apiculture. 



The nature of the several bees in 

 each colony, as to sex. function and 

 longevity, is now well known to every 

 intelligent apiarist. The peculiarity 

 of queen, drones and workers, and 

 the peculiar duties of workers of dif- 

 ferent ages, are matters of daily ob- 

 servation. 



In swarming the queen never leads, 

 yet the special place of clustering is 

 usually determined by the queen. 

 Unless the queen accompanies the 

 swarm, the latter will always return 

 to the hive. 



By clipping one wing of a virgin 

 queen, so that flight will ever after be 

 impossible, the bee-keeper quickly 

 proves the correctness of the great 

 Iluber's discovery, that queens al- 

 ways mate on the wing. The same 

 experiment proves the correctness of 

 Dzierzon's more wonderful discovery, 

 that drone bees are a result of agamic 

 reproduction. No queen whose wing 

 is clipped while yet a virgin, so far as 

 I have observed, and I have tried the 

 experiment many times, will ever lay 

 eggs that will produce other than 

 drone bees. It is also true that if a 

 queen is forced to virginity for 3 or 4 

 weeks, she will always remain a virgin. 

 Upon the queen's return from her 

 matmg flight, we may observe the 

 evidence of success, as she always if 

 successful bears away a portion of the 

 drone's reproductive organs, which re- 

 main attached to the queen for some 

 hours. 



It was a theory of the late Samuel 

 Wagner, that the placing of unim- 

 pregnated eggs in the larger cells of 

 the drone comb, and the impregnated 

 ones, in the smaller worker cells, was 

 simply automatic. The pressure of 

 the smaller cell upon the queen's ab- 

 domen, forced the sperm cells from 

 the spermatheca, as the eggs passed 

 by. As there would be no such press- 

 ure from the larger drone cells, the 

 spermatoza would not be extruded 

 from the spermatheca. Practical bee- 

 keepers have shown this to be untrue. 

 Queens have been seen to lay eggs 

 in the still larger queen-cells, whicii 

 are always impregnated. The queen 

 often lays in worker cells, where the 

 walls are but just commenced, and 

 where there is no compression ; yet 

 such eggs are always impregnated. 

 That the bringing of the sperm cells 

 into connection with the germ cells, 

 or the withholding of them, as the 

 eggs are to produce females or males, 

 is a matter of volition with the queen, 

 is sustained by the muscular character 

 of the spermatheca. It is a curious 

 fact, that young queens, when they 

 first commence to lay, often put sev- 

 eral drone eggs into worker cells, 

 though after the first day or two, they 

 generally deposit only impregnated 

 eggs for the first season. It seems 

 probable, that the muscles of the sem- 

 inal sack of the queen do not act ef- 

 ficiently until somewhat in practice. 



An anomalous physiological fact is 

 illustrated in the flight of the queen 

 when swarming takes place. Though 

 she may not have used her wings since 



her marriage flight, possibly for two 

 or more years, vet the muscles are by 

 no means atrophied, as shown by her 

 rapid flight, often several miles, en 

 route to her future home. 



The reason why a few impregnated 

 eggs develop into queens, while thous- 

 ands of the same produce worker bees, 

 appears to be wholly due to quality 

 and quantity of food. The enlarged cell 

 is necessary to a full-sized queen, but 

 not to a queen. The exceptional posi- 

 tion of queen-cells is simply for con- 

 venience, as it is not important. 



Direct observation, as also her re- 

 moval from the hive, shows that the 

 only function of the queen is to lay- 



eggs. 

 In; 



have known queens to lay with no 

 abatement of fertility for 5 years, 

 though often in one or two years she 

 ceases to be prolific, either from her 

 own impotency, or from a depletion of 

 the spermatheca, in which case only 

 drone bees are produced. Usually the 

 worker bees arrange to supersede the 

 queen before she becomes an exclusive 

 drone producer. 



Common observation proves that 

 the drones are males, that they are 

 great eaters, and that they have no 

 function in the economy of the hive, 

 except the sexual function. As al- 

 ready explained, the drone loses a por- 

 tion of his reproductive organs, in 

 mating, which is attended with im- 

 mediate death. 



Though doubt is sometimes ex- 

 pressed as to the origin of drones by 

 parthenogenesis, there is no such 

 doubt among intelligent apiarists. If 

 the wing of the virgin queen is clipped, 

 or the entrance to the hive so con- 

 tracted that she cannot fly, or again, 

 if she is reared when there are no 

 drones, she will be, not sterile, but 

 from her eggs will come only drones. 

 Often these will be in the small cells, 

 when the drones will be no longer than 

 the workers. The eggs from fertile 

 worker bees, and also from old queens, 

 with depleted spermathecas, will like- 

 wise produce only drones. In appear- 

 ance and structure these drones are 

 every way normal. I have no doubt 

 but that they are functionally perfect. 

 There is an interesting fact con- 

 nected with the appearance and dis- 

 appearance of drones, whose explana- 

 tion seems to call for an intelligence 

 above instinct As the colonies be- 

 come very populous in spring, the 

 worker bees build drone comb, and 

 rarely even tear down and replace 

 worker with drone cells, and the queen 

 lays the unimpregnated eggs in such 

 cells, preparatory to rearing queens, 

 and to swarming. If we remove a 

 queen, none but drone comb will be 

 built. Now suppose a colony is strong 

 and preparing to swarm, and suddenly, 

 from lack of bloom, continuous rains 

 or great drouth, the secretion of nec- 

 tar suddenly stops. Honey gathering 

 of course ceases, brood-rearing is dis- 

 continued, and, not infrequently, the 

 bees kill all the drones, and even drag 

 the larva' and the pupa? from the cells. 

 As soon as the honey harvest is hope- 

 lessly cut short by the autumn 

 frosts, the worker bees commence at 

 once to bite and worry the drones, till 

 the latter are driven forth to die. But 

 if the colony be queenless, or if the 



queen has become superannuated, the 

 drones will be permitted to remain in 

 the hives all winter. The fate of the 

 drones hangs on the prosperity of the 

 colony. With rapid increase of bees 

 and honey they are safe ; adversity in 

 these respects, unless caused by loss 

 or impotency of the queen, betokens 

 their speedy extinction. 



Drones are tolerated in a strange 

 colony, which is not generally true of 

 either the queen or the workers. 



The longevity of drone bees, as we 

 have seen, is largely dependent upon 

 circumstances. There is good reason 

 to believe that they may live through 

 the entire season. 



The worker bees are imperfectly 

 developed females, whicii from receiv- 



ing less and different food while larva?, 

 are immature in their sexual develop- 

 ment. A worker larva, less than 3 

 days from hatching, will, if given 

 more and richer food, develop into a 

 queen. If an apiarist allows a colony 

 to go queenless for a long time, fer- 

 tile workers are almost sure to ap- 

 pear, from whose eggs, however, none 

 but drones are produced. Some api- 

 arists suppose that such workers re- 

 ceive, perhaps by accident, a richer 

 and more abundant pabulum. I have 

 wondered if this might not verify 

 Lamarck's idea of evolution. The 

 bee desires eggs, and the deeply felt 

 want induces the extra ovarian devel- 

 opment. 



The worker bees are shorter than 

 the drones and queen, and less robust 

 than are the drones. Their wings are 

 small but strong, and move very 

 rapidly in flight. When the bees are 

 angry the rapidity is still more 

 marked, and there is a corresponding 

 increase of pitch to the hum. 



The workers, as the name, implies, 

 do all the work of the hive, hence a 

 reason for their better developed man- 

 dibles, with which they cut comb, re- 

 move cappings and dig pollen from 

 the cells ; their longer tongues and 

 maxillae, with whicii they extract nec- 

 tar from deep tubular flowers, and the 

 deep baskets on their posterior tibiae 

 and basal tarsi, which are wanting in 

 the queen and drones, in which they 

 carry pollen and propolis to their 

 hives. As they protect the hives from 

 intrusion, they need and possess a 

 better developed sting than that of 

 the queen, which is only used in dis- 

 patching rivals. 



By the introduction of Italian bees, 

 which differ greatly in color from the 

 German or black bees, bee-keepers 

 have learned that the old bees, for the 

 most part gather the honey, pollen and 

 propolis, while the young bees remain 

 within the interior of the hive and se- 

 crete, the wax, build the comb, feed 

 the brood and cap the brood cells, 

 though the old bees will do the work 

 of the young ones if for any reason 

 the natural equilibrium of the colony 

 is destroyed. 



That bees possess and use the sense 

 of smell is obvious to the apiarist. If 

 he unite 2 colonies, they often engage 

 in fierce combat, which only termi- 

 nates when one of the parties is van- 

 quished. By smoking, sprinkling 

 with an essence, or otherwise giving 

 to both colonies the same scent pre- 

 vious to the union, perfect peace and 



