Publisht Weekly at US Michigan St. 



Geouge W. York, Editor. 



$1.00 a Year— Sample Copy Free. 



3 8 til Year. 



CHICAGO, ILL., JANUARY 6, 1898. 



No. 1. 



The Digestive Machiuery of Honey-Bees. 



By PROF. A. .T. COOK. 



We know from our study of Geology that early life-forms 

 In any branch of animals are simplest, and later gain more 

 and more in complexity. Aoaong insects, bees and their near 

 congeners were the latest to develop. Indeed, there were no 

 flowering plants until the Cretaceous Age — the age just before 

 recent time — and so of course there could have been no 

 flower-loving or nectar-sipping animals. As bees were so late 

 in their evolution, we should expect them to exhibit marvelous 

 development, not only as a whole, but also iu their various 

 organs. And such is the case to a most markt degree. I 

 know of no animals — nor need I except man in the stateilient 



surely have reason to place the bee away in the lead among 

 the marvels of God's creation. 



The bee's food is peculiarly refined and complex. Its 

 provident storing of food, social habits, long life, entire care 

 of the young, are exceptional among all the lower animals. It 

 fashions vessels for food depositaries, of incomparable mechan- 

 ism and beauty. It has lunch-baskets and dinner-pails that 

 challenges anything of man's device; while its brushes, its 

 pincers, as also its industry, may well give it a first place 

 among all God's creatures — man alone excepted. 



The food of bees is for the most part the very concen- 

 trated pollen of flowers, which, like meal and flour, is rich in 

 albumen, starch and oil ; and honey, or the transformed nec- 

 tar of flowers, which supplies the other element of a perfect 

 food regimen. To prepare such food, we should expect the 

 bee to possess a very highly wrought digestive organism. 

 When we add to this the fact that the young or larval bees 

 are wholly fed by the mature bees, and with a food so perfect 

 in its composition, combination and preparation that almost 

 all of it — essentially all — is assimilated, then surely we are in 

 way to appreciate the alimentary apparatus of the honey-bee. 



Once more, the queen-bee, also fed by the workers on 

 prepared food, possibly the same that nourishes the immature 

 bees, lays often 2,000 to 3,000 eggs daily. These actually 



Mr. J. M. i'dung and Atiinry, of Cass County, Nehrasha. — See pnge 



— where the development of so many organs is carried so far. 

 Man In his brain, and the hand that it directs, shows tran- 

 scendent modification. The bee in its mouth-organs — almost 

 all of them — in its glandular structures ; in Its leg develop- 

 ment ; in the very hairs that adorn it; in its wondrously 

 modified ovipositor ; and, lastly, in its marvelously modified 

 digestive organism, shows structural modifications that are 

 hardly surpast in all the realm of life. If we add to these the 

 functional differentiation into queen, male and worker, we 



weigh nearly double the queen's entire weight. Does this not 

 speak volumes for the excellence of the food given her, and of 

 the organism that prepares it? I have already shown to the 

 readers of the American Bee Journal how honey is the result 

 of action upon the nectar of flowers, by the secretion from the 

 large glands In the head and thorax, which is emptied Jnst at 

 the base of the tongue, and so mingles generously with the 

 nectar as it streams into the mouth en route for the honey- 

 stomach. This part of the bee's alimentary system and 



