1^98. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



773 



for a long time to learn the habit ! Now I want to ask some 

 of you who are here, and who have had more experience, 

 whether any of you have seen wild bees of that kind — bees of 

 that description that came to your apiaries and carried off 

 honey. 



Mr. DeLong — Out in my country I have observed groups 

 of small, dark-striped bees that weren't any larger than a 

 house-fly. They were along the hedge-fences, and were in 

 numberless swarms — sometimes thousands in a swarm. I 

 wondered where they came from, and when I got to work ex- 

 tracting my honey I found a considerable number of them 

 <jead in the hives ; but I didn't find them carrying away 

 honey. When I was extracting they came and lit on the 

 combs as I was nandling them. They were little, black, slim, 

 long fellows, with stripes around the body. 



A Member — Is the yellow-jacket a bee ? 



Prof. Bruner — It comes pretty, close to being a bee ; it is 

 one of the wasps. I was going to speak of the cuckoo-bee. 

 What is meant by the cuckoo-bee is a parasitic bee. We have 

 certain species among our wild bees that live upon the labors 

 of other bees. The other bees make nests and carry a supply 

 of pollen and houey and fill the brood-cells ready for laying 

 their own eggs, and perhaps when there is just one more trip 

 necessary to be made before the cell is completed and ready for 

 receiving the egg, one of these cuckoo-bees will slip In and de- 

 posit an egg in the cell and get away before the rightful 

 owner gets back. The bee that has constructed the nest will 

 come back and deposit the last load of pollen and lay her egg 

 in the same place. The cuckoo-bee's egg hatches first into a 

 small grub, and eats the egg or the young larviB of the bee 

 that constructed the nest, and then goes on eating the food 

 that was provided. We have probably 150 or 200 species of 

 these cuckoo-bees. 



The bees of the one genus are parasites upon the leaf- 

 cutting bees ; on the other hand there are certain other bees 

 that live in the nests of the Andrlna, and that are called 

 Nomada, because of their habit of wandering around and lay- 

 ing their eggs in other bees' nests. This habit is much like 

 the habit of the cow-bird, which lays its eggs in other birds' 

 nests. Cow-bird eg^ have been found in the nests of over 

 100 other kinds of birds. The other birds sit upon and hatch 

 the strange eggs. In this same manner the cuckoo-bees are 

 brought up by the industrious bees of other sorts that are 

 willing to work. These cuckoo-bees have no pollen-brushes 

 on their legs ; they are not capable of carrying pollen them- 

 selves ; if they wanted to carry pollen for nests of their own, 

 they would not be able to do it, and so they must force other 

 bees to bring up their young. 



There are a great many other things in connection with 

 the wild bees that I might bring up, and that would no doubt 

 be interesting to you. If I were to carry the discussion of 

 the subject into the tropical countries, I certainly could bring 

 up something much more interesting than could be found in 

 this country. But time does not permit. What I should like 

 to impress upon you as bee-keepers Is this: Try to devote 

 just a little bit of time to the study of our native bees. I 

 think you will find that study very beneficial in carrying on 

 further work with the hive bee. We find that there are a 

 great many questions in connection with our work with the 

 honey-bee that are not settled. Many of us who might take 

 up this line of work are too busy in other directions. I am 

 sorry sometimes that I liave not confined my time to work 

 upon the honey-bee ; but I could noU be a teacher of ento- 

 mology if I had done that, because the teacher of entomology 

 must know something about other insects as well as the 

 honey-bee. Any one who has started out to study one par- 

 ticular branch of natural history has usually become so in- 

 tensely interested in it that he has brancht out and taken up 

 other lines as well. The naturalist, whatever part of the 

 country he falls into, always finds something to interest him. 



As I stated in the beginning of my talk, I have visited 

 South America since I met with you last, and during that 

 time I can assure you that not every one of my experiences 

 was pleasant. Out of every 200 people in the Argentine Re- 

 public whom I met, I found but one who was able to talk my 

 language, and so I had to try to speak the language of the 

 other 199. Those people I found were not friendly to the 

 United States, because they said we had a " Bill Ulngley " up 

 here, and they made it very disagreeable for me in every way 

 possible. Some of them carried long knives, and if I had not 

 been on the watch constantly they might have taken advan- 

 tage of me. Those things were of course a little bit out of 

 the line of pleasure. Still, I got out with Nature and enjoyed 

 myself as I have never enjoyed myself before, and as I never 

 expect to again. 



In South America, while I collected Insects only a couple 

 of weeks, I think I collected something like 350 or -100 dif- 



ferent kinds of wild bees, and none of those are identical with 

 those we find in North America. I found one that builds its 

 nest on trees down there and gathers honey. I do not know 

 what it is. The cells in which the honey is placed are of the 

 size of a small straw, and the honey is sour. The bee is of 

 about the size of the house lly, or a little smaller, and they 

 sometimes make nests as large as a bushel basket, and the 

 material they make the comb of is something between wax 

 and paper. I expect to try to work out this insect and find 

 out what it is. It has a sting. I don't think that any bee 

 that gathers honey is stingless. 



A. I. Root — A couple of our soldiers who have returned 

 from Cuba informed me that they saw the natives getting 

 hooey from a stingless bee. They had pailfuls. They said 

 the honey was dark-colored, almost as dark as tar. The na- 

 tives were in the habit of going out into the woods and bring- 

 ing in considerable quantities. They said they saw the bees 

 at work. The cells were very much like the cells of bumble- 

 bees. The bees alighted all over them, and they brusht them 

 off. They didn't sting at all, but of course they fought for 

 their honey ; they would bite. 



Prof. Bruner — It is a peculiar fact that naturalists never 

 run across anything of that kind themselves, when they are 

 out looking for just such things. 



A. I. Root— The men rather admitted that they did not 

 know that the pailfuls of honey came from the nests of the 

 stingless bees. They saw the bees and the cells. 



Prof. Bruner — There is an ant down in that country that 

 we call the honey-ant that sometimes stores a very dark honey. 

 It is the honey from plant-lice, and it is stored. Whether 

 that would be the stingless bee or not, I don't know. 



A. I. Root — We had some specimens of stingless bees In 

 our apiary at one time. They did not gather honey. They 

 came from Central America. 



Prof. Bruner — While we have heard a great deal about 

 things of that kind, it is peculiar that none of the naturalists 

 who have collected in that region have ever run across the in- 

 sects themselves. 



PLANT LICE, HONEr-DEW, ANTS, ETC. 



E. R. Root — I would like to ask a question in regard to 

 plant-lice. Some six or seven years ago plant lice seemed to 

 be quite prevalent, and during the lapse of time since we have 

 seen little of them. During this season the plant-lice have 

 made their appearance again, and honey-dew is scattered 

 through a good deal of the honey. Is there any reason why 

 they should do that? 



Prof. Bruner —There are reasons, but we havn't found out 

 what the reasons are. Usually in a wet spring and during 

 the summer following we have those very conditions. We 

 have comparatively little honey-flow during a wet seasou. 

 During that time, and during the dry seasou following, the 

 plant-lice increase much more rapidly than ordinarily, and 

 the bees gather whatever they find, owing to the scarcity of 

 honey. 



Mr. Westcott — In our locality we have always had the 

 boneydew every year, but the bees don't work on it except 

 when there is no other honey. 



Mr. Hatch — Is there such a thing as honey-dew without 

 the aphis ? 



Prof. Bruner — I do not think there is. The relation be- 

 tween ants and honey-dew is one of the most interesting 

 things we find in the study of natural history. 



Mr. Masters — During the last summer I found ants fol- 

 lowing the aphis from one tree to another. 



Prof. Bruner — They were probably trying to get new 

 feeding-grounds, for their eggs. I have known ants to carry 

 the eggs of the aphis and store them in their own nests, and 

 to bring them up and put them in the galleries that are built 

 a half inch or so below the surface of the ground, where the 

 sun could hatch the aphis' eggs. If a cold day came, the ants 

 would carry the eggs down into the recesses of their nests. 

 After the eggs were hatcht, the aphis would be carried up and 

 placed along the roots of various kinds of plants, and take 

 care of them in that way, all the time getting their reward In 

 the honey-dew which the aphis yields. They are the ants' 

 cows. The ants milk them. Some ants have certain kinds 

 of plant-lice that always live underneath the ground, in the 

 ants' nests; and the ants' nests are built along the roots of 

 certain plants — some particular kind of aster, that the aphis 

 prefers the sap of. 



Dr. Miller — There is a certain ant that sometimes will 

 burrow into the wood of hives and utterly honey-comb it. It 

 is dangerous, because sometimes you don't know there is any- 

 thing wrong, when the whole thing it utterly ruined and gone. 

 Can you tell us any prevention or remedy ? 



Prof. Bruner — The best remedy would be to make your 



