472 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



the necessities of a growing fiimily, 

 and having but little time to experi- 

 ment, I felt lilie leaving this theme to 

 such men as Prof. Cook, who has 

 done us such signal service on other 

 and like problems of our pursuit. I 

 do know that colonies do good work 

 witl; no drones at all, as I have a 

 majority on last year's full sheets of 

 all worker foundation on wires, and 

 I further know that some colonies do 

 sometimes possess so many drones 

 tliat they are nearly worthless as sur- 

 plus honey colonies. In view of these 

 truths, I am in favor of casting the 

 drones entirely out of colonies that I 

 dislike to have reproduce their like in 

 my yard. 



Mr. S. A. Shuck has asked me a 

 question tliat I never pretended to be 

 able to answer more than theoreti- 

 cally. I will say, however, that after 

 reading his account of his manipula- 

 tions carefully, I cannot see that 

 either the bacteria or pollen theory 

 are entirely shut out. I have always 

 noticed that mixing bees of different 

 colonies tended toward dysentery. I 

 used to unite vv'eak colonies in the 

 fall (now I "take them up"), and 

 they invariably had the dysentery 

 first, and worst, as a class. One year 

 ago last winter, I united three colo- 

 nies into one only, and within 3 weeks 

 they came out in front of the hive and 

 soiled all about the entrance, and all 

 winter long they laid out and buzzed 

 and flew and mussed about, and while 

 about two-thirds of all the rest of the 

 apiary died with the same malady, 

 this colony survived, " but it was a 

 tight squeeze." I have in my pos- 

 session a letter from a gentleman of 

 undoubted varacity, who tells me 

 that he calls to mind two or tliree in- 

 stances where whole apiaries have 

 died with dysentery during June and 

 July. Strong colonies that were in 

 apparently perfect condition in the 

 morning, would show signs at noon, 

 daub everything up at night, and be- 

 fore tlie next night were silent as the 

 tomb. 



Dowagiac, Mich. 



For tlie American Bee Journal 



(^ueeus, Drones, Workers. 



G. Vf. DEMAREE. 



When a proposition pertaining to 

 bee-culture or any other industry or 

 science once becomes an accepted 

 "fact," the tendency is to cease 

 further investigation. Under such 

 circumstances error may find a 

 lurking place for a time. 



From the earliest period of the 

 modern system of bee-culture, those 

 best qualified to speak intelligently 

 have substantially agreed upon tlie 

 following three propositions, and have 

 accepted them as well autlienticated 

 facts, viz : 



The queen is the mother of the col- 

 ony, and has no other functions than 

 to lay the necessary eggs, and to per- 

 form the queenly office, i. e., the focal 

 point of attraction resulting in what 

 we call a normal condition in the 

 hive. 



The drone is the male honey bee — 

 transient in existence, having no 

 other function than to " mate " with 

 the young queens. 



The worker bees are undeveloped 

 females, and perform all the labor 

 pertaining to the economy of the bee 

 hive, of whatever nature or kind. 



Are the above propositions true V 

 Of course I liave no reference to the 

 precise language which I have em- 

 ployed to state them, but sub- 

 stantially, are they true ? I believe 

 that the first and third have never 

 been called in question, and the sec- 

 ond not till very recently. If there 

 is a bare possibility of a niistake as to 

 the functions of the drone, the editor 

 for calling attention to the subject in 

 the Bee Journal, of June 28, and 

 Dr. J. R. Baker for his outspoken 

 skepticism as to the truth of the prop- 

 osition, so well expressed in his com- 

 munication on page 437, issue of July 

 12, will deserve the thanks of all in- 

 telligent apiarists. Because if it 

 should turn out that the presence of 

 drones in a colony is necessary for 

 other important purposes besides the 

 very important one of fertilizing the 

 young queens, why then, the some- 

 what expensive efforts to suppress 

 and curtail their number by the use 

 of all worker ftuindation, and the 

 keen edge of the honey knife will 

 sooner or later result in failure and 

 ruin. But I assume that when a 

 proposition has long been accepted as 

 a " fact," the burden of proof rests on 

 the shoulders of those who wish to 

 controvert and overthrow it. 



I hold that the function of the drone 

 as stated in the above proposition, is 

 as essentially necessary to the propa- 

 gation and perpetuity of the race as 

 that pertaining to the queen or work- 

 ers. The mere fact that the oftice. of 

 the drone is limited to the one act of 

 Impregnating the queen, by no means 

 makes him a " dead-beat libertine." 

 lie who created them " male and fe- 

 male," also assigned to each its func- 

 tions, and both alike are legitimate. 

 The drone, though quite gay in his 

 season, is nevertheless an exceedingly 

 modest insect, as I have learned, to 

 my disappointment and disgust 

 while prosecuting my experiments to 

 discover a method to " mate " queens 

 in confinement. 



The short, gay, and seemingly use- 

 less life of the drone is in perfect har- 

 mony with the " eternal fitness of 

 things." The duties of his office are 

 few and alluring, but fraught with 

 dire consequences. He sips the pre- 

 cious nectar for which he labors not, 

 but he enjoys the feast at the suffer- 

 ance of others. He basks in the 

 balmy air and sunshine, but he re- 

 turns to a liome to which he can lay 

 no claims, and is powerless to assert 

 his inherent rights. Thus he flits 

 through life till functus officis and 

 speedily falls a victim to tlie monster 

 so much dreaded by all animate na- 

 ture. 



I wish to remind Dr. Baker that 

 " nature is wonderfully profuse in her 

 ways." It is no harder to account 

 for the superfluous number of drones 

 reared under f:ivoiable circumstances 

 than it is to account for the fact that 



the atmosphere is literally loaded 

 with pollen at times, when its chief 

 office is to fructify the comparatively 

 few seeds of the vegetable kingdom. 

 iSTo one colony of bees needs, or wants, 

 or will tolerate more than one queen, 

 yet 1 have removed more than .50 well 

 developed queen cells from the combs 

 of a single colony. Is this not also 

 " marvelous V" 1 think that the facts 

 which I have just cited are a fair off- 

 set to the argument based on the in- 

 structive tendency of bees to rear a 

 superfluous number of drones. 



Xow what is our experience ? 1 

 have made it a rule for years to test 

 by actual experiment the truth or 

 falsity of every important accepted 

 proposition in bee-culture, and dis- 

 cover more if possible. In order to 

 improve my colonies of bees, I have 

 been in the habit of encouraging some 

 colonies to rear an abundance of 

 drones, whilst other colonies were not 

 allowed to have any drones at all. 

 \Vith this state of tilings in an apiary, 

 it is not difficult to learn what part of 

 the programme tlie drones fill best. 

 They are liberal consumers, and that 

 continually. No matter how crowded 

 the colony may be for room, you will 

 never see the " gentlemen " hanging 

 on the outside with the workers; 

 they could not be induced to leave the 

 well filled cells for such cold comfort 

 as that. Nothing will move them but 

 the habit of their afternoon flight or 

 the poured out wrath of the ireful 

 workers. But I tried an experiment 

 last season that settled the matter to 

 my own satisfaction at least. I kept 

 a drone laying queen at the expense 

 of about 50 lbs. of honey. I found 

 that the queen was able to keep the 

 hive stocked with drones in exact 

 proportion to the number of worker 

 bees I supplied her with, from other 

 colonies. She could do no more than 

 this, and did no more. 



To sum the matter up in few words, 

 I have found that when tljere is a 

 generous flow of honey, the honey- 

 storing capacity of colonies with and 

 without drones, is much the same, 

 but when the flow is light, there is all 

 the difference in favor of colonies that 

 have no drone consumers. 



Christiansburg, Ky. 



Iowa Homestead. 



Increasing Bees by Division. 



O. CLUTB. 



If, from any cause, a colony of bees 

 be deprived of its queen at a time 

 when there are in the hive worker 

 eggs, or worker larvse not more than 

 three days old, the bees will at once 

 proceed to rear queens from these 

 eggs or larvae. To do this they enlarge 

 the cells around a few eggs or larviE, 

 say from 5 to 12, and feed the young 

 bee on the royal jelly, then, instead of 

 growing into a worker bee it grows 

 into a perfect female, or queen, eight 

 days from the egg this young queen 

 is sealed up in the cell to undergo the 

 final transformation. It remains 

 sealed in the cell about eight days, 

 and then comes out a full-grown 

 queen, perfect in all its parts. But it 



