THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



633 



Mr. Jaarda : Last tall I bought 3 

 colonies of bees, and put them into 

 the oellai- and they came out all 

 rijjlit. In the spring I bought 'Z more, 

 and tliey were looking linely. The :i 

 bought in the fall stored nearly 100 

 lbs. of honey and did not swarm. The 

 other two colonies swarmed and did 

 not store mueh honey. My profit is 

 out of bees that do not swarm. Only 

 by perseverance can we succeed. If 

 we can prevent our bees from swarm- 

 ing, then we can reach the acme of 

 success in the honey business. 



Mr. Case: I would like to ask, that 

 if our main object is to get honey, 

 how can we manage to get surplus of 

 bees ? 



Mr. Gage : It is a well knov/n fact 

 that bees store more honey when not 

 allowed to swarm. I would cut out all 

 the old queen-cells bat one, after the 

 7th day from the issue of the first 

 swarm. When the swarm issues, the 

 old queen goes with it. I cut out all 

 but one so as to insure, if possible. 

 better success in their future work. 

 I have 50 colonies, and And it best to 

 continue this course. In utilizing 

 queens by this method I do not fail 

 one time out of -50. 



Mr. Davis : If you divide colonies 

 they will not go to the woods. 



Mr. Gage : You are not sure of that. 

 "When bees get the swarming fever, it 

 is hard to break it up. 



Mr. Hall : Do you think that this 

 season is a favorable one y 



Mr. Gage : I do not. AVhile there 

 is an abundance of clover, etc., it does 

 not contain as much nectar as usual. 

 The more closely we follow nature, 

 the better we will succeed. I have 

 had a prodigious yield from one col- 

 ony alone. 



Mr. Dodge; A colony that is divided 

 does not go to work as readily as one 

 that is not. It is considerable work 

 to divide colonies. I cannot divide 

 one usually in less than half an hour. 

 If I had time I would divide more 

 than I now do. It would save trouble. 

 We must use tact and precaution if 

 we expect to succeed. Wliat about 

 upper ventilation V 



Mr. Wilcox : My bees, last winter, 

 did not have upper ventilation and 

 came out afl right. 



Mr. Dodge : My experience is that 

 all this talk about ventilation is a 

 waste of time. I do not think that 

 it makes any difference about ventila- 

 tion. Mv bees came through safely. 

 I let in sufficient air from the bottom 

 of the hive. 



Mr. Fay : I have kept bees a life- 

 time. Last winter my bees had upper 

 ventilation and I lostseveral colonies, 

 but my son-in law gave his bees noth- 

 ing of" the kind and he did not lose a 

 colony. 



:Mr. Case ; My opinion is that venti- 

 lation lets off the surplus animal heat. 



Mr. Dodge ; I do not believe that 

 bees, of themselves, get very damp. 

 But if they do, it is from some extra 

 moisture that comes in from the out- 

 side of the hive. I find that bees kept 

 in the cellar, gather moisture more 

 rapidly than those outside. My bees 

 that I wintered in the cellar were not 

 ventilated at the top, or even very 

 much any where. 



Mr. Fay : My neighbor has an api- 

 ary that seldom freezes. It is near a 

 hedge and is covered with snow nearly 

 all winter. 



Mr. Haven : I covered a hive over 

 with straw and then witli dirt, and 

 the bees came through safely. This 

 experiment shows conclusively that 

 bees do not suffer so much from lack 

 of ventilation as from lack of warmth. 



Mr. Dodge : I would ask if there is 

 danger from overstocking V 



Mr. (iage : Not with honey, but 

 with bees, perhaps. 



Mr. Dodge : I believe that the opin- 

 ion of overstocking is a delusion. 

 Mr. Pond, of Mass , says that one acre 

 of white clover will furnish 2.5 colo- 

 nies with suflicient honey. We need 

 not fear from overstocking. But in 

 a poor season we are always over- 

 stocked. In a good season I would 

 risk 1,000 colonies in my locality. 



Mr. Fay : In my locality we must 

 be overstocked, for out of 17 colonies 

 I have only 3 lbs. of surplus honey. 

 How is that for clover and goldenrod V 

 ily bees on foundation did no better 

 this season than those without any. 



Mr. Boiling : I do not think that 

 this question can be exhausted. We 

 exi)ress very much guess work in our 

 different theories. The condition of 

 the atmosphere has something to do 

 with storing honey. Once I had one 

 hive fill up with honey in five days, 

 which had been entirely empty. This 

 sliows conclusi vely favorable in atmos- 

 pheric conditions. They will not do 

 well with the same number of flowers 

 in some seasons as compared with 

 others. 



Mr. Dodge : If Mr. Boiling had 

 owned -500 colonies, my opinion is that 

 they would have worked in that spe- 

 cial season with the same energy. We 

 cannot expect, when there is no honey 

 in the flowers, that we can get our 

 hives filled. I affirm that we cannot 

 overstock when the blossoms are full 

 of honey. 



Mr. Boiling: To have goldenrod 

 yield honey plentifidly, it must be 

 warm weather. To-day, it is warm 

 enough to suit the most fastidious bee 

 or hornet. 



Mr. Dodge : How and where to mar- 

 ket our honey ? 



Mr. Boiling : That is a hard ques- 

 tion. Honey to-day seems to be quite 

 a drug in the market. People are sus- 

 picious. There has been too much 

 adulteration by crafty dealers. We 

 must have the " clear quill," and when 

 they find us out we will have buyers 

 enough. Our motto must be, '• war- 

 ranted pure." 



Mr. Ciage: By proper methods the 

 trade can be w'orked up near home. 

 Last season I had !I60 lbs. of extracted 

 honey and sold 900 lbs. of it at my 

 own door. 



Mr. Bolhng : In seasons of great 

 success in clover, goldenrod and 

 heart's-ease blossoms, we will have a 

 large surplus for distant markets ; but 

 ordinarily we can dispose of such 

 goods at home. I do not imagine that 

 our climate will allow us to be much 

 over-stocked. 



The subject for the next meeting is 

 "The best method for wintering bees." 



Adjourned to meet at Brocton, in 

 Moss Hall, on Saturday, Oct. 4, 18S4, 

 at 10 a. m. Good attendance requested. 

 .J. A. BioNEDiCT, Sec. pro tern. 



For the American Bee JoumaL 



Sexual Functions of ftueens, Drones, 

 and Worker Bees, 



A. K. KOHNKE. 



Having found, within the last year 

 or so, articles by two or three different 

 apiarists expressive of disbelief in 

 " parthenogenesis," together with 

 some reasons, which would apparently 

 justify the same, I have considered 

 the subject not a little. I may be 

 pardoned for not attaching much im- 

 portance or weight to the observations 

 of the average American apiarist, 

 because I know that if it is not a ques- 

 tion of dollars and cents, the average 

 American does not trouble himself 

 much about new discoveries, the 

 knowledge of wliich is apparently of 

 no practical use to anybody. For this 

 reason it has seemed to me that obser- 

 vations to establish new discoveries 

 were not tliorough enough to accept 

 them as proven facts. 



Let us consider proven facts first : 

 The queen is the female bee, the drone 

 the male bee, and the worker is a 

 stunted female bee. To produce the 

 worker, the queen must mate, or be 

 fertilized ; if she does not, the eggs, 

 which she may lay hatch drones. It 

 has been proven by microscopical in- 

 vestigations made by Professors Sie- 

 bold and Leuckart, and Rev. Schoen- 

 f eld , that eggs laid in worker-comb, 

 by a queen mated in the regular way, 

 contained from two to five of the sem- 

 inal filaments. These eggs were ex- 

 amined as soon as deposited, and the 

 sperm-cells or seminal filaments were 

 always found within the eggs and not 

 on the outside. Enough eggs have 

 been examined to establish this as a 

 fact. Consequently, to assume that 

 the workers change the sex of the 

 egg, on the supposition that the sperm 

 filaments adhere to the outside of the 

 egg from which they may be easily 

 removed, is contradictory to perfectly 

 reliable authority, which have verified 

 the opposite by ocular demonstration. 



The same scientists have also proven 

 by ocular demonstration that freshly- 

 deposited eggs laid by a mated queen, 

 in drone-cells, or those laid by a queen 

 not having mated, as also those laid 

 by workers, are devoid of these sperm 

 filaments. Now. as one and the same 

 fertilized queen has been used by these 

 scientists to obtain both kinds of eggs 

 which she deposited while being 

 watched in an observatory hive, I 

 think that we are justified in believ- 

 ing that such exact work by such close 

 observers and investigators precludes 

 all chances of error, as far as their 

 investigations extended, which was to 

 demonstrate the true sexual relation 

 of queen, drone, and worker, and to 

 show why eggs laid by the same queen 

 should hatch workers or drones. 



As a natural consequence, it has 

 been assumed that it is voluntary 

 with the queen to either impregnate 

 the eggs that she deposits, or not. 



