1895. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



333 



insects by diving under water, remaining there for a long time, 

 and, at last, hiding in a cleft of the rock. 



But Boddlngton, although also a practiced swimmer, was 

 never lost sight of by the exasperated bees, and in the end 

 was drowned, and bis body carried down the stream. It was 

 recovered, and buried above the cliff under a marble slab cut 

 from the rock under which he had met his death. 



Captain Forsyth, of the Bengal Staff, who tells the sad 

 story, says that he has several times been attacked by this 

 species of bees, the Bonhra {Apis dorsata), while riding 

 through forest tracts. 



Once his baggage animals were attacked and scattered in 

 every direction. One pony, that could not get rid of his load, 

 was killed on the spot, and many of the men and ponies were 

 so severely stung as to be laid up for several days. In the 

 Mutiny days a large force of troops, horse and foot, were 

 routed by a swarm of these terrible insects. 



Efforts have been made to domesticate Apis dorsata, but I 



think those who have tried it have failed in every instance. 



The late Prof. Cheshire calls it " a useless savage," and says 



it is in the nature of things impracticable to hybridize our 



hive-bees with it. Mr. Baldensperger, who claims to have 



had some experience with it, says it cannot be confined to a 



hive, and cannot be kept from migrating at certain seasons 



any more than can wild fowl. From nearly all I have read 



about it, it seems almost impossible to ever expect it to be of 



any practical value, even if it could be successfully introduced 



into this country. 



■*-'-^ 



Dr. Adolpliiis dc Plaiita. 



In the British Bee Journal for March 14, 1S95, the fol- 

 lowing sketch, and portrait (given on the first page of this 

 issue), were published, which it is a great pleasure to repro- 

 duce here: 



Dr. de Planta was born on May 1.3, 1820, at Taniins, in 

 the Canton Orisons, Switzerland. He was educated in the 

 college at Schnepferthal, and it was here that he acquired a 

 taste for natural sciences. He then attended the classes at 

 the Industrial School at Zurich, and upon deciding to devote 

 himself specially to chemistry, he went to study in the univer- 

 sities of Berlin, Heidelberg, and Qiessen. In 1845 he com- 

 pleted his studies, and after passing a brilliant examination 

 he obtained a degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Being fond of 

 nature and study, he traveled through France to Enghiiid, 

 after which he visited Norway, Spain, Portugal, as well as 

 Egypt and Palestine. 



For 1.5 years Dr. de Planta worked assiduously in his own 

 laboratory at Reichenau, and occupied himself principally 

 with researches oa the mineral springs of the Canton of 

 Orisons. During his stay in Germany, whither he had re- 

 paired for the education of his children, he was urged by Dr. 

 Liebig and bis friend. Prof. Erlenmeyer, of Munich, to inves- 

 tigate the unsettled points in connection with bees and their 

 products. To this he devoted ten consecutive winters, and on 

 his return to Switzerland he continued his researches. 



There is hardly another man who has given so much time 

 to scientific investigations for the benefit of bee-keepers as 

 Dr. de Planta. Being of independent means, and with char- 

 acteristic zeal and energy, this amiable and benevolent man 

 was able to devote considerable time for the advancement of 

 the pursuit in which he took so great an interest. Although 

 we knew Dr. de Planta by his works previous to 1883, it was 

 in that year that we had the pleasure of making his personal 

 acquaintance, and have from that time carried on a constant 

 correspondence. In 1883, whilst at Zurich, we had the op- 

 portunity of seeing some of the results of our friend's work, 

 and it was to settle some of the points undecided up to that 

 time that Dr. de Planta undertook the work. The results of 

 seven years' labor were represented in two small cases in the 

 exhibition. He had been experimenting for seven years with 

 a view to determining the constituents of honey, as he found 

 this different to the nectar in the flowers ; and he also wanted 

 to determine what part pollen played in the production of 

 honey or wax. A bottle contained pollen which had been got 

 from hazel blossoms, and 13 other bottles contained the dif- 

 ferent constituents of which this pollen was composed. 



Dr. de Planta explained to us the difficulty he had had in 

 getting a sufficient quantity of pollen for experiments, and it 

 was such as would have certainly deterred any person with 

 less perseverance from prosecuting the experiments. The 

 same difficulty was experienced in getting sufficient nectar. 



which had to be collected by means of a pipette, and sealed up 

 at once to prevent the action of bacteria. The constituents 

 showed no coagulated albumen, but this was afterwards found 

 in honey. He also found that whereas nectar contained cane- 

 sugar, honey contained none, or simply a trace, which could 

 not enter into calculation. To determine what caused the 

 difference, he tried to find out what part the glands played in 

 the transformation. 



The way in which he carried out his experiments in this 

 line is very interesting. He pounded a large number of heads 

 of bees in a mortar, and dissolved out the saliva with glycer- 

 ine, from which he was afterwards able to separate and ana- 

 lyze it. He found that by means of the saliva various sub- 

 stances in the nectar were converted into other substances 

 which only appeared in the honey. This way he was able to 

 prove that honey undergoes a change in passing through a 

 bee, and that the saliva plays a very important part in pro- 

 ducing this change. This determined. Dr. Planta tried to find 

 out what prevented honey from fermenting or decomposing. 

 This he found was formic acid, which is known to be a power- 

 ful preservative or antiseptic. 



Bee-bread was next experimented upon, and was found to 

 contain pollen, honey, and saliva. Experiments on wax 

 showed that it contained cerotic acid, myricene, and saliva; 

 so that it is evident that saliva plays a very important part in 

 the products of the hive, which was quite unknown before 

 that time. Another important work was to test the various 

 substances on which bees could be fed with advantage for the 

 purpose of producing wax. Bees were fed on honey alone, 

 sugar and honey, sugar and yolk of egg, sugar alone, sugar- 

 dextrine and rose-water, gelatine and sugar. The combs pro- 

 duced from these substances were of various colors, those 

 from sugar being the whitest, next came the produce of gela- 

 tine and sugar, third honey and sugar; fourth honey alone; 

 and those produced from other substances were quite brown. 



He has further experimented on the methods of distin- 

 guishing between pure and adulterated honey. One of the 

 grandest and most important works was that of determining 

 the nature of the food of the larva? and royal jelly, and thus 

 confirming the view taken by Schonfeld that brood food was 

 semi-digested, and produced in the chyle stomach. In opposi- 

 tion to this Schiemenz, who followed Leuckart, stated that 

 " The food is not produced in the chyle stomach, but is a 

 secretion from the glands," and this view, without anything 

 to corroborate it, was adopted by Cheshire. The subject is 

 too long to go into now, but it will suffice to say that Dr. 

 de Planta's chemical experiments were quite sufficient to set 

 this theory completely at rest, and to show not only that 

 Schonfeld was correct, but that the anatomical structure of 

 the bee was specially adapted for the particular way of feed- 

 ing with chyle, and that the food given to the different larv» 

 differed in quantity and quality, according to their develop- 

 ment. It would take too much space to go into the full de- 

 tails here. 



Dr. de Planta occupied himself with other chemical 

 studies, more particularly with respect to the esculent proper- 

 ties of various vegetables. The amount of work done in con- 

 nection with bees may be judged from the following papers 

 and memoirs published from time to time : 



"Chemical Studies of Bees" (in conjunction with Dr. 

 Erlenmeyer), 1878 to 1886; " Economy of the Hive ;" "Pol- 

 len, Bee-Bread, and the Ferments Which they Contain ;" 

 " Methods of Distinguishing Between Pure and Adulterated 

 Honey;" " Cappings of Brood-Cells;" "The Presence of 

 Formic Acid in Honey ;" " The Collection of Pollen by Bees ;" 

 "What Causes the Color of Wax;" "Detritus Collected in 

 Hive;" " Chemical Composition of Ilazel Pollen ;" "Experi- 

 ments in Artificial Feeding of Bees ;" "Analysis of Barricades 

 Constructed by Bees ;" "Chemical Composition of Some of 

 the Nectars ;" "Composition of Brood Food ;" " Fruit Sugar 

 as Food for Bees;" " The Formation of Honey and the Elimi- 

 nation by the Bees of Water from Nectar," etc. These are 

 some of "the works for which bee-keepers are indebted to Dr. 

 de Planta. He was busy at his favorite subject even up to the 

 last, for only a few weeks ago we had a letter from him in 

 which he told us that he was occupied on the pollen (bee- 

 bread) in cells. Here is an extract from his letter: 



" I am occupied with a big work on bee-bread (Bienen- 

 brod). I have made partly myself, and have had done by an 

 assistant, the analysis of combs, honey, cane-sugar, pollen, 

 and bee-bread. Asa result, the proof will be furnished that 

 the opinion of Gerstung with regard to the degeneration of 

 colonies of bees, on being fed on sugar, without pollen, is per- 

 fectly correct. What is self-evident, and is found by practical 

 experience, will be confirmed and decided by figures derived 

 from analysis." 



For some time Dr. de Planta was President of the Swiss 



