THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



297 



He closes with the repeated declaration 

 that wax is a product of the vegetable kiag- 

 dom and speaks of the fact that it abounds 

 in the tropics, and is there obtained direct 

 from nature without the help of the bees, 

 and brought to Europe in great quantities as 

 vegetable wax. 



Herr Weippl mentions as remarkable the 

 fact that last spring, from the 12th of Febru- 

 ary to the 18th of March, his apiary of 46 col - 

 oljies drank 17 liter of water, about 15 

 quarts. 



He also describes his method of strength- 

 ening weak colonies in the spring. He in- 

 troduces a flat vessel of warm honey with 

 gauze covering into a strong hive, and when 

 it is covered with bees takes it away and 

 places it under the hive of the weak colony. 

 As they are for the most part young bees 

 that are carried away, only a small part of 

 them will return to the old hive ; and by re- 

 peating the operation three or four times the 

 weak swarm will be very much strength- 

 ened. 



Herr Topitz advises all bee-keepers to keep 

 from year to year an accurate account of 

 the honey yield in their neighborhood. 



Pastor Durr, in the Deutsche Illustrierste 

 Bienezeitung, speaking of laying workers, 

 mentions two theories advanced by text- 

 books in regard to them. 1, that laying work- 

 ers are those which have accidentally received 

 some royal jelly in their cells. 2, that 

 they are bees which after hatching out were 

 fed and brought up as queens because the 

 pressure for a queen was great in the hive. He 

 rejects both theories as contrary to the laws 

 of nature in the bees, and himself advances 

 a third theory that when for want of brood, 

 the brood-bees cannot use the chyle as prov- 

 ender it rushes into the different organs of 

 the body in excess, and develops them more 

 than is usual. In this way the atrophied 

 ovary is more strongly nourished, and in 

 some bees is completely developed and 

 brings forth eggs, an impossibility with ordi- 

 nary nourishment. 



Gravenhorst adds his experience iu intro- 

 ducing queens among laying workers, by 

 running them into a new furnished hive in 

 which the queen has previously been placed 

 in a cage. When this has not succeeded he 

 has weakened the colony by running part of 

 them into another hive, and finally by giving 

 the a brood frame with queen cells. He con- 

 cludes by agreeing with Pastor Durr that 

 laying workers are very numerous in such a 

 hive. 



In L'Apiculteur for October, Dr. Paul Mar- 

 chal, of the Entomological station at Paris, 

 gives a minute account of his observations 

 of a hive of laying workers, the result of his 

 observations being the assurance in his own 

 mind that laying workers exist, that they 

 produce drones, that iu such a hive, rot one 

 or a few. but the largest number, if not all 

 the bees are laying workers. He gives, as 

 his reasons for this observation and record, 

 that many apiculturists and some scientists 

 of note (he quotes Prof. Perez whom he calls 

 the best scientific authority on bees in 

 France) are of the opinion that laying work- 

 ers do not exist, or at least that their exist- 

 ence has not yet been proved. 



Abbe Baffert iu his " Observations during 

 the year 1894,,' says this has been a year of 

 many swarms and little honey, and quotes 

 as verified by his experience, the old pro- 

 verb, " A rainy year a swarm year, a dry 

 year a honey year." 



Bro. Heddon and His Bee Journal. An 

 Honest Effort to Clearly Define the Po- 

 sition, Object and Aim of the 

 Bee-Keepers' Edition rf the 

 Dowagiac Times, 



JAS. HEDDON. 



"The dignity of a business may be known by 

 its literature." 



T SINCERELY believe it to be a duty I owe 

 i to myself, to you my Bro. publisher, and 

 in a much broader sense, to the bee-keepers 

 with whom and for whom I have struggled 

 for over a quarter of a century, to now do 

 what little one man may, in the improve- 

 ment of our apicultural literature. I have 

 been credited with making improvements in 

 our fixtures, implements and methods ; 

 changes which have proved remunerative to 

 those who have understood and adopted 

 them, and I am sure that not less needed are 

 changes in our special literature. 



In replying to your editorial on pages 

 274-5, I desire in the beginning to correct at 

 least one important misconception of yours. 

 Your inference — as forcible as an assertion 

 — that I feel hurt because some of the jour- 

 nals do not mention the Quarterly, is en- 

 tirely wrong. So far as my interest is con- 

 cerned, both as relates to my reputation and 



