120 



THE? MMEKICMIf BE® JO^RTSCSlLr. 



SOME REPLIES, 



To Questions 'which All were 

 Invited to AnsAver, 



Written for the American Bee Journal 

 BY C. P. HEWETT. 



The questions were published on 

 page 42, and are as follows : 



1. How many keep a dailj;, record of the 

 temperature and degrees which tliey prefer 

 ill their depositories ? 



2. How many believe in hibernation ? 



3. How many can winter colonies on 

 from 3 to 6 pounds ot stores ? 



4. How many have had bees steal eggs, 

 and from them make queens ? 



5. How many have had queens fertilized 

 that did not leave tlie hive ? 



6. How many have had queens become 

 re-fertilized ? 



7. How many have had queens die with 

 the drones, on their bridal trip ? 



8. How many have had bees hibernate, 

 and remain so until taken out in the spring- 

 time ? 



9. How many can tell that they have a 

 queenless colony in their apiaries, by seeing 

 bees trying to steal eggs, before they notice 

 the colony which is queenless ? 



10. How many know that there is no 

 vitalization in some queens' eges, when 

 they first commence laying in the spring, 

 and the bees have no regard for her, more 

 than any other bee, and swarm out ? 



Harvey Feathers, of Royalton, Wis., 



sends the following answers : 



1. I do. I prefer from 40= to 42^ 

 for very populous colonies, and from 

 48° to 50° for less populous ones. 



2. I believe that the dormant state 

 that the bees enter into when winter- 

 ing well, might as well be called 

 hibernation. 



3. I cannot winter a colony on from 

 3 to 6 pounds of stores, through one of 

 our winters of 5J months. 



4. I do not believe that bees steal 

 eggs. 



5. I do not believe that queens are 

 ever fertilized in the hive. 



6. I am doubtful if thej' ever are re- 

 fertilized. 



7. I liave had queens that never re- 

 turned from their bridal trip. 



8. I have. 



9. I cannot tell. 



10. I do not. I do not believe that 

 is the cause of bees swarming out in 

 the spring-time. I have had a colony 

 swarm out and cluster on a bush ; 

 while there, I cleaned the hive and 

 combs real clean, and returned the 

 bees. .They staid and did well that 

 season. 



W. H. Stewart, of Kimball, Dak., 

 answers some of the questions as fol- 

 lows : 



1. I keep a record of the tempera- 

 ture in the bee-cellar, and I prefer that 

 of 45°. 



3. I have sevei'al times wintered full 

 colonies of bees on from 3 to 4 pounds 



of stores, and I can do it any time if 

 I wish to do so, and have them come 

 out in the spring as good in every re- 

 spect as though they had consumed 

 more. 



7. I have had several queens to die 

 with the drone on their bridal trips. 



S. W. Conrad, of Hanford, Calif., 

 replies to !l few of the questions in the 

 following manner : 



3. I have wintered a colony on from 

 5 to 7 pounds of honey. 



4. I have seen my bees steal eggs 

 and rear queens therefrom. 



5. I have had queens fertilized that 

 did not leave the hive to meet the 

 drone. 



7. I have seen dying queens at- 

 tached to the drones after the bridal 

 trip. 



HORTICULTURE. 



Arc the Bees our Friends i — The 

 Vice-President's Address. 



Read before the Iowa Horticultural Society 

 BY EUGENE SECOR. 



In some localities, where grape- 

 growing is the chief industry, and 

 where, in certain seasons of the year, 

 or in seasons peculiar in themselves, 

 the honey-bees have given the growers 

 more or less annoyance, some persons 

 who have not studied the structure and 

 habits of bees, and whose observations 

 have not been as careful and thorough 

 as the subject demands, have been 

 ready to declare them a nuisance, and 

 to banish them as an enemy to horti- 

 culture. Hence the question at the 

 head of this essay is not onl}' an inter- 

 esting one, but important. 



That they do, occasionallj-, annoy 

 grape-growers, and perhaps others, is 

 true. Those of us who keep dairy 

 cows know that t/iey sometimes break 

 out of their proper enclosure, and give 

 us trouble and annoyance in conse- 

 quence ; yet we should hardly be will- 

 ing to forego the luxuries which tliey 

 furnish us, nor forget their general 

 usefulness, on so slight a fault. If good 

 qualities over-balance the bad, bees 

 cannot be an unmixed evil. 



On the theory that everything was 

 created to serve some good purpose in 

 the economy of nature, what was the 

 purpose in the creation of the honey- 

 bee ? Was it onlj' that man's palate 

 might be tickled with the delicious 

 nectar which she finds hidden in the 

 delicate chalices ? I think not. The 

 honey is of only minor importance. I 

 believe that it was the Divine purpose 

 to minister to our necessities and en- 

 joyments, but in a difierent and more 

 important way. " Male and female 



created He them " was no less true of 

 plants and flowers than of man. 



In a good many of the species the 

 sexual organs are not in the same 

 flower. In others they are developed 

 on distinct plants. In still others, al- 

 though the flowers are hermaphrodite, 

 the anthers and stigmas do not ripen at 

 same time. Some means of carrying 

 the pollen-dust from flower to flower, 

 or from plant to plant, is necessaiy. 



The wind is one of the fertilizing 

 agencies, but the wind does not always 

 blow during the brief opportune period 

 when the pistils are ripe for receiving 

 the life-giving dust ; and if rains are 

 frequent, thus keeping the pollen- 

 germs too damp to be easily carried 

 by the favoring breeze, many plants 

 would fail to mature seed and fruit, 

 but for the insects that perform this 

 important service. 



Charles Darwin, that eminent En- 

 glish naturalist, whose careful experi- 

 ments have added so much to our 

 knowledge of plant and insect life, 

 states in his work on " Cross and Self 

 Fertilization," that out of 125 species 

 that he covered with netting, exclud- 

 ing insects when in bloom, more than 

 half were either entirely sterile, or 

 produced less tlian half the number of 

 seeds of the unprotected plants. I will 

 cite one only of the man}' so treated 

 by him, namely, white clover. I quote: 



" Several plants were protected from 

 insects, and the seeds from ten flowei'- 

 heads of these plants, and from ten 

 heads on other plants growing outside 

 the net (which I saw visited by bees) 

 were counted ; and the seeds from the 

 latter plants were verj' nearly ten times 

 as numerous as those from the pro- 

 tected plants. The experiment was 

 repeated on the following year ; and 20 

 protected heads now yielded only a 

 single aborted seed, whilst 30 heads on 

 the plants ont^side the net (which I 

 .saw visited by bees) yielded 2,290 

 seeds, .as calculated by weighing all 

 the seed and counting the number in a 

 weight of 2 grains." 



He says : "The most important of 

 all the means b}- which pollen is car- 

 ried from the anthers to the stigmas of 

 the same flower, or from flower to 

 flower, are insects belonging to the or- 

 ders of Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera and 

 Diptera. 



The bees are the love-messengers 

 which carry on the courtship and 

 hasten the marriage of the blushing 

 blossoms. They furnish tlie means of 

 locomotion, and make it possible for 

 distant and non-related flowers to meet 

 in happj' wedlock. Other insects do, 

 indeed, play some part in this impor- 

 tant work, but no other honey-and- 

 pollen gathering insect increases with 

 such rapiditj- in the spring, before the 

 fruit-trees and small fruits blossom. 



