192 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



June 



"more surplus yield," and that we 

 both have been reasonably successful 

 is proven by the fact that my brother 

 owns from' two to three hundred 

 colonies, while my average yield has 

 been in late years about $20 per col- 

 ony, spring count. This, however, 

 does nol include our last season's 

 crop. All beekeepers know that, 

 with a few local exceptions, we had 

 almost a complete honey failure all 

 over the United States. 

 La Salle, N. Y. 



Laying Workers Which Pro- 

 duce Female Offspring 



By lohn Anderson, M. A.. B. So. 



IN Dr. Phillips' Beekeeping (191S), 

 there are two references (pp. IS/ 

 203) to a paper by Mr. <j. W. 

 Onions in the Agricultural Journal 

 of South Africa for May, 1912. Mr. 

 Onions asserted that, among Cape 

 black bees, laying workers occurred 

 very frequently and from their eggs 

 drones, workers and queens were 

 produced. This extraordinary claim 

 seems to have attracted little atten- 

 tion at the time except that one or two 

 Cape beekeepers wrote refusing to 

 believe the story. Mr. Onions, how- 

 ever was not discouraged, and when 

 he removed to Rhodesia he sought 

 the help of the Division of Entomol- 

 ogy at Salisbury. Mr. R. P. Jack. 1- . 

 E S undertook the superintendence 

 and checking of fresh experiments m 

 parthenogenesis, to be carried out at 

 Salisbury, but with bees from Cape 

 Colony. A full account of those fur- 

 ther experiments, conducted with 

 scientific care, was published in June, 

 1917 in the Transactions of the Ento- 

 mological Society of London. Mr. 

 Jack is convinced that Mr. Onions 

 has proved his conclusion that work- 

 ers of the Cape bee "are apt to de- 

 velop the habit of laying eggs, and 

 that these eggs may produce workers, 

 queens or drones, but do, as a matter 

 of fact, mainly produce workers." 



Dr. Phillips, Mr. Onions and Mr. 

 Jack seem to have been unaware that 

 the power of certain worker bees to 

 produce female offspring was noted, 

 and the facts published, many years 

 before the appearance of Mr. Onions 

 first paper in 1912. The oversight is 

 pardonable in the case of Phil- 

 lip-, Onions and Jack, because such 

 recenl writers could hardly be ex- 

 pected to know that valuable papers 

 on beekeeping used to appear in the 

 fournal of Horticulture, published at 

 London and edited by Robert Hogg. 

 1. 1.. I),. 1 I. S. English contributors 

 to the Journal of Horticulture in- 

 cluded Cheshire, Woodbury, Hewitt, 

 and the two Cans, while among the 



Si on i ii writei w ei i Petl ign w , 

 1 homson, Raitt and McPhedran. 

 Every one ol these writei s made ad- 

 dition- nt permanent value to our 

 knowledge oi I" i kei ping, though, 

 with the exceptions of Cheshire and 

 "W. B. C," their nam. 5 are can el) 



til hi ..1 



British beekeepers. 

 John Hewitt, of Sheffield, England 



1 and his name ought to be mi 



with those of Schirach, Huber, Dzier- 

 zon and the other great masters I 

 made his observations on laying 

 workers more than .ill years ago, and 

 published a brief account of them in 

 the Journal of Horticulture for 1892 

 i August 11, page 134). It was, per- 

 haps, fortunate that the Journal of 

 Horticulture was not exclusively a 

 bee journal, and that Or. Hogg was 

 broad-minded enough to realize that 

 perhaps, after all, Dzierzon had nol 

 said the last word on parthenogene- 

 sis in the bee. When Hewitt at- 

 tempted to make his discovery known 

 through the bee press of Britain and 

 America his main conclusions were 

 either suppressed or covered with 

 ridicule. No discoveries might be 

 published which would not fit into 

 the Dzierzon theory. It is thus only 

 by a kind of accident that we can es- 

 tablish priority for the original dis- 

 coverer of an unsuspected peculiarity 

 in the workers of certain races of the 

 honeybee. 



European bees, with which alone 

 Dzierzon was familiar, have one 

 marked defect in their otherwise per- 

 fect arrangements for preserving the 

 continuity of the stock. At the time 

 when a virgin queen is ready to be 

 mated there is no other queen in the 

 hive (except perhaps in supersedure) 

 and there is no means of making one. 

 The virgin is the sole hope of the 

 stock, and if she be lost or fails to 

 mate, that stock is doomed. 



Hewitt had been working with 

 Punic or Tunisian bees, which he had 

 imported direct from North Africa, 

 and found to differ greatly from the 

 bees of Europe. For example, a stock 

 which had lost its virgin on her mat- 

 ing flight, promptly developed laying 

 workers, and raised queens from the 

 eggs of those workers. 



"In one case a number of Punic 

 workers entered a stock of queenless 

 Carniolans and reared a queen from 

 the eggs they laid. This queen is now 

 in the British Museum." (1892.) 



It is clear from the narrative thai 

 Hewitt had been familiar with the 

 facts for some considerable time, and 

 that his object was to get others to 

 verify observations, of the accuracy 

 of which he entertained no doubt 

 whatever. He proceeds to give di- 

 rections for inducing Punic bees to 

 rear queens from the eggs of laying 

 workers. The aim is to reproduce as 

 nearly as possible the conditions of a 

 stock that has lost its queen on her 

 mating flight. It must be queenless 

 and broodless with some drone- pre 



cut. 



"The bees will so, in be biisv laying 

 and rearing queen cells. If an) ol 

 these seem natural, that is not long 

 Ones, but just like ordinary queen 



cells, queens will most certainly be 



found in them, and not only SO, but 

 numbers of worker bees will hatch 



from workei I ells. Heine Punic work 

 er bees have the power to raise both 



, in ■ i) - and dn 'ties from i hemseh es 

 The instinct seems perfect in the 



Punii bi i . "''I '. parti) so in Syrians, 

 and it is quite absent in our native 



bees. I < .mm il go into I he matter 



JUS1 now, but should like as many as 

 possible, who have those bees, to 



confirm my discovery, incredible as 

 it mai seem." 



From these quotations it is quite 

 clear that Hewitt had made the 

 greatest discovery in the natural his- 

 tory of the bee since the time of 

 Dzierzon, and that lie anticipated 

 Onions by at least 20 years. The lues 

 of Africa are probably nearer to the 

 ancestral stock, and the workers still 

 retain the power of reverting to the 

 primitive condition when ever) Fe- 

 male was a potential mother. Hew- 

 itt's remark that the power is less 

 perfectly developed in the Syrian bee 

 and totally absent in native bees, is 

 highly significant. Dzierzon and his 

 co-workers, being acquainted only 

 with the more specialized bees of Eu- 

 rope, had no chance of making this 

 discovery, and made the very usual 

 mistake of generalizing from insuf- 

 ficient data. 



Meantime only the barest facts are 

 mentioned, but it is evident that a 

 new vista has been opened up, and 

 that we must now consider partheno- 

 genesis in the honeybee from quite 

 a different standpoint. 



Agricultural College, 



Aberdeen. Scotland. 



Co-Operative Selling Pays 

 Texas Honey Producers 



I '•> i li il ton Gano 

 (Concluded from last issue) 



THE story of how poor market 

 conditions for Texas honey led 

 79 beekeepers to meet and de- 

 cide on co-operative marketing, and 

 how an immediate result of their 

 uniting was the advance of wholesale 

 honey prices 2 cents per pound, was 

 told in the last issue of American 

 Bee Journal. 



This price advance took place 

 within six weeks after they had or- 

 ganized, indicating that the mere- 

 news that things were to be con- 

 ducted in a more businesslike way 

 had a good effect on the trade. Then 

 began the work of putting their plan 

 in operation. 



The prime purpose of the move 

 was to improve the selling methods. 

 The first step was to adopt an asso- 

 ciation label. The Lone Star label 

 shown in the illustration was 

 adopted. Six sprays of flowers sur- 

 rounding the central design are the 

 chief honey plants of Texas, namely, 



guajillo, catsclaw, mesquite, alfalfa, 



liorseiniiit and cotton. The blank 



space 1- t' 'i the kind ol honey, comb 

 or extracted, and for a number rep- 

 resenting the apiarist who packed it. 

 'The Association announced that 

 hone) bearing this label is guaran- 

 teed, will be distributed al uniform 



prices, and w ill be in cvci \ w .1 ) 

 standard. 



Instead of establishing an exten- 

 sive official inspection system to pro- 

 1 ei 1 the label's good name, the Asso- 

 ciation w ithholds a part of the prici 

 from the beekeeper until time has 

 been allowed for the purchaser to 

 enter an\ complaints. This results 

 in the producer being paid as fol- 

 Ii 'W - ; 50 per cent of I he \ able oi the 



