270 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



August 



lifter looks like two forks arranged 

 i] --fashion and costs 25 cents. 



Once more — have you a wide 

 mouth funnel for tilling jars (co t, 10 

 cents), or do you waste material and 

 make ourself by attempt- 



ing to till jars w ithi nit . 



Do yon follow the government 

 bulletin advice and blanch your veg- 

 etables in cheese-cloth ? If you 

 have thought it too much bother to 

 hunt up the cheese-cloth, or thought 

 it "just as easy" sonic other way, trj 

 the cloth, just to see how great a 

 time saver it is. Following the gov- 

 ernment bulletin is one sure way to 

 succeed, and the woman who thinks 

 she will save time by skipping what 

 to her mind seems a trifling opera- 

 tion need not be surprised when she 

 "has had luck" with her canned peas 

 or corn. 



Have you a kitchen table on cas- 

 ters that you can easily pull close to 

 the stove? If you have you know 

 what a comfort it is to lift filled jars 

 directly from the stove to the table 

 with no steps between. 



Have you thought carefully of your 

 kitchen arrangements, or is the re- 

 frigerator, sink, stove, table shelves 

 arrangement hit-or-miss? It is not 

 a difficult matter to have the furni- 

 ture so placed that you do not weave 

 backward and forward over your 

 kitchen floor a hundred times during 

 one operation. 



Do these seem like little things? 

 So are minutes, and yet they are of 

 great importance in this time of cri- 

 sis. Some super-efficient housekeep- 

 ers may say. "Why, of course I have 

 all those time-savers, and do all 

 those things!" but the majority of 

 housekeepers skimp on kitchen uten- 

 sils and do not think sufficiently to 

 save themselves. We need the ut- 

 most strength of every woman of the 

 nation and not an ounce of it should 

 be wasted any more than food should 

 be wasted 



Washington. D. C. 



Parthenogenesis Among the 

 Solitary Bees 



By John H. Lovell. 



IN the May number of the Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal the editor gives 

 a very interesting criticism of 

 Fabre's views on parthenogenesis in 

 oi - | bei I ' is I h< mon sur- 

 prising that Fabre should so posi- 

 Dzierzon's theory, since 

 he himself has described partheno- 

 in Halictus, a genus of soli- 

 tary bees. \- aiming the bumble- 

 - - mate in the fall, the 

 males soon die, but the impregnated 

 t. iinhs hibernate during the winter. 

 With the r.turn of warm weather in 

 the spring thi e mothei 



dig burrows in thi ground which are 

 5 or 6 inches in depth and havi 

 eral short lateral branches, in each 

 of which and in the lower end of the 

 tunnel a cell is built. In each cell 

 ball ot bout the size of a 



pea or smaller, is stored and an egg 

 is laid on this little mass of food. 

 • n ,n oi '1" bee bread is 

 essentially the same as that of the 

 honeybee. From these eggs come 



only females; there are no males in 

 the first generation. In like manner 

 the queen bumblebee's eggs produce 

 only workers in the spring. Each 

 burrow of Italians thus contains 8 or 

 HI females, sisters, since they are 

 progeny of one mother. Beginning 

 with the cell in which she was born, 

 each female digs a new group of 

 cells, connected with the main tun- 

 nel. Although there are then no 

 males in existence, each of these vir- 

 gin sisters provides her cell with a 

 ball of bee-bread, and lays eggs, 

 which by parthenogenesis give birth 

 to both males and females — the sec- 

 ond generation. 



"To sum up," says Fabre, "judging 

 by the three species that form the 

 subject of my investigations, the 

 Halicti have two generations a year, 

 one in the spring, issuing from the 

 mothers who have lived through the 

 winter after being fecundated in the 

 autumn, the other in the summer, the 

 fruit of parthenogenesis, that is to 

 say, of reproduction by the powers 

 of the mother alone. Of the union of 

 the two sexes, females alone are 

 born ; parthenogenesis gives birth at 

 the same time to females and males." 



If in Halictus unimpregnated females 

 can lay eggs which give birth to both 

 males and females, it is less surprising 

 to learn that in some instances there 

 are laying worker? of the honeybee 

 which can also produce both drones 

 and females. There was a time in the 

 history of the honeybee when there 

 were no workers, but only males and 

 females. The virgins of this period, 

 as in Halictus, may have been able to 

 lay eggs, which gave birth to both 

 sexes. With the evolution of the 

 worker the egg-laying power has 

 been largely lost by this caste. The 

 ability to produce females may have 

 disappeared more completely than 

 that of producing drones; but still 

 manifest itself under special circum- 

 stances. 



Since Fabre admits parthenogene- 

 sis in Halictus, why should he so un- 

 hesitatingly deny it in the case of the 

 honeybee? As the editor of the 

 American Bee Journal has shown, 

 this was partly due to his natural 

 dislike of the Germans, partly to his 

 neglect to study the honeybee, which 

 is a cause for some surprise, and 

 partly, perhaps, to the fact that he 

 himself discovered parthenogenesis 

 in Halictus. 



It is usually the egg. which devel- 

 ops into a new individual without 

 fertilization, since it is larger and 

 contains more food material; but 

 theoretically there is no reason why 

 l ins may not also do so, and 

 it is said th.it in certain of the brown 

 • J weeds (Ectocarpus) the sperms, 



which are unusually large, do devel- 

 op into new plants of small size. 

 Parthenogenesis can excite little sur- 

 prise, indeed it might well be more 

 , .milium I he I'gg and the sperm are 

 only spiii ill ''I spores, and parthe- 

 ii, tin retention 

 of the primitive power to multiply 

 sexually by means of spores. A 

 is a single cell which can produce a 

 new individual. Many of the lower 

 plants, as among the sea-weeds and 

 fungi, multiply wholly by spores. The 

 union of two spores is a sexual act. 



There are algae in which the larger 

 spores grow directly into new plants, 

 while the smaller unite, or conjugate, 

 before developing into new individu- 

 als. There are also algae in which 

 >por< s of the same size may produce 

 new plants sometimes independently 

 and sometimes by conjugation. The 

 writer fully agrees with the editor of 

 the Journal that parthenogenesis in 

 the honeybee is a well-established 

 fact. 



Waldboro. Maine. 



"A Mountain of Honey" 



By Lue Sites. 



TOGETHER with an old prospec- 

 tor named Jabe Gates, I was 

 running a tunnel into the side 

 of the mountain above Hell Hole, 

 upon the head waters of the Ameri- 

 can River, in Eldorado County, Cali- 

 fornia, hunting for copper, as my 

 partner had found copper floating 

 down the mountain and had traced it 

 up to an almost perpendicular ledge 

 of rock about midway between the 

 river and the peak of the mountain. 

 We were about three thousand feet 

 above the river and at least that far 

 from the Red Cliffs, which were 

 jagged rocks and cliffs at the summit 

 of the mountain. So we concluded to 

 run a tunnel straight into the heart 

 of the hill and see if we could tap 

 the copper vein, which Gates said 

 must be deposited there. We 

 worked three summers and had run 

 the tunnel in about eight hundred 

 feet (we could not work in the win- 

 ter, for this is in the high Sierras, 

 about seven or eight thousand feet 

 elevation, and the snow piles mighty 

 high), and blasting a good deal of 

 the way, as the rock was hard in 

 places, but soft in others. 



About 1 o'clock one day we came 

 back into the tunnel and the shots 

 had bursted down the whole faci oi 

 the drift, and as we commenced 

 shoveling it away we could sec a 

 sticky mass that looked like molas- 

 ses. As we shoveled and cleared out 

 the mass we could see great^ slathers 

 of comb. We took a bar and broke 

 flown the rock the full width of the 

 tunnel and there we were with a 

 solid mass of honey in the comb full 

 width of our tunnel. It was as black 

 as any black strap molasses you ever 

 saw, and we could see that it was a 

 regular cavern, as the wall was W ell 

 defined. 



We took a candle box and a min- 

 ing pan full of the stuff to the cabin, 

 and as we were low on sugar and 

 didn't have any syrup on hand, we 

 ' nm bided in try some On pain .ikes 

 for supper. We tried it out, and if 

 you ever heard of two sick miners, 

 we wire the ones, for in less than 

 half an hour later we were writhing 

 in pretty hard pains, and it wasn'l 

 until nearly morning that we run- 

 i luded I , 



Of course, it made us sore at the 

 discovery we'd made. Bui in a few 



days we tackled the job again and 

 ran an upper cut about liil\ Eeet 

 li the mass, intending to run 

 ahead again over the lower tunnel, 

 but this mass of honey and comb was 



