1919 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



419 



chine. The baskets always turn in 

 the same direction. We are showing 

 two pictures herewith, which will give 

 a good idea of the construction of the 

 machine. The one shows the top 

 view of the baskets and the gearing. 

 The other shows the complete ma- 

 chine. 



The movement of the earth on its 

 axis as it revolves around the sun 

 furnishes a good illustration of the 

 way the baskets inside the extractor 

 turn on their pivots, while revolving 

 around the inside of the can. Mr. 

 Livingston has extracted thousands 

 of pounds of honey successfully with 

 this machine. He first described it 

 in this journal in 1909. The same 

 machine has been in operation in his 

 apiaries since that time, so that it is 

 safe to say that the principle is cor- 

 rect and beemen may hope to be re- 

 lieved of the annoyance of the break- 

 age incident to reversing with the 

 old style extractor. 



Punics or African Bees and Parthe- 

 nogenesis 



THOSE of our readers who have 

 read the editorial on the above 

 subject and the Baldensperger 

 article on the same matter in the 

 November, 1918, number of the Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal, will remember that 

 the question raised is whether any 

 Punic or South African worker-bees 

 have a capacity to lay eggs that will 

 hatch and produce perfectly devel- 

 oped females, without previous im- 

 pregnation. 



The quotation which we made, 

 from the "Western Province Bee 

 Journal," on this question, convinced 

 us that its editor, Mr. Attridge, is 

 entirely disinterested and impartial 

 in this matter. So we wrote him to 

 ask his opinion. He replied in a 

 long letter, from which, with his ap- 

 proval, we quote as follows : 



"From my own experience I can 

 say that it is quite a common thing 

 for our South African queens to take 

 wing during manipulation while the 

 hive is open. Unless great care '.s 

 taken, it is easy for a queen to enter 

 a super or to settle in a small cluster 

 anywhere and enter a hive. 



"I have experimented with several 

 colonies regarding 'worker-laying 

 workers,' but my results have been 

 negative. In every instance I have 

 failed to produce workers from 

 workers, although the Rhodesian En- 

 tomologist considers Mr. Onions, 

 who conducted experiments und.-r 

 his supervision, to have proved his 

 claim that they 'produce females 

 without male impregnation' and that 

 this 'appears to be the rule to whic'-i 

 male development is the exception.' 



"It is generally believed that only 

 one queen is allowed in a hive at one 

 time. When inspecting colonies in 

 Johannesburg (for European foul- 

 brood), I found, in one hive contain- 

 ing bees, brord and stores, no less 

 than six young and active queens, be- 

 sides some sealed queen-cei's. I was 

 struck with the number of queen- 

 cells in nearly every hive opened in 

 that part of the country. 



"Three years ago I raised three 



queens at the same time in an obser- 

 vation hive. One of them was slight- 

 ly small, but she mated successfully 

 (indicated by the presence of the 

 genital organs of the male), and be- 

 came a worker-laying queen. The 

 other two were scarcely larger thin 

 an ordinary worker. One of them 

 lived about a month and then disap- 

 peared. The other one lived in the 

 hive for 5 months. Although such 

 queens would be difficult to find in a 

 populous colony, I had no difficulty 

 in picking her out from among the 

 workers in the observation hive on 

 account of her shape. When seen 

 enlarged through a hand lens, she 

 looked a perfect queen. She was shy 

 and preferred the dark places on the 

 top and edges of the comb. Some- 

 times she would wander on the face 

 of the comb and deposit eggs in the 

 cells surrounding the brood patch. 

 All of her eggs which I marked dis- 

 appeared in 24 hours. They were no 

 doubt removed by the workers. I 

 believe they were drone eggs and as 

 drones were apparently not required, 

 the bees would not rear them. If, by 

 any chance, the worker-laying queen 

 came near the supposed drone-layer, 

 the latter fled as fast as possible. 

 She was also sometimes worried by 

 the workers. This is the only time I 

 have observed workers worrying a 

 queen, even though there were more 

 than one present in the same hive. 

 The distance from the inside of the 

 hive to the outside was 3 to 4 feet. 



"Do fertile or laying workers work 

 in the field the same as ordinary 

 workers until such time as they as- 

 sume the maternal instinct, or do 

 they remain in the hive to be fed and 

 treated as normal queens? I should 

 believe the latter. 



"There is no difference in the egg 

 which produces a queen or a worker. 

 Special feeding produces a queen. 

 This was proved by Huber, who fed 

 worker larvs with royal jelly, and 

 when emerged he painted the thorax 

 and amputated the right antenna. He 



afterward caught some of these 

 workers in the act of ovipositing. He 

 wrote : T have repeated the experi- 

 ment so often, and weighed all the 

 concomitant circumstances with so 

 much care, that whenever I please I 

 can obtain fertile (laying) work- 

 ers in my hives.' The perfect queen 

 is capable of mating. The laying- 

 worker is considered to be incapable 

 of mating, yet she is credited by Mr. 

 Onions with power which it is gen- 

 erally believed is denied to the per- 

 fect queen. If the worker can gen- 

 erate workers, why does nature give 

 them a queen or mother-bee, without 

 which no colony can survive? The 

 fact that the ancient Egyptians of 

 the 12th Dynasty used the figure of 

 the queen-bee to denote sovereignty 

 shows that thousands of years ago 

 the honeybee had evolved to the 

 stage of a queen or mother-bee for 

 the colony. It seems remarkable that 

 this bee retains what may possibly 

 be considered the original type, i. e., 

 each female perfect and able to re- 

 produce her kind. 



"As far as I can gather, Mr. Onions 

 makes no mention of unmated Afri- 

 can queens possessing the power of 

 producing worker-bees. 



"Is a perfect unmated African 

 queen able to produce both workers 

 and drones? If not, why should a 

 laying worker be able to do so? 

 This has an important bearing on the 

 subject. Mr. Onions used what he 

 described as 'African bees.' These he 

 obtained from near Cape Town, 

 where no pure race may be said to 

 exist, where in past years scores of 

 colonies, English, Carniolan, Italian, 

 etc., having been imported and accli- 

 matization attempted. In his own 

 apiary, at the Cape, he had an Italian 

 as well as an African 



"Hewitt writes of using Punic bees, 

 a bee found in North Africa. Taylor, 

 writing of the Egyptian, i. e., a North 

 African bee, says : 'They possess two 

 striking peculiarities — the first that 

 they never use propolis, but substi- 



