14 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



or hinges. These median parts with 

 the attached portions, ( the two sets 

 of palpi and the maxilUt ) make 

 up the parts of the tongue. The im- 

 portant question which presents itself 

 here is, what shall we l)ase our measure- 

 ments upon in giving tongne-length.'' In 

 breeding for long-tongued bees, what 

 one would want to know is the distance 

 the tongue can be made to reach beyond 

 the jaws or mandibles, "'the tongue- 

 reach" as it has been called. This is the 

 measure which has been given by Mr. 

 Root and most others, so far as I know, 

 who have reported lengths of bees' 

 tongues. Glossometers also have been 

 constructed to measure this tongue- 

 reach in the living bee. This means to 

 me like endeavoring to determine how 

 far a man can reach above his head. If 

 we could catch him putting forth his ut- 

 most efforts to reach in that direction, 

 and could get him to hold still long 

 enough, we could determine the distance 

 with considerable accuracy. On the 

 other hand, when we have to determine 

 this point from measurements of the 

 dead or chloroformed body we cannot ob- 

 tain very accurate results. We would 

 not know how hard to pull upon the arm 

 to just draw it into the position of the 

 highest reach, and if we should not pull 

 upon it, it would, from the elasticity of 

 the parts, draw down much too far. The 

 conditions are worse in case of the elas- 

 tic and many jointed tongue of a bee. It 

 would be true, as a rule, that the longer 

 the arm, the farther a person could reach 

 above his head, and it would be much 

 more certainly true that the longer the 

 tongue of a bee, the farther can it reach 

 beyond its mandibles, as the rotios be- 

 tween parts in a bee are far more con- 

 slant than in man. For this reason, and 

 for the further reason that it is more easy 

 to get an accurate measurement of the 

 parts of the tongue when it is dissected 

 completely out and placed upon a glass 

 slide under a compound microscope, I 

 have considered the entire tongue-length 

 1: }:,. n : u i.'i n ; 1 . U.J J 1 which to ba se 



conclusions as to tongue-reach. I be- 

 lieve, for practical purposes, it may al- 

 ways be considered true that the bee with 

 the longest tongue has the longest possi- 

 ble tongue-reach. As the man with the 

 shorter arm-reach might secure more 

 persimmons from the tree than his longer 

 armed but less active brother, so the bee 

 with a slightly shorter tongue-reach may 

 excel her less industrious sister in col- 

 lecting nectar from flowers. 



In my first measurements, tongue- 

 length only was taken into account, but 

 in the later ones the tongue-reach, so 

 near as I could measure it, was also re- 

 corded. An examination of the figures 

 in the following table will show a far 

 greater variation in the latter measure- 

 ments than in the former. If the tongue- 

 reach seemed too short w'hen first 

 measured, I could usually increase it by 

 two or three hundredths of an inch by a 

 little careful stretching. I do not mean 

 a real stretching, but a straightening of 

 the joints of the cardos so as to extend 

 the tongue forward as shown in the illus- 

 tration. The tongue will not remain in 

 this position unless held there. 



HOW TO KII.L THE BEES. 



Chloroform, alcohol, formalin, c^'anide 

 of potassium and boiling water were all 

 experimented with to determine the best 

 killing agent, and it was found the last 

 was the only one that would always leave 

 the tongue in a completely relaxed con- 

 dition for measurement. The water is 

 first made boiling hot and then the bees 

 are either thrust into the water or the 

 water dashed upoii the bees. 



MEASUREMENT OF THE TONGUE. 



To obtain the tongue-reach the head of 

 the wet bee is removed and the tongue 

 pulled out between thumb and finger as 

 iar as it will reach and is pressed in this 

 condition upon a glass slide with the face 

 of the bee uppermost. The slide is then 

 placed under the compound microscope 

 and upon a rule graduated to hundredths 

 of an inch and the length of ligula, 

 mentum, sub-mentum and total length 

 read separately and recorded. 



