226 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July 



large, the bees are compelled to turn them 

 up, or the honey would flow out. As the 

 honey is kept in place by capillary attrac- 

 tion, it the cells exceed a certain size, the 

 adhesion of the liquid to the wax walls is in- 

 sufficient, of itself, to hold the honey in 

 place. Where drones are to be reared in 

 these very large cells, the bees contract the 

 mouth, by a thick rim. As an experiment, 

 r had some plates made for producing small 

 sheets of fdn., having only 3i cells to the 

 inch. The bees worked on a few of these, 

 with these same thick rims, but they evi- 

 dently did not like the idea very well, for 

 they tried to make worker cells of some of 

 it, and it proved so much of a complication 

 for their little heads, that they finally aban- 

 doned the whole piece of comb, apparently, 

 in disgust. Bees sometimes rear worker 

 brood in drone comb, where compelled to 

 from want of room, and they always do it in 

 the way I have mentioned, by contracting 

 the mouth of the cells, and leaving the 

 young bee a rather large berth in which to 

 grow and develop. Drones are sometimes 

 reared in worker cells, also, but they are so 

 much cramped in growth, that they seldom 

 look like a fully developed insect. 



Several times, it has been suggested that 

 we enlarge the race of honey bees, by giving 

 them larger cells; and some circumstances 

 seem to indicate that something may be 

 done in this direction, although I have little 

 hope of any permanent enlargement in size, 

 unless we combine with it, the idea of se- 

 lecting the largest bees to propagate from, 

 as given a few pages back. By making the 

 cells smaller than ordinarily, we can get 

 small bees with very little trouble ; and I 

 have seen a whole nucleiis of bees so small, 

 as to be really laughable, just because the 

 comb they were hatched from, was set at an 

 angle, so that one side was concave, and the 

 other convex. The small bees came from 

 the concave side. Their light, active move- 

 ments, as they sported in front of the hive, 

 made them a pretty and amusing sight for 

 those fond of curiosities. Worker bees 

 reared in drone cells are, if I am correct, 

 sometimes extra large in size, but as to 

 whether we can make them permanently 

 larger by such a course, I am inclined to 

 doubt. The difficulty, at present, seems to 

 be the tendency to rearing a great quantity 

 of useless drones. By giving a hive fur- 

 nished entirely with worker comb, we can 

 so nearly i)revent the production of drones, 

 that it is safe enough to call it a complete 

 remedy. 



now THE BEES BUILD THE COMB. 



In this day and age of bees and honey, it 

 would seem that one should be able to tell 

 how the bees build comb, with almost as 

 much 6ase as they would tell how cows and 

 horses eat grass; but, for all that, Ave lack 

 records of careful and close experiments, 

 such as Darwin made many years ago. In 

 our house apiary, there are dozens of hives, 

 where the bees are building riglit up close to 

 the glass, at this very minute ; and all one 

 has to do, in order to see how it is done, is* 

 to take a chair and sit down before them. 

 But the little fellows, have such a queer, 

 sleight of hand, way of doing the work, that 

 I hardly know how they do accomplish it. 



In a little work, published by Prof. Agas- 

 siz, about the year 1867, the renowned nat- 

 uralist speaks as follows about tlie way in 

 which bees build honey comb : 



"The bees stand as close as they can together in 

 their hive for eeonomy of space, and each one de- 

 posits his wax around him, his own form and size 

 being- the mould for the colls, the regularity of 

 which, when completed, excites so much wonder 

 and admiration. The mathematical secret of the 

 bee is to be found in his structure, not in his in- 

 stinct." 



Notwithstanding the promptness with 

 which the folly of such a statement was at 

 once shown up in the bee journals, it seems 

 it never came to the eyes of the Prof., or, at 

 least, he never deemed it worthy of notice ; 

 for, in 1873, he gave, substantially, the same 

 thing in a lecture at Cambridge, Mass.. 

 and it was praised and published in the Tri- 

 bune and other papers, and sent broadcast 

 all over our land. I believe all the bee jour- 

 nals at once protested against giving the 

 people such "twaddle" (if I may be excused 

 for using the term), as science ; but, for all 

 that, I believe the learned ptrofessor never 

 recalled his blunder, or even so much as a d- 

 mitted that he had never seen the inside of 

 a bee-hive at all, bitt only guessed at it, or 

 repeated what he had been told by some 

 one. 



About two years afterward, the great sci- 

 entist Tyndall, by some means, got an 

 inkling of the way in which Agassiz had 

 "put his foot in it," and, in the Popular Sci- 

 ence Monthly, wisely admitted that the bees 

 did not stand in the cells to build their 

 comb, but fixed them in this wise : says he, 

 "The bees place themselves at equal dis- 

 tances apart upon the wax, and sweep and 

 excavate — " etc. Now if Tyndall is teach- 

 ing us other things in the same way, i. e., 

 delivering lectures on some subject on which 

 he knows nothing, how much can we depend 

 on any thing he says. Oh why could not he 



