Apiculture. 



150 



[August, 1909. 



quently spoken of in Africa as a water- 

 carrier, but this is not so, nor does be 

 gather honey or pollen. Like tbe queen, 

 he has no pollen basket. He is entirely 

 dependent on the workers for sustenance- 

 There has been much speculation as to 

 the duties performed by the drone, but 

 as far as is known at present his sole 

 duty, if not the only function, is that of 

 continuing his race. In most districts 

 drones are called into existence at the 

 commencement of the swarming season, 

 and may be ruthlessly expelled at the 

 close. He is, so to say, a tenant at will, 

 and may be ejected at any time accord- 

 ing to the fancy of the workers. It is 

 nothing unnatural if drones are allowed 

 to live on throughout the year, which 

 they frequently do where stores are 

 abundant and the supplies not altogether 

 suspended. We can with care keep 

 drones all the year round. Queenless 

 hives and those having fertile workers, 

 although weak in stores, instinctively 

 tolerate drones until provided with a 

 laying queen. 



The Worker.— The worker, or neuter, 

 as she is frequently called, is really an 

 undeveloped female, having only traces 

 of the generative organs found in the 

 body of the queen ; a few can lay drone 

 eggs under special circumstances, and 

 these are called fertile workers, to which 

 we shall presently allude. To the 

 worker, the bee most diminutive in size, 

 devolves the entire work and adminis- 

 tration of the hive. There may be from 



twenty to fifty thousand workers in a 

 gcod stock, so, "many hands make light 

 woi k," 



Nectar gathering, collecting pollen, 

 Avax secreting, comb building, brood 

 rearing, storing honey and pollen in the 

 various cells, feeding the queen, the 

 ventilation of the hive, removal of the 

 dead from the vicinity of the hive, tbe 

 defence of the colony against intruders, 

 keeping the hive clean and tidy, and 

 numerous other duties are performed by 

 the workers. The worker is provided 

 with a longer tongue than either the 

 queen or drone, and a beautifully 

 aranged organ it is, allowing the owner 

 to adapt it to the ever-varying depths 

 and surfaces of flowers, and also for 

 many other duties for which it is 

 required in the hive. The worker has 

 two stomachs, the stomach proper and 

 the honey sac. Under the body between 

 the abdominal segments are situated 

 small wax pockets, which furnish the 

 wax for comb building. The sting of 

 the worker is straight and barbed, which 

 make its extraction very difficult when 

 deeply inserted. At the base of the 

 sting is a poison bag furnished with 

 muscles for injecting tbe poison. The 

 smell of the poison is pungent and easily 

 discernible. The posterior legs of the 

 worker are provided with indentations 

 and stiff hairs, upon which the gathered 

 pollen is carried to the hive : these are 

 called pollen baskets. 



SCIENTIFIC AGRICULTURE. 



SOIL INOCULATION. 



(From the Agrimdtural News, Vol. VIII., 

 No. 184, May 15, 1909,) 



Agricultural literature has of late years 

 included numbers of papers and reports 

 on the subject of ' soil inoculation.' 

 This term is applied to the various 

 attempts that have been made to in- 

 crease the crop-yielding power of soils 

 by the introduction of bacteria which are 

 known to be the cause of the nodules 

 frequently observed on the roots of legu- 

 minous plants, and which are capable of 

 assimilating free nitrogen Item the 

 atmosphere, that can be utilized as 

 food by the plants in whose roots the 

 bacteria live- 

 Practical agriculturists have for gener- 

 ations past been well aware of the fact 

 that the growth of a leguminous crop 

 such as peas, beans, alfalfa, etc., results 

 in an increase in the crop-yielding 

 capacity oi'theland cultivated, although 



it is only within comparatively recent 

 years that a satisfactory explanation 

 of the matter was brought forward. 

 One of the early observers in respect to 

 this subject was a Frenchman, Bous- 

 singault, who, as the result of weighing 

 and analysing the crops grown on his 

 own farm throughout six separate 

 courses of rotation, Avas able to state 

 definitely that from one-third to one- 

 half more nitrogen was removed in the 

 produce than was supplied in the man- 

 ure. He observed, too, that the gain 

 of nitrogen was particularly large when 

 clover or other crops of the same family 

 were grown- 



Investigation work in relation to the 

 mauner in which leguminous plants 

 obtained the supply of nitrogen was 

 undertaken by a number of experi- 

 menters, but the credit of carrying out 

 the researches which ultimately cleared 

 up the whole matter belongs to two 

 German scientists, Messrs. Hellriegel and 

 Wilfarth, who published their results in 



