The Washburn times. [volume] (Washburn, Wis.) 1896-1976, 1906-06-21
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Zee KEEPING as3 |
a LESSON IN BEE ECONOMY.
Marvellous Family Ties Exists Among
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the Little Honey Makers.
1T is as certain as anything can be
that at one time the bee was simply
male and female. The irresponsible
male buzzed about getting his own
living, marrying and dying. The re-
sponsible female not only got her
own living, but that of her children.
Somehow, they came to see the ad-
vantage of communal effort, and, just
as women say now: IF you'll wash
bee said to the others: ''I'll be the
mother if you'll get the living 1t
was a bargain, and they took the
drcnes to board. Somebody had to
look out for them. The queen of
bee hive does not rule; she lays eggs,
She does not mind the babies. She
does not even do her own digesting,
letting alone getting the food. The
attendants that surround her are not
continually bowling and scraping and
saying: Your Majesty they are
feeding her with bee-milk, secreted
by glands in their heads. 1t is like
the chyle poured into our blood. food
SO perfect that the queen does not
need to leave the hive from time to
time to keep it clean and sweet. She
mas to be fed continually, for at GER
tain periods she has the power of pro-
ducing from 1000 to 5000 eggs day,
twice her own wefght-four times,
indeed, for more than half her weight
is eggs In her lifetime a very pro-
life queen will lay 100000 eggs.
Put each Of these little grains, one
fourteenth Of an inch long, end to
end, and they will make a line of a
mile and three-quarters.
She possesses the power of choos-
ing which Of her offspring shall be
drones and which workers. Some
have thought that this was automatic,
and that the narrower worker cell
touched the button, so to speak, that
brought forth a fertilized egg. But
the queen will lay worker eggs in
drOne cells if she thinks fit, so that
settles that.
IF the drone is male and the queen
female what is the worker? The New
Woman of Bee-dom. She has given
up he motherhood for a business car
eer. Sometimes, though, she lays
eggs, but they always hatch out
drones, Of which it is strictly true to
say: They have mother, but no
father. If the queens wings are Grip
pied SO that she cannot make her
marriage flight, her children are all
drones. An italian queen in a hive
of black bees will beget workers of
mixed blood. but her sons are pure
Italians. Drones are useful as fathers
of workers. but they cannot collect
the honey they eat. Their tongues
are too short.
"The worm when it matches out OF
the egg lies in it's cell surrounded by
oeemilk or royal jelly as it is call
ed. AS it grows in size and strength
it is weaned, so to speak, by having
the milk diluted more and more with
pap made of pollen, honey and water,
till it finally lives on grown-bee diet
If the worker is not weaned, if it lives
on the fat of the land till it spins its
cocoon, it will be a queen. I don't
know how it would do to put little
girls on a low diet to make New Wo-
men out of them. 1t is an experiment
worth trying-on somebody else's lit
tie girl. Not mine. Not mine.
What marvellous, what miraculous
transformations occur in the progress
from that like the stuff the women
folks call tiny pearly egg, covered
with a fine net blonde; through the
blind and legless grub that soaks its
food in as well as eats it; through the
chrysalis that lies tranced while the
swellings on it's shoulders change into
a double pair of gauzy wings and that
ridge upon its breast is metamoT
phosed into an ingenius tongue, while
the interior organs undergo profound
mutations, each step of which traces
back through millions upon millions
Of contributing ancestors
"Ah! we are too ignorant, too dull
and stupid to understand!"-Harry
Sutherland in Ainslee's.