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queens, increase the number of our stocks artificially, and we feel like adding, how to winter successfully, and with certainty also, but we should feel lost to attempt any of these without the extractor, most especially the latter. Before the advent of the extractor, even with movable combs, the progress in the interior of the hive was mostly guesswork, and only viewed at rare intervals and with the feeling that it was an intrusion.

Now we watch the progress of honey storing and comb building, even to seeing every comb that is built and whether it be worker comb, strait, etc.; our queens are seen, their fertility noted, progress of brood rearing, amount of pollen on hand, what becomes of it, etc. Swarming is kept under almost entirely by its use, and the disorderly work that follows almost always where natural swarming is allowed, is avoided.

Last and not least, without the use of the extractor we should be almost powerless to avert the consequences of Bee Malady in wintering. By removing natural stores entirely, and supplying them with food of known and invariable quality, we are no farther depending on the chance that may perhaps have provided wholesome food for Winter.

For The American Bee Journal.

How to Feed and Winter Bees.

Messrs. Editors: In/response to many inquiries in regard to keeping and wintering bees, please give the following an insertion in the AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL if found worthy.

To each quart of sugar add one pint of hot water, heat to the boiling point and skim; or to every three pounds of sugar add two pounds of hot water, stir, heat, and skim as before directed. As soon as cool enough it is ready for the bees.

For feeding in the Spring, Summer or early in the Fall, a common grade of good sugar does very well; but for late Fall or Winter feeding, use the most refined grades. Feeding for Winter should be done during warm weather, soon after the first killing frosts and as fast as the bees can store away the syrup, and until the brood combs have been well filled. Molasses, sorghum, or the poorest grade of

sugar should never be used. Good sugar is the cheapest, and is also healthy for the bees. Honey from other hives often proves fatal to them while confined to their hives. When bees are fed late in the Fall, or during continued cold weather, place their hive at an open window in a room kept constantly warm, where the bees can crawl back into the hive after flying. Keep the room warm until they have stored, evaporated, and sealed over enough syrup to last them until Spring. With the Universal Hive, as patented Aug. 26, 1873, I accomplish the same thing without letting the bees out, by placing a screen in front of the hive, securing a space for the bees to fly in. A frame of empty comb filled with syrup, poured into the cells from a suitable hight, may also be placed between the screen and the end of the hive, which, being exposed to the light and the open air, will cause the bees to remove the syrup to the interior. By this means the bees may be kept in a parlour, or any other suitable, warm room while being fed, and at any season of the year. When feeding bees in the Spring, or any other time, care should be taken not to give them much more syrup than they will consume in preparing food for the young.

In judicious feeding lies one of the great secrets of success. Plenty of flour also should be given to the bees as early and late in the Spring as they will use it. It may be protected from robber bees by means of the screen arranged as already pointed out. In the sunshine is the most favorable place for the flour, which may also be made of different kinds of grain.

A cool, still, dry, and perfectly dark place, with thorough ventilation to the hive, is the most favorable place and condition in which to winter bees. They should be kept as quiet and free from disturbance as possible. To prevent the accumulation and retention of dampness or water, the hive must be well ventilated, and should also be so arranged and protected that the bees can economize their animal heat to the best advantage. Proper conditions will ever secure success in wintering bees. The required conditions may be enumerated as follows: 1st. A productive queen, with bees enough to rear brood. 2d. Suitable combs stored with wholesome food. 3d. A pure atmosphere of a suitable tempera

or so will drop, which the bees will take care of. The hive should be as near level as possible. Sometimes when the bees do not care for the food, or the weather is too cool, drops of moisture will gather on the can, and form a draft for the syrup, which will act the same as a half dozen bees, and the feeder will leak a little. The can must be perfectly air-tight. I give mine a couple of coats of paint, outside, which keeps them from rusting.

ture, about 40° or 50° above zero being up over the bees, when the atmospheric the best. 4th. No disturbances of any pressure will keep the liquid from running kind, with a proper exclusion of light-out, except at first, when a teaspoon-full total darkness and stillness being the best for keeping the bees quietly confined to their hives. A good method of out-door wintering is to set up and tie a shock of corn stalks around the hive, enough to break the winds and keep the hive dry, at the same time packing plenty of hay or straw around and over the frames, after properly ventilating and protecting the bees from the mice, and also securing the bees a small and suitable passage to and from the external atmosphere. The straw and fodder will absorb the moisture collecting around the bees, conveying it to the external atmosphere and also more fully protect them by confining their animal heat.

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In the December JOURNAL, Mrs. Lucinda W. Harrison wants to know why I did not describe Mr. Grimm's bee-feeder and smokI thought I would leave that for Mr. G. to do, but as he has not done so, I will

er.

do it now.
ly imagination, so, Mrs. H., please try and
imagine this description.

Ladies are said to have a live

BEE-FEEDER,—a tin can four and one fourth inches in diameter, and four inches high; a hole in the center of the end, one and one half inches in diameter, covered with perforated tin, soldered on; a small hole near the edge of the same end, on which is soldered a screw cap, the same as on kerosene cans, with the rim of the cap cut down so as not to project over five eights of an inch from the can. A rim is soldered on to the end of the can, three fourths of an inch wide, so that

when the can is turned with the hole downwards, there will be room for the bees to come up under it, and eat honey, syrup, or water through the perforated tin. Fill the can with a tunnel through the screw cap, turn the cap on tight, and with a quick motion turn the can bottom

-a

SMOKER, -a tin tube, one and one-fourth by six inches, ends covered with perforated tin, pressed inwards; two mouth pieces fitting over the ends of the tube, removable, and tapering to a point, with knob on each to hold between the teeth like the stem of a pipe. To use it, fill one of the mouth pieces with tobacco (I suppose fine rotten wood would do), light it, and crowd it on to the table, then blow through the other mouth-piece, and there is your smoke. For those who use the weed, it is very handy, for it can be held between the teeth, through a hole in the vail, and the smoke directed to different places, while both hands are at liberty to handle frames, etc. But for those who do not use tobacco, and certainly ladies, I think a piece of rotten wood is far preferable. A little cup with handle and perforated tin bottom, is a nice thing to lay the wood in, when the smoke can be blown down through it, and no danger from fire when it is set down. If Mrs. H. does not understand the description of the feeder, I will send her a sample by express for twenty-five cents, and her tinman can make them from it. W. M. KELLOGG. Oneida, Ill., Dec. 19, 1873.

Honey may be kept in perfect purity for years by boiling the strained or extracted article, then skim it carefully, and seal it up air tight, as fruit is canned, then keep it in a cool, dark place.

As a supply for the Winter, a strong stock should, on the first of November, contain at least one pound of honey for every thousand bees; and a weak stock should then have a pound and a half for every thousand bees.-Hoffman.

THE WINGS OF THE BEE.

Physiologically Considered as Organs of Flight and of Special Sensation.

The following paper was read before the Bee-keepers' Convention, by Gen. Adair:

To the novice the wings of a bee appear as a dry membrane or tissue of skin,stretched over a frame-work of as equally dry and lifeless ribs of hard, elastic, horny matter. He does not suspect that they have other than to enable the bees to fly, or that their loss or destruction does' other injury than to disable them from flight. It is a common practice even among well informed apiarians to cut off the wings of the queen to prevent her going off with a swarm. A better acquaintance with the structure and uses of the wings would show that any such mutilation must be injurious.

Bees do not breathe through the mouth, neither do they have lungs, like the higher animals. Respiration is carried on through an intricate ramification of minute tubes called trachea, having their outlets or mouths as pores (called spiracles or stigmata) in the sides of their bodies, under and behind their wings. Through these breathing pores the air is led by those delicate tubes to every part of the body, even to the tips of their wings.

Bees have no heart as higher animals have. A tube, or as it is called, a "dorsal vessel," lying just beneath the middle line of the back, and extending from the head to the tip of the abdomen, performs that office. The blood is received into this tube, and, as bees have no veins proper, it escapes from all parts of the tube and traverses the body in currents, bathing all the organs, even to the extremities of the wings.

The nervous system of bees consists of a cord, or rather a double cord, commencing in a knot in the head, which is their so-called brain; from thence it extends throughout the whole length of the body under all the internal organs, resting on the "floor" of the body-walls. On this cord, at intervals, there are swellings (ganglia) from which fine filaments are sent out, which are special nerves for the various organs to which they lead; one branch passing to the wings is distributed through all parts of them."

The horny frame upon which the fine membrane of the wings is stretched, is all of it composed of hollow tubes of a hard substance called chitine (the same substance that constitutes the hard part of the organs and the crust of all insects). Those tubes are double, being one tube inside of another. The inner ones are extensions of the trachea through which the air circulates in breathing; between which and the other is a space through which the blood circulates, and is brought in contact with the air through the thin walls of the air tubes, just as the air and blood are brought together in the human lungs, and with the same effect.

Thus we see that the wings, besides being organs of flight, are in reality lungs. The blood in the wings, however, is not confined to those tubes, but circulates like the sap in the leaves of plants to all parts of them, and, it is likely, is thus also aerated.

The nervous filaments we have also seen pass to the wings. They follow these tubes, and all the fine venations, and terminate in every part of the wings in what are called nerve filaments (papilla), which in all animals are vehicles through which all sensations are perceived; so that we may infer that the wings of bees, besides giving the power of flying and acting as lungs, are also organs of sensation of some kind. All parts of the human body have these nerve filaments on the surface, through which the sense of touch is exercised. The eye has them so modified that they give us sight. On the tongue they give us taste; in the nose, smell, and in the ear, hearing-in each case modified to give different perceptions. For what purpose the wings of bees are so supplied has not been determined. We would of course conclude that the wings were not organs of sight or taste.

In all the investigations of naturalists none of them have been able to locate the organ of smell, although the belief is that it is the most powerful of all their senses and the most necessary to them in searching for honey. By means of it, it is supposed that they recognize each other and distinguish between their fellows and strangers to the colony. Some have suggested the antennæ as the organs of smell, but as they appear to be poorly adapted to perform such an office, it is just about

as likely that they smell with them as that they see with them, which some have supposed they did. Invisible and subtle particles emanating from odorous bodies (often so fine that they elude all attempts to detect them by any other means), coming in contact with the olfactory nerve-fibers, produce the sense of smell. These atoms are mixed with and float in the air, and in order to collect them a considerable volume of air must be made to pass over the surface-a thing which the wings certainly accomplish in an eminent degree. It is highly probable that the sense of smell is lodged in the wings.

The sense of hearing in bees has never been located by naturalists, although that office has by some been attributed to the antennæ also. Is it not more probable that the wings exercise it? The impression of sound is produced on the organs of hearing in all animals by vibrations of elastic bodies (commonly the air). A delicate, thin membrane stretched across what is called the drum of the ear, receives the impression, and communicates it by means of an intricate arrangement of parts to the auditory nerve-fibers, or papilla. What appendage of the bee would be more suited to receive such impressions than the thin, stiff membranes composing the wings?

But it is not intended in this article to

discuss these questions. I only throw them out as suggestions. Whether the wings are the organs of smell or hearing, or not, does not materially affect the point I wished to make, i. e., that the clipping of a queen's wings is an injury to her. We have seen that they perform the office of lungs, and that a queen with clipped wings is in the same condition that a man would be with part of his lungs gone. Those who have seen human beings in that condition need not be told how useless they are for the active duties of life. An insect like the bee, with a differently distributed vitality, may not be injured to the same extent, but that it is injurious no one certainly can doubt; and if by the mutilation, the sense of smell is destroyed, and the queen rendered deaf, her usefulness would certainly be impaired.

In the act of flying the bee makes another use of the trachea. At the moment of elevating its wings it may be seen to increase in size suddenly, which is the ef

fect of drawing in through the spiracles a quantity of air, which is distributed over the whole body, thus rendering it of less specific gravity; the air being further expanded by the warmth of the body acts like the heated air of a balloon, and enables the insect to rise easily and sustain a long flight, even when loaded with honey and pollen. In the act of alighting it expels the air with which it has been inflated, and falls suddenly to the alighting board of the hive. If the landing place is narrow and elevated, and it misses reaching it, the bee will be sure to fall helplessly to the ground, and can only rise again by inflating its body. Bees with larger bodies than our honey-bee, the large bumblebees have at the base of the abdomen, in addition to the ordinary air-vessels, two large sacs, called air vesicles, which are supposed to be used alone for inflation in flying, and some other insects have in the heavier parts of their bodies similar sacs.

For the American Bee Journal.

Italian Bees.-Their Worthlessness.

We give below, an extract from the discussion that took place at the meeting of the Bee-keepers' Association, of Ober Hess, in July last, by which it will be seen that there are some in Germany as well as this country, who have no faith in the Italian race of Bees.

The question before the Association for discussion was: What practical results have thus far been obtained by the introduction of the Heath bee as compared with that of the other imported racesCarnolian and Italian?

Herr Dorr, of Mettenheim, said: Gents, Since 1857 I have interested myself in imported races of bees, especially the Italian. I was their warm defender, and protected and guarded them as pet children, and thus became possessed of fine, pure colonies, and also some crosses in the first and second degree. But when I seek to find out what has been the practical result from 1857 to the present, what return I have had for my trouble, outlay of money, etc., in the introduction of different races of bees, I am forced to acknowledge that all the foreign races combined are not worth an iota. I will not include the list by foul-brood which was introduced into my apiary through these importations.

I, for my part lost 500 guilders through the foul brood introduced by the Italians, and on these grounds I warn all my Association friends. I must hence decidedly oppose any further importations.

İnestimable damage has been done to our neighborhood by the introduction of the Italian race. I could mention whole apiaries, containing upwards of forty stocks of movable comb hives, that were Italianized and have gone to total ruin. In 1868 I owned 100 movable comb hives; three fourths of which had pure Italian queens, and the other fourth were halfbreeds. From that time on I began to Germanize my stocks, and from 100 have come down to 40 Italian stocks; and so perhaps it may be with other members of the Association. I could show you with statistics how great the loss has been to our Association alone. You would be amazed, and from this basis advise against every introduction of foreign races.

The Heath bee does not suit us, because it swarms too much, when it should be gathering honey. I have in my immediate neighborhood, a beginner, a man of good judgment, who, persuaded by the praises of Gravenhorst, procured 22 stocks of heather-bees. These cost, when they reached Alshiem, somewhat over 500 guilders. He built a house. To-day they are standing there without a half ounce of honey; they swarmed, however, in abundance. Thus are failures produced, and upon these grounds I hold it to be my duty to so work, that our Associations will take this matter decisively in hand.

Since 1868 I would not endure any Italian blood in my apiary. I have half-breeds who do very well. Last year I allowed myself to be again persuaded and engaged 4 very choice queens, and this spring three of them were proved to have foul brood. The entire stands were destroyed. This again cost me a fine sum of money. It would be far otherwise, if we would more closely watch our native bees, and from year to year note what stock distinguishes itself beyond the others, and make these the standards from which to rear our queens, and I believe we would improve our race of bees without costing us so much money.

President. It might, perhaps, be interesting should Mr. Dorr explain how the foul brood got into his hives, whether it

was imported with the Italian bees, or whether from a peculiar character of the Italian bee, which would in our climate produce foul brood.

Herr Dorr. From 1857 to 1863, as Secretary of this Association, I received from Dzierzon Italian Queens. The Association of the Palaterate received from me Queens. Yet not in one instance did foul brood appear. In 1863 after the meeting at Hanover occurred the discussion as to the difference between the queens raised by Dzierzon, and those imported.

In the spring of 1863 I received my first queens from Mora, and the following Fall foul brood made its appearance. At the time I ascribed the appearance of foul brood to a peculiar circumstance. A friend of mine had some Italian queens in a triple hive. He desired me to put it in order. I agreed to do it, and had the hives brought to my apiary. I then purchased some honey from the honey dealers, for feeding, and I believed that the foul brood was caused by this honey. But it so happened that others, who in 1863 and 1864 received queens were as unfortunate as myself. Last year I tried some from Uhle, but with the same result-foul brood.

Prof. Baest. At what time did foul brood appear most abundant?

Mr. Dorr. I have not yet concluded. From the hundred, yes, hundreds of queens, I have certain information of, I am convinced that the queens reared in May, June, and July are not foul-broody; while on the other hand, those raised in the Autumn months, and those raised in Canton Tessin and sent out by the farmers, are nine-tenths of them foul-broody. Of the former, hardly one fourth show themselves foul-broody. Hence let the importing of strange races of bees alone. If we had spent for the aid of natural bee-keeping in the Grand Dutchy of Hesse, the amount of money expended for importing foreign bees, bee-keeping here would be in a very different stage.

President. Judging from the remarks of Mr. Dorr, it appears that foul brood is imported with the Italians, and not a peculiarity of that race.

Mr. Dorr. I have one more remark to make. I have, for example, often in Fall, in order to quickly accomplish my work, smoked the bees with a puff-ball, and in the evening I opened the hive and placed

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