. The American bee keeper. Bee culture; Honey. Vol. XIII MARCH, 1903 No. 3 OBSERVATION. The Bee Still Affords a Rich Field for the Stu- diously Inclined. (Arthur C. Miller). IT MAY sound pedantic to say that knowledge of bee life is as yet in its ABC but be that as it may and at the risk of calling down upon myself a deluge of denial and counter assertions. I here make that statement and will give some of my reasons, hop- ing thereby to stimulate observation, to the end that light may be shed on many at present unsolved problems of practical apiculture. Thanks to the patient labors of such men
. The American bee keeper. Bee culture; Honey. Vol. XIII MARCH, 1903 No. 3 OBSERVATION. The Bee Still Affords a Rich Field for the Stu- diously Inclined. (Arthur C. Miller). IT MAY sound pedantic to say that knowledge of bee life is as yet in its ABC but be that as it may and at the risk of calling down upon myself a deluge of denial and counter assertions. I here make that statement and will give some of my reasons, hop- ing thereby to stimulate observation, to the end that light may be shed on many at present unsolved problems of practical apiculture. Thanks to the patient labors of such men as Cowan, Cheshire and others be- fore them we have a very full knowl- edge of the anatomy of the honey bee, of the functions of some organs and an inkling of the use of some others, but of still others we have no idea at all of the part they play in the bees' life and work. Many plausable but unsupported statements of the internal life of the hive are accepted without question. "It is so because the text books say ; But who informed the author of the book, or how came he by his knovvl- edge? Only too often he has taken it from some prior work or seeing in some magazine a plausable statement by some popular or temporarily promi- nent writer, has copied it as fact. An example of this is the belief that bees use their head to ram the pollen into the cells, a notion too absurd to de- serve attention were it not for its wide- spread acceptance. As the pellets of pollen are dropoed on the floor of the cell bj^ the gathering bee, a mere ramming in by the head of any bee would pack it very unevenly, much at the lower side and little or none at the upper, a consideration which heretofore seems never to have atracted attention. Also as every or- gan is adapted to its particular func- tion we should expect to find the front of the bee's head hard and smooth, if it was intended and used for this pur- pose, whereas it bears a pair of deli- cately articulated antennae, and sim
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectbeeculture, bookyear1
