. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. 420 AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL December tute wax; the second, and a still more surprising one, that thej ap pear to be accompanied in every col- ony by a fourth order of individuals, consisting in about a dozen of what may either be lalled fertile workers or drone-producing queens, but differing from either of these classes as we find them with other bees, as they are like queens in form, but smaller, and are marked, as are the drones that they and they only produce, by a yellow spot upon the breast.' "Mr. Onions' latest experiments were carried out in
. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. 420 AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL December tute wax; the second, and a still more surprising one, that thej ap pear to be accompanied in every col- ony by a fourth order of individuals, consisting in about a dozen of what may either be lalled fertile workers or drone-producing queens, but differing from either of these classes as we find them with other bees, as they are like queens in form, but smaller, and are marked, as are the drones that they and they only produce, by a yellow spot upon the breast.' "Mr. Onions' latest experiments were carried out in Rhodesia with bees imported from the suburbs of Cape Town. Some of the bees were sent him from near to where his lace Cape apiary was situated. What is our 'Cape bee?' One would have thought that a bee of purer African race would be found in Rhodesia; a Punic or Egyptian bee having worked its way down. Mr. Onions does not claim to be able to demonstrate worker-laying workers from the na- tive bee found in Rhodesia, but from the hybrid bee from the Cape. "I know of only one man here who claims to be able to repeat Mr. On- ions' experiments, and he acknowl- edges that the colony does not pros- per, and finally perishes through weakness. "I think we need to better under- stand the factors which govern sex in mating. In this we are told that there are certain laws which, like those of the Medes and Persians, are unalterable, and it is a question whether, in face of these laws, it is possible for an egg from a fully de- veloped and mated queen, to produce either a worker-laying worker or only a drone-laying queen, simply by the difference in the feeding of the larva after the egg—in which are wrapped unalterable laws determin- ing sex—has hatched. "What we speak of as the 'Cape bee' is not a pure race, but a hybrid. Bees of various colors and stripes and characteristics are found in the hive at the same time. We have yet much to learn about the 'Cape bee.' "
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, booksubjectbees, bookyear1861
