I may say that the income from the bees aided not a little in helping me through college, and I may say, also, without exaggeration that this interest in bees by one enthusiastic student helped in no small degree toward the inauguration of a course in bee-keeping at our own Ohio State University. To make the story complete I think I should add that the writer of this article is at present engaged as assistant in apiculture, doing experimental work in apiculture in the government apiaries at Washington, D. C.
There is opportunity for those who wish to take up some problem relating to apiculture as a subject of investigation, and the agricultural colleges and experiment stations will no doubt in the future give more and more attention to the investigation of problems related to this interesting and profitable pursuit.
Arthur H. McCray
VIII
RAISING SILKWORMS
Although silkworms are not actually reared in the open air, there is so much outdoor work and moderate exercise connected with their care that the subject may properly be included in a book on outdoor work.
The best food for silkworms is the leaf of the white mulberry. If you have already a hedge of this or several trees you can begin at once. If not, several years must elapse while you raise your preliminary crop of mulberry trees from seeds or cuttings. It is useless to buy silkworm eggs if you have not the wherewithal to feed your infant caterpillars. You may not think of going into silkworm rearing in a commercial way but only as an interesting bit of nature study. Why not make up some neat attractive cases, each containing a little collection illustrating the four stages of the growth of this insect? Heat a few eggs to destroy life, then glue them to a card; preserve a caterpillar in a vial of alcohol; glue a cocoon to a card; pin and spread two of the moths, a male and a female, and pin them into the box. From such a box school children will get a far more definite idea of insect metamorphosis than they will ever get from a book on zoölogy. Such little collections ought to sell well in schools where nature study, zoölogy, or agriculture is taught.
The mulberry silkworm makes the best silk, although it is by no means the only silk-spinning insect. Every now and then we read of some one who is experimenting with the silk of our American or giant silkworms, the Promethea or the Cecropia, or with the silk spun by spiders. But none as yet compares with Bombyx mori in either quantity or quality of its product or in ease of rearing or in reeling of the silk.
The adult moth lays between three and seven hundred eggs during the first three days after she emerges from her cocoon. In a week or ten days she dies, her work finished. Moths in the wild state are at some pains to deposit their eggs on the favourite food plant of their young, but in the case of Bombyx mori this instinct has been lost in the countless years of domestication. The eggs, when laid, are moist with a sort of glue which secures them to the surface upon which they are deposited. The winter is passed in the egg stage. A cool, dry place is safest for them, where no sudden changes of temperature are possible. A steady temperature of thirty-five degrees is ideal, and they must be enclosed in something that is mouse proof, though not air-tight. A perforated tin box is right for this purpose. Silkworm eggs for study may be obtained from dealers in miscellaneous insects, birds, animals, etc.