382 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



Italian Llood. For the queens von rear from that queen will be 

 Lalf-blood, and the drones full blood; so, if one of those queens mates 

 with one of the drones, the resulting worker progeny will be three- 

 fourths Italian. Having one Italian colony in the apiary, it is only 

 a matter of time to get more or less Italian blood into your other 

 colonies. But eo long as your neighbors within two or three miles 

 of you have black bees, you will find a constant tendency to work 

 back toward black blood. 



CONTROL OF FERTILIZATION. 



It is a rather discouraging circumstance that anything like ab- 

 solute control of fertilization has never yet been reached. The queen 

 flies out of the hive to meet the drone high up in the air; and she 

 may meet a drone from one of your own hives, but is more likely 

 to meet one from some hive half a mile away, possibly three or four 

 miles away. 



]*erhaps the nearest toward control has been something like this: 

 Into the nucleus containing your virgin queen put the desired drones 

 and put the nucleus in the cellar, the queen being at this time about 

 four days old. Two days later, after drones have ceased flying, 

 say four o'clock, bring out the nucleus and give it some diluted 

 honey or sugar syrup. This will stir up the bees to fly, and there will 

 be a prospect that the queen and drones will also fly. This is more 

 trouble, perhaps, than you are willing to take, especially as you 

 have nothing entirely sure. 



I»ut you may and ought to do something in another way, especially 

 if 30U have quite a number of colonies. Decide which are your best 

 colonies; from the very best one rear your queens, and allow the 

 remainder of the best to have some drone comb, and keep all drone 

 comb out of the other colonies. Then you will know that none but 

 the best drones from your own apiary will be used, but must stand 

 the chance of what your neighbors have, unless you can prevail 

 upon Ihcm to co-operate with you. 



KEEP RECORD OF YOUR BEST COLONIES. 



IIow are you to know which are your best colonies? By keeping 

 track of their performance, and putting it down in black and white. 

 It is some trouble but it will pay you well. It is the belief of some 

 that the right way is to measure the tongues of bees, and count 

 those best which have longest tongues. The average length of a 

 bee's tongue is perhaps not far from 1,3-100 to 15-100 of an inch; 

 not long enough to roach tlie bottom of a red clover blossom. But 

 some tongues have been found as long as 25-100, and if we could have 



