166 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE, [Jan., 



for a small insect, it was very severe. I watched them, I saw 

 that the common bees were getting whipped, and when the 

 battle was over, the Italians went back and took the honey 

 ofif of this cloth and put it into their hive. Then they came 

 out again and marched right across this platform to the swarm 

 of common bees, and went into the hive in regular soldier 

 style, and the battle commenced again. By that time both 

 swarms had got very much excited, and the Italian bees were 

 coming out by hundreds, and gathering around the stock of 

 common bees. I saw at once that it was becoming a serious 

 matter, and I must stop it. So I closed up the entrance to 

 the hive of the common swarm, shutting the Italian bees in, 

 when they were overpowered by numbers and killed. Then 

 I just opened the entrance a little, to allow one bee in or out 

 at a time, and the black bees carried the day against the Ital- 

 ians. So you see that in this test the Italians were very much 

 stronger, or rather, excelled in fighting capacity, at least, the 

 common bee. I have tested them in other ways, with the 

 same result. 



I will remark here, in regard to the queen bee, as I did not 

 explain in my paper that the queen bee is different from the 

 common bee. Any egg that will produce a common bee will 

 produce a queen bee. The common bees are all raised in 

 these cells. In raising an Italian queen, we take out a card, 

 cut it up into pieces, slip them into the little frames, and en- 

 close three frames in a little box just like that. That is a 

 miniature swarm of bees. They have no queen, but they 

 have these eggs, which will produce a queen. So they will 

 start these eggs and raise a queen, and in three weeks the 

 queen is perfected. Now you can take her away and put her 

 in one of these cages with three or four bees, and set that to 

 raising another queen. 



Now the Italian bees differ from the common bees in this 

 respect. The common bee it takes three weeks to perfect. 

 The Italian queen bee is fed with a different food from the 

 common bee, and it develops reproducing organs, those or- 

 gans which are necessary in raising the young, which in a 



