The Bulletin. 45 



The proper method is not to invest too heavily at first. Two or three or 

 four colonies of Italian hees in improved or movable frame boxes are suffi- 

 cient to start with. Then subscribe to some good bee journal and study the 

 business— study it hard. Test your field thoroughly, and add no more colonies 

 to your yard than the field will support and give you a fair surplus under 

 ordinary circumstances. When you have reached this point you can sell your 

 increase (if you keep good, pure-bred stock) and add quite a nice sum to 

 your income annually. If you keep good stock and advertise it you will have 

 no trouble in selling it at a fair price. And right here I will say, there are 

 more ways than one to get money out of bees. There is just as much money 

 to be made from the sale of queen bees as there is from the sale of honey, 

 and in a dull season, when there is not much honey made, you can divide 

 your stock, build them up and sell off the surplus and still have as many or 

 more colonies than you started with for the fall or next spring honey crop. 

 Artificial division and queen-rearing can both be very readily learned by 

 anyone that has a taste for bee-keeping, and by these methods a nice little 

 sum may be picked up annually by the farmer's wife or daughters. 



If you wish to make a success with bees do not start with black bees in box 

 hives. If you do you need not expect to succeed. Purchase one or more boxes 

 of Italian bees in improved boxes, and. start right. There is just as much in 

 the stock of bees as there is in well-bred cattle or anything else. The Italian 

 bee was imported from Italy many years ago, and, after undergoing most 

 thorough tests by expert bee-keepers, has long since been pronounced and 

 recognized as the best all-round, general-purpose bee in the world. You will 

 make no mistake in buying the Italian, either the three-banded, five-banded, 

 golden, or leather-colored varieties. All are good. 



The Italian will fly further for honey than any other bee, and owing to- 

 its greater tongue-reach can gather honey- from many deep-tubed flowers 

 which the common black bee cannot work at all. The tongue of the average 

 Italian will measure from 20/100 to 21/100 of an inch, while that of our com- 

 mon black bee will not exceed 16/100 of an inch. Hence, when crimson clover 

 is grown the Italians will, as a rule, store a nice crop of surplus honey, while 

 the blacks will procure hardly enough to keep themselves alive. I have proven 

 this to my own satisfaction time and again. 



There is another point in favor of the Italians that speaks highly for them. 

 They will not, under ordinary circumstances, tolerate the presence of the 

 moth or web-worm that destroys thousands of boxes of bees annually through- 

 out the country where the blacks are kept. 



An old box hive, as you perhaps know, sometimes throws out three or four 

 swarms of bees in the spring. In a case of this kind there are usually not 

 enough bees left to cover the combs. And here is where the moth gets in her 

 work. It is the nature of the black bee to protect no more comb than they 

 actually cover, and in a case of this kind three-fourths of the comb remains 

 unprotected. Hence, the moth crawls in and deposits eggs in the cells of all 

 unprotected combs, and in due time each egg produces a worm that spins 

 webs from comb to comb, and in a short time completely destroys that which 

 remains of the colony of bees and every particle of comb. 



In the case of the Italians it is quite different. They rarely swarm them- 

 selves weak, and when this does occur I have proved that, though only a 

 handful may be left, they will industriously traverse the combs and keep 

 them clean and free from the eggs that the moth may slip in and deposit. 



Terhaps it is not generally known that a colony of bees consists of four 

 classes : Two classes of workers, queen and drones. The two classes of work- 

 ers are field bees, those that gather pollen and honey, and nurse bees or comb- 

 builders, those that attend to the duties inside the box. The duty of the 

 field force is to bring the honey in and deposit it in the cells, while the nurse 

 bees seal it up at the proper time, and also deposit food in the cells containing 

 eggs or "grubs" (which are young bees just started), to be consumed by the 

 "grub" after the cell is sealed up, which is promptly done on the ninth day 

 from the time the egg is deposited by the queen. In twelve days more young, 

 thoroughly developed bees will gnaw their way .from the cells and crawl 

 around on the comb two or three days before going forth on the wing to 

 gather honey from the field. 



