ITALIAN BEES. 



294 



ITALIAN BEES. 



with only one or two bands will be as peace- 

 able as your best Italians. Without a 

 doubt, many queens have been sent out as 

 pure that produced only hybrids ; but since 

 our recent studies in the matter we are quite 

 well satisfied that we have sold several 

 queens as hybrids that were really full-bloods. 

 A very slijj^ht admixture of black blood will 

 cause the band C to disappear on some of 

 the bees, but we should be very careful in 

 sucli matters to be sure that the bees in 

 question were really hatched in the hive ; 

 for bees of adjoining hives often mix to a 

 considerable extent. If you examine a col- 

 ony of blacks and one of hybrids that stand 

 side by side, you will find many Italians 

 among the blacks, and many blacks among 

 the Italians. Take young bees that you are 

 sure have hatched in the hive, and you will 

 be pretty safe, but you can not readily distin- 

 guish the third band until they are several 

 days old. 



FOUK AND FIVE HANDED ITALIANS. 



In 1890 and the following year there was 

 quite a rage for four and five banded Ital- 

 ians. These are nothing more nor less than 

 Italians bred for bands by selection. For 

 instance, we may take a lot of black fowls, 

 and from one having a few white feathers 

 we can, by selection, breed fowls that are 

 entirely white by selecting the whitest fowls 

 to breed from for successive generations. 

 Some Italians show a tendency toward the 

 fourth band. Perhaps some of the daughters 

 of the mother of these bees will show in their 

 bees a greater tendency toward the fourth 

 l>and. Again, we breed from the last 

 named queen, and select from her another 

 breeding queen whose bees show quite 

 clearly the fourth band with a glimmering 

 of the fifth. By continued selection we may 

 be able to get the fifth. But after all, 

 when we have bees with four and five yel- 

 low bands, we are liable to have bees for 

 color and not for business. It is possible 

 to develop any trait that we may wish to 

 have characteristic of our bees. In the 

 same way it is possible to breed bees that 

 are very energetic. But as a general rule 

 we shall have to lose sight of fancy colors. 



HOLY-LAND AND CYPRIAN BEES. 



In 1882 considerable excitement arose over 

 two new races of bees brought over from 

 the Old World by D. A. Jones, of Beeton, 

 Ontario, Canada, who was the leading bee- 

 keeper across the line. They were called 

 Cyprian and Holy-Land bees, from the 

 places where he found them. The former, 



from the Isle of Cyprus, seem to have been 

 for many years isolated, and are a very dis- 

 tinct and uniform race. 



While they look like Italians, and might 

 be classed as such by bee-keepers not fa- 

 miliar with their peculiarities, yet they 

 have a few distinct characteristics. Holy- 

 Land bees show whiter fuzz-rings, and the 

 bodies are slimmer than those of tlie or- 

 dinary Italians. They are more like the 

 ordinary albinos. In fact, most of the albi- 

 nos formerly sold were of IIoly-Land ex- 

 traction. The Cyprians look very much like 

 the four and five banded Italians. The 

 yellow bands are of a deeper orange than 

 those of the Italians, slightly wider, and 

 sometimes more than three in number. Just 

 at the base of the thorax, and between the 

 wings, there is a little yellow spot that is 

 quite distinct and prominent, called the 

 "shield." This may be seen on some yellow 

 Italians, but it is less pronounced. 



When Italians are crossed with Cyprians 

 or Holy Lands it is a little difficult to detect 

 the difference except by their nervousness. 

 And this brings us to the 



TEMPERAMENT OF EASTERN BEES. 



They are more nervous, especially the 

 Cyprians. Sometimes smoke seems to have 

 no power over them. They will fiy up 

 twenty or thirty at a time without warning, 

 and sting the moment they touch the apia- 

 rist. The more smoke is used, the more 

 enraged they become. Cyprians especially 

 are the crossest bees ever brought into this 

 country— so cross, indeed, there is scarcely 

 a breeder in the United States who has them 

 for sale. The same objection, though to a 

 less extent, applies to the Holy Lands. 



We once sold an imported Cyprian queen; 

 and our customer, after he had kept her for 

 a while, returned her, saying that her bees 

 were so vicious that on one occasion they 

 stung every thing in sight, and drove even 

 the family down cellar. We bought the 

 queen back ; but after we had had her for a 

 few weeks and her bees had begun to hatch 

 out we found it would hardly be safe to keep 

 them in the yard. They would become so 

 enraged at times that the whole colony 

 would rush out in battle array. While 

 the progeny of this queen was exceptionally 

 cross, the general run, both of Cyprians and 

 Holy Lands, is so disagreeable to handle 

 that they are now well nigh discarded by 

 the bee keepers of the United States. 



The only possible redeeming feature is 

 that they are good brood- rearers : but tliey 

 breed to excess after the honey-flow, using 



