64 EIGHTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



Mr. Kildow. — I might answer it one way and you would say 

 I was wrong. I might answer it the other way and the other fellow 

 would say I was wrong. 



The President. — Answer your own way. 



Mr. Kildow. — I found the general golden, what they call golden, 

 through the State, and yet different men have different ideas of what 

 a golden is, so I do not know exactly what to say, but I found the 

 ordinary golden through the State are generally the quietest bees, as a 

 rule. There are exceptions, of course, but I see no reason why we 

 should think that the goldens are a vicious class of bees. That has 

 not been my experience. 



Mr. Bishop. — I have tried the three banded bees of the Ughter 

 color, so-called Italians, I have tried golden Italians from several 

 different breeders, some of our best breeders, throughout the United 

 States, and sometimes you find a colony of golden bees that are ex- 

 tremely cross and irritable and some times you find one that is a little 

 bit dark fully as irritable and cross, but as &, rule, I actually believe 

 that the yellow bees that I have in my apiary to-day are really the 

 best natured and I do not see but they gather just as many pounds of 

 honey as the dark ones and when you go into an apiary and see the 

 bees around, whether there is any difference in their production or in 

 their qualifications, those golden fellows out there in the sunshine, 

 it makes a fellow feel good. If there is no difference any other way I 

 just prefer the golden, because the gold business is a nice business, jf 

 they will make you as much money as the dark ones, I would rather 

 look at the golden bees. 



The President. — Possibly the State Inspector of Iowa has some- 

 thing to say about difference in the dark Italians and the golden 

 Italians. 



Mr. Millen. — The only thing I have to say is that it is a matter 

 of strain and I do not think we will find as many cross Italian goldens 

 now as we did years ago. The bee-keepers seem to have improved 

 their breed a little. I think it largely depends on the strain of the bees. 



Mr. Kildow.- — I do not think there is any difference. I am one 

 of these fellows the bees do not care for, anjrway, I do not have kny 

 trouble. I have been in bee yards where they chased the owners of 

 the yard out of the place and I had no veil on and they would not 

 bother me, they would get after the other fellow, goldens or blacks or 

 hybrids. I had what they call the golden kind of bees in 1886 or 1887 

 and those bees were as gentle as the bees we get now. There may 

 have been individual cases where some of them were regular hornets,^ 

 but as for me, I find the so-called goldens through the State are really 

 gentler than any other bees. None of them bother me, as far as that 

 is concerned.. Maybe I am not a good one to tell about these bees. 



Mr. Pettit. — On this matter of cross bees, I think there is some- 

 thing in having pure strains. I have been told that pure bred Cyprus 

 bees are gentle. The Cyprians I have had to do with were mixed, 

 they were anything but gentle. I have an idea that some of the golden 

 we have get their color from a little mixture of Cyprians. On the 

 other hand I have been in an apiary of one hundred or more colonies 

 tiered way up, eight strong colonies golden Italian bees and we sat 



