ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPEES' ASSOCIATION. 65 



out under a tree gossiping. The bee-keeper's little daughter came out 

 between a row of hives without being stung. They were gentle bees, 

 good workers. That man swore by the golden Italians. A neighbor 

 that has the other colored Italians had had better success with the 

 darker colors than he had with the goldens. In Canada we are inclined 

 to think that the darker race is more hardy in the winter than the 

 golden that we generally get. 



Mr. Kildow. — I want to ask a question before we leave this 

 subject. Isn't it a fact that you can take a good strain of three band 

 Italians, or take a strain of Italians and select yellows from those for 

 several generations, cannot you get what we call or what is produced 

 nowadays, a golden Italian from them? Do they necessarily have to 

 have Cyprian blood in them to really bring about a yellow brood? 



The President. — ^I will ask Mr. Pettit to answer that question. 



Mr. Pettit. — I should say decidedly no. But as a matter of 

 fact I consider some of the southern breeders got their colonies from 

 there. I remember one man in Texas breeding splendid bees, but 

 they were snappy. A bright yellow, they had that httle golden hump 

 on the back of the thorax, which is inclined to mark the Cyprian. 



Mr. Kildow. — I think you can breed a yellow bee from the 

 straight Italian. 



Mr. Dadant. — I have been in Italy, I have not seen a golden, 

 they are all three banded bees. I do not know whether you would 

 call them lighter colored, but they are not bright golden bees. Now, 

 can we raise golden bees from the darker Italian? I think we can. 

 The first we ever bought in 1866, 1867 or 1868, were very bright yellow. 

 They were bought from a breeder who has been dead many years, but 

 he was breeding for color. The reason they were breeding for color 

 was because people wanted yellow bees. They wanted them not only 

 because they were pretty, but because they thought that was a test 

 of purity, and I think you have more sluggish bees among your pretty 

 looking bees. If you select for color, if you select one quality to the 

 exclusion of everything else, you will get that quality, but will perhaps 

 lack in some other point. While the golden pure Italians are not so 

 active as the every day Italian bee as existing in Italy, on the other 

 hand, when you get the mixture with the Cyprian, you certainly get a 

 yellowish bee, but you get a bee with the characteristic of the Cyprian. 

 I do not know whether we had the pure Cyprian. We compared the 

 noise they make to that of a frying pan whenever the smoke hit them. 

 It did not frighten them, they went all over the hive and they were 

 ready to jump at you as soon as the smoke cleared off. You never 

 could get them filled with honey. We thought they were pure ; maybe 

 they were not. We thought if they were still purer they would be still 

 Grosser. I think the mixture of the golden Italian and the golden 

 Cyprian are the cross golden. 



Speaking of color and raising for color because a bee is pretty, 

 I remember when I was at Mr. Doolittle's two years ago last summer, 

 and he showed me some beautiful queens and beautiful bees and I 

 said, "What do I care whether the queens are pretty and bees are 

 pretty?" He said, "you hke to look at a pretty girl? Well, you Hke 

 to look at a pretty bee too. " 



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