102 



FIFTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



spends $10,000 a year for bee-keeping. 

 The legislature allows us that much 

 money. 



Go after your legislature and let 

 them do something for bee-keeping. 

 Tell them what other states are doing. 



Go before them as an organization 

 of influential men. 



Say to them, there are 10,000 bee- 

 keepers in the state of Illinois be- 

 hind us — demanding an appropriation 

 of $2,000 for queen rearing apiary, an 

 experimental station for bees. 



I wrote to Ernest Root, a personal 

 letter, asking him to give his own per- 

 sonal attention with a view of lo- 

 cating for me the best breeding queens 

 that can possitfly be obtained in the 

 United States. 



It took him a year to do it. 



I selected three grand daughters of 

 that queen selected especially by Mr. 

 Root for that purpose; I got those 

 three queens and introduced them into 

 full sized colonies, and have seen 

 them develop, lay and produce brood 

 and you would be surprised what size 

 queens they were and what beautiful 

 bees they produced, beautiful leather 

 color Italians, gentle, industrious 

 workers, great producers of honey. 



Although I was disturbing them all 

 summer they gave me a wonderful 

 crop. 



The state allowed me $1500 to buy 

 an outfit, and, if you want to have 

 mating boxes, the common Hoffman 

 frame is the best. 



About the mating of those queens: 

 There is a great deal of ignorance and 

 prejudice. Queens can get mated in 

 neighboring yards and queens fly 

 three or four miles away. 



I will tell you of our experience: 



We have, in Minnesota, bees all 

 around us from one-half mile to two 

 miles. 



We are surrounded by bees. We are 

 in the suburbs. 



In our yard at Minneapolis I intro- 

 duced 125 of our own queens; onlv 

 four were mismated; all others mated 

 ppre. 



I found upon observation — where we 

 have four hundred mating boxes — 

 queens flying through the air — drones 

 flying through the air — that a queen 

 did not go, I do not believe, a block 

 away before it mated. 



Of course we have an unusual lo- 

 cality. 



We have a queen -rearing yard lo- 



cated in the middle of a grove, witli 

 trees all around. 



The queens keep circling over the 

 tops of the trees, trying to fly away,- 

 but they meet hundreds and hun- 

 dreds of drones in the same yard. 



But, gentlemen, the pleasure of hav- 

 ing pure bees, and all kinds alike, is 

 something that only those know who 

 have the pure bred stock. 



Hybrids and black bees, the moment 

 you approach the hive they run for 

 you. There is no pleasure in keeping^ 

 a yard like that. 



But the pure bred Italians — you can 

 handle them the whole season through 

 without gloves and without a veil; and 

 practically without a smoker. You can 

 perform all your operations there in- 

 your yard without hardly ever getting' 

 stung. 



Xo danger, if you have children or 

 have visitors, of getting stung, and, 

 besides, the advantages you have, the 

 pleasure of handling those bees — the 

 pleasure of handling pure stock which 

 only those people know who have ever 

 owned pure stock. 



I don't know what Mr. France would 

 like to have me say to you, but if 

 there are any questions you can think 

 of I will do all I can to answer them. 

 (Applause.) 



President France — If Doctor Phillips 

 would like to add to this, at this time, 

 anything further on the subject of the 

 value of young queens, we w^ould like 

 to hear from him. 



Doctor Phillips— I don't believe I 

 could add anything to what Professor 

 Jaeger has said because he has cov- 

 ered the ground so thoroughly. 



The difficulty is a great many bee- 

 keepers are very much misled as to 

 what they actually have. 



A great many bee-keepers, when you 

 first visit their apiaries, will brag to 

 you about certain colonies and queens- 

 they have, when it is true that, if you 

 have recently come from a yard where 

 there is good stock, j'ou will be sur- 

 prised to find that a man would take 

 in such scrub material. 



We should take advantage of what 

 others have done to improve because 

 there is no doubt that the stock can be 

 improved. 



The bee-keeper would, with advan- 

 tage to himself, breed his queens from 

 his stock in the yard if he knows pos- 

 itively he has .the best stock that can 

 be obtained. 



