Mar. 24, 1904. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



217 



C 



Convention Proceedings 



in^s J 



CHICAGO- NORTH WESTERN. 



Report of the Chicago-Northwestern Bee-Keep- 

 ers' Convention, Held in Chicago, Dec. 

 2 and 3, 1903. 



(Contlnned from pa^e 14').) 

 LONG-TONGUED BEES AND THEIR WORK. 



''Do the so-called long-tongued bees work to much extent 

 on red clover?" 



Dr. Miller — There is no question but that the hive- 

 bee does sometimes work upon red clover. There is no 

 question in my mind, and no question in your mind, that the 

 red clover blossom is too deep for most bees to work upon, 

 and there is no question in my mind but what a bee with 

 an unusually long tongue has a better chance on those blos- 

 soms than one with a short tongue, so I believe that they 

 do work to a considerable extent on it, and I believe that 

 some of our bees, where we don't expect it, work on it. The 

 question that is really down at the bottom of that is : Is it 

 worth while for us to work for long-tongued bees, or pay 

 any attention to that? Admitting all the value, I don't be- 

 lieve that it is worth while for me to pay any attention to 

 which of my colonies have long tongues or short tongues. 

 The thing I look for is which colony gives me the best crop 

 of honey. When I do that, I am very likely getting the long 

 tongues. I want the ones that get the honey. I think very 

 likely you will get them when you do breed from your best 

 colonies. I don't believe we need to talk much about it, 

 but to breed from the colonies that will give us the most 

 honey. Now allow me to defer from that point, and say 

 that I believe that if you work — that if any man here who is 

 six miles from me — 'WOrks in his own apiary trying to im- 

 prove his stock by breeding from his bees that give him the 

 most honey he is helping me six miles away, and every one 

 of us. You may say it is very small ; but it is that much. 

 It isn't that one man should work to improve his stock, 

 but we all should. If you keep good stock and my bees 

 meet your drones — although if you are six miles away that 

 won't happen — ^but still, the thing is extending, and one of 

 the things we need to do is to get bee-keepers at large to 

 understand it is an important thing that each one should 

 breed from his best stock. 



Mr. Longsdon — My experience has been that my best 

 yields has nearly always been from the hybrid bee. That 

 would encourage breeding from mixed races of bees. I had 

 some long-tongued bees and they weren't satisfactory to me. 

 They are nice to handle, and I like them first-rate, and the 

 red clover don't seem to worry them at all, but my best 

 yield has nearly always been from colonies that have a little 

 mixture from the black bee. I don't know whether to en- 

 courage breeding from a mi.xture or not. 



Mr. Longsdon — I would like to hear from Mr. Muth 

 on the long-tongued-bee business. 



Mr. York — Do vou want long-tongued bees, Mr. Muth? 



Mr. Muth — My friend in the rear is afraid that 1 may 

 stir up a hornets' nest. May I hear the question again? 



Mr. York — Do the so-called long-tongued bees work to 

 much extent on red clover? 



Mr. Muth — I believe I spoke to a gentleman this morn- 

 ing at the breakfast table, who said he had had bees for 

 many years, and I plead guilty of advertising the long- 

 tongued red clover queens, and I will say for the others that 

 I believe they are all quiet, because we all have red-clover 

 workers, but they want the poor common workers to under- 

 stand that they have bees with longer tongues. I believe 

 they are stuffing something down us that is not so. I believe 

 in calling things facts. When we have a customer come 

 in and ask whether our bees' tongues are longer than any 

 "Others, I will quote them just like this gentleman here. I 

 believe you have hybrid bees, to tell you the truth, that pro- 

 duce as much honey as the bees from $2.50 queens. 



Mr. York— Whose? 



Mr. Muth — Those that are advertised. We sometimes 



pay $10 and $15. I paid $10 for one queen some three or 

 four years ago. I wouldn't part with it for anything. It 

 might be because I paid $10 for her, but there are others that 

 are very fine, but long-tongued bees are one of the things — 

 I believe when a man tells you his bees have longer tongues 

 than anybody else's, I think tliat is a little bit too mucli. 

 I don't believe it all. I have Carniolans, hybrids and blacks 

 that I see produce just as much honey. 



Rev. McCain— May I not ask if these tongues have not 

 been measured? I have been reading some of the bee- 

 books in the last two years, and I have seen some party giving 

 the length. I must plead ignorance, but the book says they 

 have been measured, and they gave a picture of the relative 

 length of these tongues. I wanted to see if they actually 

 measured these tongues with a micrometer. 



Mr. York — I notice that Mr. McCain is asking us a 

 question, and giving us a chance to answer. Most preachers 

 don't give us a chance to answer ! 



Mr. Smith — If it is a good idea to breed for long tongues, 

 why wouldn't it be a good idea to breed for short stingers? 

 The argument holds just as good. 



Mr. Abbott — Things are not always what they seem. 

 That's the gist of it. 



Mr. York — A stinger always is ! 



Mr. Moore — I believe Mr. Abbott is wrong on this idea 

 of breeding out the stinging propensity. All right, do that 

 if you please, and have all the neighbors' boys and town boys 

 eat your honey. It is my idea not to breed the stingers 

 out, but teach your bees to respect the members of the family 

 and jab their stingers into the neighbors' boys and all who 

 come to rob. 



Mr. Muth — I measured lots of bees' tongues with a 

 micrometer. You can take 10 bees out of a hive and there 

 will not be two tongues alike. We have them all the way 

 from 13, 17, to 20 one-hundredths, just according to how 

 hard you press on their heads. You can make them any length 

 you like. I have been in families where the husband and 

 wife had a good many children, and there was a great big, 

 long-armed fellow, the laziest man in the family; and there 

 was a little bit of a runt, and a cripple may be, and he did 

 all the work. So it is not always the long-tongued bee that 

 does the most work. That's my candid opinion about the 

 long-tongued bees. I am guilty of advertising long-tongued 

 bees, because if I didn't do that I couldn't sell any queens ! 

 Mr. York — That's his candid opinion; that's granulated, 

 I suppose? 



Dr. Miller — The tongues have been measured, and it is 

 a fact, I have no doubt, as Mr. Muth says, that you can 

 stretch, and you can measure, and you can do this unfairly, 

 and there are scientific men, and they can be measured fairly, 

 and there is a difference. As he suggests, there will be a 

 difference in one hive. They will not be all exactly the same. 

 Just as you see in a family there will be differences. You 

 will find this, that one colony in the yard may have longer 

 tongues than any other colony in the yard. Go back to what 

 I said awhile ago, the nectar in the corolla of the clover 

 blossom is difficult to reach on account of the shortness of 

 the tongue, and as the longest pole brings the persimmons, 

 so the longest tongue reaches the nectar, and if there was 

 nothing else to judge by I would believe a good deal of that, 

 and doing as some of the French do, and taking that colony 

 which had the longest average length, and take that as the best 

 colony. I believe it would be a good thing to do that, al- 

 though I don't think it of much value, because we can do 

 something better; we can measure the honey or crop we get. 

 Those that give me the crop of honey are the ones I want. 

 It might be of value to have the longest-tongued if we had 

 nothing better to do than to measure the tongues, and taking 

 the longest. We can do better than that. We can measure 

 our crop of honey. 



Mr. Moore — I have been waiting a number of years 

 for this minute — to get Dr. Miller on the run. I have had 

 my own suspicions. I spent $15 for a queen. There is Dr. 

 Miller with all his 40 years' experience among the bees 

 and he has never, as far as I know, said one word in print 

 about long-tongued bees getting honey from red clover. I 

 want to ask you a question : Do you, Dr. Miller, know per- 

 sonally of long-tongued bees gathering from red clover to 

 any extent? 



Dr. Miller — Mr. Moore doesn't read carefully all I write. 

 He doesn't think it worth reading, or he would know that 

 I have said in print what I have said here. I say, I don'<- 

 know whether the long-tongued bees did more than any 

 other. I do know that a long-tongued bee will do better 



