788 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAl. 



Dec. 12, 1901. 



man niis-ht till the ofBee more satisfactorily. 

 In such case will easily be seen tlie advantage 

 of a previous nomination ; and if there should 

 be anything like unanimity in the nomination 

 at the annual meeting, it would be a great 

 help toward deciding who was the right man 

 to vote for. 



In this connection it may be said that Edi- 

 tor Root has requested that his name and that 

 of his father should be dropped at the ex- 

 piration of their respective terms of ofiice. 

 Certainly, it does not seem necessary to have 

 two directors from the same town, although 

 all would not agree that the younger Root 

 should be dropped just yet. 



Wm. Rohrig, of Arizona, and Editor H. E. 

 Hill are named in Gleanings in Bee-Culture 

 as proper persons to be elected as directors. 

 Mr. Hill, however, asks that' his name should 

 not be used, giving reasons therefor. 



Breeding from the Best has been the 

 motto with perhaps the most of breeders, but, 

 as already mentioned, F. B. Simpson would 

 prefer, for improvement, to take a queen 

 of stock that showed not such a very 

 great yield above the average, but rather of 

 stock that showed a uyiiforriL increase, even it 

 this increase should not be very great. To 

 this Mr. Adrian Getaz replies in the same 

 paper (the Bee-Keepers' Review) as follows : 



Mr. Simpson thinks that since an excep- 

 tionally good queen is necessarily more or less 

 of a freak, and therefore liable to give an 

 irregular progeny, it would be well not to use 

 her for breeding. 



It depends upon what the queens are reared 

 for. If it is for sale, it might be best not to 

 take any chances, as a very few worthless 

 queens are enough to ruin a breeder's reputa- 

 tion. But if the object is to improve the 

 stock, I should say use her by any means, and 

 select the best of her progeny until the strain 

 is fixed. 



It is a matter of fact that all of our best 

 varieties of vegetables and Howers are freaks 

 that were selected, or sometimes accidentally 

 found, and perpetuated by close breeding. 

 Many of our fancy breeds of dogs, chickens 

 and pigeons originated also in that way. The 

 silk-wool merinos are descendants of a ram 

 that was a freak ; and now the race is well 

 established. 



The Ontario Convention was held last 

 week at Woodstock. We are informed that 

 it was a good and profitable meeting. We ex- 

 pect to publish a full report of the proceed- 

 ings. Our Canadian readers will be specially 

 interested in this, though it will be of great 

 interest to all, as Ontario has some of the 

 best bee-keepers in the world. They attend 

 conventions, too, and thus •' let their light 

 shine" for others. 



The New York State Meetings of 



bee-keepers, to be held this month, should be 

 well attended. Pres. Marks announces them 

 on page rW. We trust that our readers will 

 do all they can to make them a success, and 

 thus prevent their discontinuance. 



Sweet Clover in the Rookies, accord- 

 ing to W. P. Collins in the Rocky Mountain 

 Bee Journal, is to play a very important part 

 in the future, covering all the slopes that are 

 now barren, and affording Hoods of honey. 



I The Buffalo Convention. I 



• ^ ^ • 



^ Report of the Proceeding's of the Thirty-Second Annual *^ 



^ Convention of the National Bee-Keepers' Asso- ^ 



^ ciation, held at Buffalo, New York, ^ 



1^ Sept. 10, 11 and 12, 1901. ^ 



(Continued from page T75.j 

 LENGTH OF TONGUES OF BEES. 



Mr. Rankin — I had hardly expected 

 to talk to you this afternoon, and what 

 I have to say will be entirely extem- 

 poraneous. It has been my pleasure 

 to be connected with the Michigan Ex- 

 perimental Station for about five years 

 and during that time I have been doing 

 something in the investigation of the 

 length of the bees' tongues. The idea 

 came to me at one time when I had a 

 single colony that gathered a half more 

 honey than any other in the yard. I 

 began making investigations with 

 crude machines to measure the tongues. 

 I have been working right along on 

 that line. I have run across adifficulty 

 in the mating of queens — getting the 

 queens mated to the desirable drones is 

 the difficulty. Personally, I don't 

 know how it will be unravelled, but I 

 am confident it will be done some time 

 or other. I have observed right 

 straight along that a colony which 

 gathered an exceptional amount of 

 honey was one that had correspond- 

 ingly long tongues, and the tongue for 

 one bee in the colony is the rating for 

 the tongues of every bee in that colony; 

 that is, the tongues are uniform. You 

 don't get one bee in a colony with a 

 tongue 7 millimeters or 22-100 of an 

 inch long, and the rest of them run 

 away down low. Now, a young bee 

 hasn't as long a tongue as a full-grown 

 bee, but if you gather the bees which 

 you are measuring as nearly the same 

 age as possible, you will have a uni- 

 form length of tongue, and I think 

 this is one of the problems which bee- 

 keeping will solve in the future, that 

 is, breeding bees with a longer tongue. 

 It is true we can produce a strain of 

 bees just as superior to that we have 

 now as the strain of live stock we have 

 now is superior to that our ancestors 

 began with. Do not let us carry this 

 thing too far and make a hobby of it 

 and run it into the ground, but let us 

 keep our eyes open, and if we have one 

 colony of bees in the yard that is giv- 

 ing us exceptional returns, let us rear 

 some queens from that colony and put 

 those queens in from the stock that is 

 doing the best work. I have found out 

 by talking with bee-keepers all over 

 Michigan, that bee-keepers rear their 

 queens from wlierever it happens when 

 the colony swarms, and no matter if 

 that be a poor or good colony, that 

 queen is allowed to go right on and lay 

 eggs and be the mother of that colony. 

 If you have an exceptional strain, pro- 

 duce that strain in yourother colonies : 

 bring them all up to that standard, and 

 that is the practical side of bee-keeping 

 today. In relation to in-breeding, I 

 don't think we need be very much 

 afraid of this at present. I don't know 



of a single scheme which has been 

 brought up that a queen will be mated 

 to drones from the same stock. If in- 

 breeding were carried on to an extent 

 that would degenerate live stock, it 

 would probably degenerate the bee. I 

 don't think that from any of our sys- 

 tems—anything that we can get is not 

 systematic enough to bring this cross- 

 ing to such a small focus that it will 

 be possible for us to inbreed enough to 

 hurt. I do think the bee-keeper of to- 

 day can improve his stock by selecting 

 his queens and his drones. If you have 

 four or five successful colonies, by all 

 means breed from them. 



FOUL BROOD IN MICHIGAN. 



Mr. Rankin — As far as foul brood in 

 Michigan is concerned, we had some 

 of it up there. I think my record for 

 any one day this summer was to con- 

 demn 118 colonies, and that in two 

 yards. Those people are all going to 

 treat theirs. I have so far visited per- 

 haps over 4.000 colonies. I have been 

 on the road since July 1. and came 

 directly from the field here, and am 

 going back to the field to-night. 



Dr. Mason — Are you in accord with 

 Mr McEvoy when he says that a liive 

 that has foul brood in it, does not need 

 disinfecting ? 



Mr. Rankin— The stand I take is that 

 if the hive is perfectly free from any 

 drops of honej', it is probable that the 

 disease will not be produced by putting 

 a clean swarm of bees into it ; but on 

 the other hand, if there is any honey 

 around the hive the disease will in all 

 probability be reproduced. But that is 

 not the point. We have a lot of ignor- 

 ant people in our State, and w'nen you 

 talk to a farmer about a bacterial dis- 

 ease and tell him what the character- 

 istics of a germ are ; when you tell him 

 that you can put 25,000 of them on the 

 head of a pin, they will just stand and 

 look at you. If you take the ordinary 

 bee-keeper and tell him that there is 

 no use of him disinfecting his hive, it 

 has been my experience that he will 

 go right out and do something which 

 there is no use in, and vvhich renders 

 his treatment a total failure. The 

 principal reason why I place the stress 

 on disinfecting hives, and in washing 

 your hands in an antiseptic after ex- 

 amining a diseased colony, is, to im- 

 press upon those bee-keepers more 

 forcibly the virulency of the germs, 

 and the precautions they must take. I 

 use bichloride of mercury. It doesn't 

 smell so bad as carbolic acid. 



Dr. Mason — What do you think of 

 salicylic acid and borax ? 



Mr. Rankin— I don't like it. The 

 salicylic acid is all right if you have it 

 in a strong enough solution. I think 

 it well to convince a man that one 



