200 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



per colony more of honey; and, as honey 

 was my aim, I discarded hybrids. 



I am led to believe, however, after 

 years of careful breeding, that the 

 Italian, at its best, is a hybrid. We all 

 know how hard it is to keep them uniform 

 in color and markings, and how quickly 

 they will degenerate back to the black 

 bee. I found that I could take a yellow 

 queen from an Italian queen-mother, 

 mated to a black drone, and some of 

 these (not all) when mated to Italian 

 drones would produce three-banded 

 bees. If I breed these for several genera- 

 tions, each time selecting the yellow 

 queens, they breed true to color every 

 time. So, you will see, you can cross 

 your bees with any other race, and, in a 

 short time, by selecting and breeding, get 

 them as pure as they were before the 

 cross was made. I am just as sure that 

 I can take the average Italian bees as 

 they are now bred, and, by selecting the 

 dark queens and dark drones can, with 

 three crosses, breed the black bee with 

 all its characteristics. The color factor 

 is a great guide to go by. 



Take a strain of Italians like mine, that 

 has been bred by selecting the dark 

 queens, and you will find that their drones 

 are very dark, and their queens are also 

 dark; that is, the majority of them are, 

 although the workers are all nicely 

 marked three-banders, only dark. 



I have a queen bred by Mr. D. R. 

 Hardy of Burr's Mills, N. Y. She is at 

 least one-third Carniolan, as he breeds 

 the Garniolan-Italian along my line of 

 breeding. Now, this queen, mated in 

 my yard to an Italian drone, breeds as 

 true to color as my own queens. I brir^r 

 these things up, by just touching on 

 facts, so that you may better understand 

 the breeding of bees. 



You all know, or should know, how 

 hard it is to get a perfect male, and how 

 few of them there are in the animal 

 world, even with all the advantages we 

 have in selection over the male of our 

 bees. There are so many inferior males 

 one perfect specimen; and we, as a 



whole, pay so little attention to our 

 drone-mothers, is it any wonder that we 

 have not advanced in the breeding of 

 bees as we should? 



I know there are some who have bred 

 bees, as to color, most beautiful to look 

 at, but, in all those beautiful colonies 

 of bees that I have had, not one was up 

 to the dark colonies as to gathering 

 honey. I wish I could report otherwise. 

 for I am not blind to beauty. I find, 

 after fourteen years of breeding, that 

 these dark queens will breed some very 

 yellow queens, but nothing like the 

 goldens. 



This field of breeding for honey has 

 scarcely been touched; and as 1 found 

 the dark, leather-colored bees superior, 

 I naturally selected them. I found some 

 strains of Italians inferior, however, even 

 to the common black bees. There seems 

 to be two strains of the common black 

 bees. The strain that is brown (not 

 black) is superior in every way. They 

 are larger and more quiet. 1 find that 

 the bee keepers who stand up for the 

 black bee have the brown race every 

 time. 



I got an Italian queen of L. H. Robey, 

 and she proved such a wonderful queen 

 that I reared a number of queens from 

 her, and they proved superior to all 

 others. I used her for a breeder as long 

 as she lived. About the time she died I 

 found one of her daughters to take her 

 place. This queen proved a wonderful 

 breeder. The only fault with these bees 

 is that some of them would cap their 

 honey thin, or "greasy," as some would 

 call it; and, as these queens were gener- 

 ally some of the best, I did not like to 

 kill them. I tried ventilation, but it did 

 no good. I found that this was a trait 

 of certain colonies; that by changing the 

 queen I stopped it every time. I wish 

 that it could have been stopped with 

 more ventilation, for it would have saved 

 some fine queens for honey. I found, 

 however, that by breeding from queens 

 whose colonies capped their honey white, 

 reduced this trait very much, although 



