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THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



I have seen supers of fancy honey ruined 

 by the bees uncapping their honey when 

 the escape board was put under the 

 super. Black bees are more inclined to 

 this trait, some strains of Italians are 

 bad. 



I look well to see if they tolerate the 

 bee moth. If I find a colony that toler- 

 ates wax worms in their combs, the 

 queen is not used even as a drone- 

 mother. I also breed against swarming-, 

 not using a queen given to this trait. 

 Seasons and the bee keeper do much to 

 encourage swarming. Size of brood nest 

 or hive have much to do with it. Carni- 

 olans are great swarmers; a strong 

 trait and hard to breed out of the pure 

 race, but can be overcome by crossing 

 with an Italian drone. I merely mention 

 this to show you that the trait is in the 

 race or strain of bees. I find that the 

 colony that never swarms, or, seemingly, 

 thinks of it, has the bees that roll in the 

 honey. 



VALUE OF LONGEVITY. 



What a great difference in colonies as 

 to longevity. Some colonies whose 

 queens are the most prolific do not seem 

 to have any more bees than other colo- 

 nies that have less than half the brood or 

 seemingly so. By taking some of these 

 colonies to make nuclei for mating our 

 queens, we can tell to a nicety where the 

 trouble is; keeping records of when made 

 and when the last bees hatch from the brood 

 of that queen. Bees don't show much 

 vigor that are short lived. I keep a 

 record of all queens; that is, to a certain 

 extent. 



I observe my breeders, or all prospec- 

 tive breeders, to see if the bees get out 

 early in the morning, and if they work 

 late in the evening. I also look to see if 

 they dart away like a fiash on leaving 

 their hive, and, on their return, that they 

 enter the hive so quickly that it is hard 

 to catch one unless it is cool. This tells 

 you that they have a strong homing 

 instinct. I am thinking of the old work- 

 ers. I find that colonies with this trait hardly 

 ever lose a virgin queen in her mating 



flights. The workers do not lose a 

 second on leaving the hive, nor in their 

 return. The bees that get the honey do 

 not hang around the hive. If you had 

 ever bred the homing pigeon, you would 

 better understand this trait. 



THE FOUNDATION FOR MY STRAIN. 



Now, after inbreeding these bees for 

 1 1 years or more, I got the best queen- 

 mother I ever had. This is a Robey 

 queen, or from that strain on her mother's 

 side, and everything leads me to believe 

 that she was mated to a Robey drone. 

 I have the color fairly fixed in this strain. 

 The bees are easily detected from any 

 queen mated to these drones. This queen 

 is No. 58. She has wintered perfectly 

 every winter. She will be four years old 

 in August next, has produced a large 

 crop of honey every season, and is the 

 mother of more extra good queens than 

 any two breeding queens that I ever had. 

 I do not know just how many hundreds 

 of queens I have reared from her, and 

 scarcely a poor queen in the whole lot of 

 them. Even the queens that are mis- 

 mated are good honey gatherers — some 

 are hard to beat. I have some most 

 promising young queens from her; that 

 money can not buy. 



I can not boast of beauty in my bees, 

 but, when it comes to honey, I will leave 

 that for some of the parties that have 

 this strain to tell. Not only are these 

 bees superior in a good season, but show 

 their breeding in a poor season, producing 

 a fair crop of honey, while some other 

 strains scarcely make a living. 



I bought 70 colonies of black bees last 

 spring (1909) putting them 3>^ miles 

 from the home-apiary, in a better loca- 

 tion, if anything, than the home-apiary, 

 which had 250 colonies, mind you I run 

 the out-yard, using full sheets of founda- 

 tion in most of the shallow extracting 

 supers, running them mostly for extracted 

 honey, and they produced a little less 

 than one-half as much per colony as the 

 home-yard did, run for comb honey. I 

 said "mostly full sheets of foundation," 

 the rest was drawn combs. There w 



