Novemlber, 191 1. 



American ^ae Journali 



hive. When room, shade and ventila- 

 tion are given there is no clustering 

 out. 



5. Remove drone-comb as much as 

 possible in early spring. Numerous 

 drones annoy the bees and make the 

 home uncomfortable in hot weather. 

 The comb thus removed must be re- 

 placed by worker-comb, not trusting 

 the bees in the rebuilding, as they 

 might build the same kind. 



6. Have no old queens — none over 2 

 years old — unless they are still very 

 prolific. 



Queen-cell removing is practised 

 with some success, but the average 

 bee-keeper can not follow this method, 

 as it requires almost daily attention 

 during the busiest season. 



With the fulfilling of these condi- 

 tions by artificial means, for genera- 

 tions, there is probably a slight open- 

 ing for a decrease of the swarming in- 

 stinct, since some races are known to 

 have greater swarming impulse than 

 others. 



Hamilton, 111. 



Keeping Honey— Breeding Bees 



BY DR. A. F. BONNEY. 



Every once in a while some bee- 

 keeper is delivered of an idea which 

 should be classed as a " Bright 

 Thought," and perpetuated. "Keep 

 More Bees" was one of them; and 

 passing the others I know of I wish to 

 call attention to what Mr. C. P. Dadant 

 writes in the American Bee Journal for 

 September, liJll, page 271 : 



" But erapes and other fruit are perish- 

 able eoods. Wiien tliey are once picked, 

 they must be sold. Not so with honey. You 

 may store away your honey and sell it at 

 your leisure." 



Any one looking over the bee-papers 

 will often see bee-keepers urged to sell 

 their honey before the Holidays, the 

 reason given being that the demand for 

 honey falls off or ceases after that date. 

 I early became imbued with that idea, 

 but after I put a furnace into the house, 

 which enables me to keep bulk, comb, 

 and extracted honey, without its granu- 

 lating — or largely, at any rate — I found 

 that there was a steady demand for 

 honey all the time. Believing what I 

 had read in the books, one season I 

 put myself out to sell a thousand 

 pounds of No. 1 section honey, on 

 which, had I kept it, I could have made 

 a couple of cents a pound more. A 

 cent a pound is $20 a ton. Hum ! Now 

 I hold my honey; and if I do not sell 

 it in December I do in March. 



Breeding for Improved Bees. 



In the American Naturalist for Au- 

 gust, page 471, is an article by Dr. J. 

 Arthur Harris, of the Station for Ex- 

 perimental Evolution, Cold Spring 

 Harbor, N. Y., entitled, "A Coefficient 

 of Individual Prepotency for Students 

 of Heredity," which every bee-keeper 

 who aspires to improve bees by selec- 

 tion and breeding should read. One 

 passage I noted, making an interroga- 

 tion mark: 



"The necessity of dealine with each gen- 

 eration independently is also imposed by 

 the possibility of a differentiation between 

 any two eeneralions due to purely environ- 

 mental (meteorological or cdaphic) influ- 

 ences Taken as a whole, the entire off- 



spring generation may be superior or infe- 

 rior to the parental generation; and this be- 

 cause of no hereditary influence at all, for 

 all families may be raised or lowered pro- 

 portionately." 



There is so much that is good in this 

 article that I am tempted to quote fur- 

 ther, but will add but this : 



" However well one may know the somatic 

 characters of an individual, or however in- 

 timate his knowledge of its ancestry, the 

 ultimate test of its value as a starting point 

 for a new race is the quality of its offspring. 

 The l>i-oof ot a iHirent is Us produce has been 

 recognized as valid by various breeders 

 since thetimeof Louis Vilmorin " 



HlBERN.'^TION. 



It may interest the readers to see this 

 compilation : " Hibernation," a term 

 used to define the condition certain 

 warm-blooded animals assume to pass 

 the winter. The definition is: "To 

 pass the winter in a close place." 

 " Hibernation is a peculiar state of tor- 

 por." "Hibernation is not produced 

 simply by cold." 



Encyclopedia Britanica says: "It is 

 an error to suppose that hibernating 

 animals can stand any degree of cold." 

 Hibernation of warm-blooded in -uarm 

 climates is called " Aestination." "An 

 analogous condition to hibernation is 

 diurnation, as the day-sleep of bats." 

 "In cold-blooded animals, as the Am- 

 phibia and Reptilea, respiration and 

 digestion are entirely suspended dur- 

 ing hibernation." 



1 believe hibernation in the cold- 

 blooded animals and insects is caused 

 entirely by cold, but can not find cor- 

 roborative literature. 



Gl.\ss vs. Tin Hdney-P,.\ckages. 



There are always two sides to a ques- 

 tion, and sometimes more. 1 believe 

 with Mr. Grenier, that there is nothing 

 better than a glass jar for honey, biil, I 

 restrict it to my local retail trade. 

 When, also, any one wants more than 3 

 pounds (a quart Mason jar), I sell in a 

 tin pail, and use only the lOpound. 



Queen-Rearing in an Isolated Region. 



I am just back from a trip to South 

 Dakota, and if Mr. Gately or any one 

 else wants to try out queen-rearing 

 where there will be no " wild " bees or 

 other kinds to bother, he can find such 

 a place in either of the Dakotas, where 

 there are thousands of acres, if not 

 square miles, where a bee has never 

 been known. 



While I write, Mr. William Newell, 

 State Entomologist of Texas, is, I am 

 told, working with bees under similar, 

 or identical, conditions. 



I might add, just for a joke, that I 

 have an average of 60 pounds to the 

 hive from some " scrub " bees, when 

 others with "improved" bees had to 

 feed. 



To extract a Bright Thought, I want 

 to ask Mr. Gately: In the 50 years we 

 have been importing bees, Italians, 

 what have we gained more than Ital- 

 ian bees ? Honestly, now, as between 

 students, is it not, as yet, only intelli- 

 gent guesswork, this rearing queens ? 

 Note again what Dr. Harris says, in 

 the American Naturalist, page 473, Vol. 

 XLV: " The proof of the farent is its 

 produce " 



I think if Mr. Gately and other in- 

 vestigators will study Mendelism closely 

 they will not be so swift to assert that 



we have improved the bee. That we 

 have isolated colonies which yield 

 largely, I admit — I have had several 

 such ; but what of the offspring ? 



I assert that only the Diety can tell 

 what the result will be from breeding a 

 pure Italian queen to a pure Italian 

 drone, in reji^ard to honey stored, and 

 that is all the commercial bee-keeper 

 cares about. We may get color, size, 

 and all that; the rest is all conjecture, 

 and we have to wait a year or two to 

 find out. 



Buck Grove, Iowa. 



Working for Purity of Stock 

 in Bees 



BY G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



I know it is a question in the minds 

 of some of our best bee-keepers 

 whether purity of stock is any great 

 advantage, quite a few claiming that a 

 mixed race is as good for the produc- 

 tion of either comb or extracted honey 

 as are bees in their purity. Then there 

 are others fully as certain that if we 

 would make any improvement in our 

 bees in the future years, said improve- 

 ment must come by taking a certain 

 race which shows the best character- 

 istics and breed for the best, till we 

 have something much better than the 

 original. And to my mind these latter 

 have the advantage. Although I fully 

 believe that a first cross between two 

 good races of bees gives a great degree 

 of energy, still, if we persist in such 

 crossing or working from the hybrids 

 which are thus obtained, the chances 

 are that our bees will revert back to- 

 ward the inferior faster than toward 

 the goal we are seeking after. There- 

 fore, I have tried building up a supe- 

 rior strain of Italian bees looking es- 

 pecially toward the comb-honey pro- 

 duction side, as (after trying all the 

 bees imported into this country, ae 

 well as the common German or brown 

 or black bee, which was in the United 

 States at my beginning in this world) 

 I find the Italian bee the best of any 

 for the locality of central New York, 

 which is where my lot was cast. 



But the breeding of any cc-tain race 

 of bees is not nearly so easy as to try 

 for a fixed standard of our other do- 

 mestic animals, in that we have no 

 positive control of the male progeny 

 from certain mothers which we may 

 have selected. As all mating of bees 

 is done in the air, far away from the 

 sight or influence of man, the question 

 which confronts every bee-keeper who 

 is desirous of keeping pure stock, or 

 the one who wishes to improve his 

 stock along any line by a careful selec- 

 tion of the best is, " How far apart 

 from other bees must they be kept in 

 order not to have the young queens 

 from his selected mother inate with 

 drones from other colonies of bees ?" 

 Then the singular thing is, that on this 

 question the " doctors " in apiculture 

 very materially disagree. 



Some years ago, one of our noted 

 queen-breeders wrote me in these 

 words : 



"There are some who entertain the idea 

 that a race of bees can not be kept pure 

 unless it is isolated several miles from 

 all other races. I have tested this matter 



