1910 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



109 



and try them with virgin queens in the early 

 spring before any other drones begin to fly. 

 I have tried this experiment twice, but have 

 failed to get a single queen fertilized. 

 Adams, Tenn. 



♦ » I ♦ 



PURE STOCK VS. HYBRIDS. 



Is it not Better to Breed from the Best 

 Colony In the Yard, Irre- 

 spective of Race? 



BY FRANK C. PELLETT. 



Inasmuch as my experience with the Ital- 

 ian bees has been so different from that so 

 often expressed in your columns, I feel im- 

 pelled to offer a word in favor of the hybrid. 

 Every one seems to have the idea that the 

 only thing to do is to Italianize and keep only 

 pure bees, or as nearly so as his locality will 

 permit. I am inclined to the opposite view. 

 With about one-third of my apiary of the 

 yellow bees, they have not, so far, proved as 

 satisfactory as the darker ones Fifteen of 

 the queens originally came from a breeder 

 well known, and one who, being a regular 

 advertiser, probably has sold queens to a 

 large part oi the readers, so we feel sure the 

 fault can not be with the strain. However, 

 not all the queens came from him, and we 

 can see no appreciable difference between 

 those queens {or, rather, colonies) and the 

 other yellow colonies. 



There has been much said in these columns 

 about the gentleness of the Italians; but the 

 Grossest colony we have are yellow bees; and 

 the gentlest (or as gentle as any) are dark 

 hybrids. Do not understand me to say that 

 all our yellow ones are cross, as some are 

 not; but we have no dark bees that will come 

 as near driving the whole outfit out of the 



J^ard as the above mentioned colony of yel- 

 o*v ones. Then the best honey producers 

 we have are hybrids and they make the clean- 

 est combs witn less propolis and less brace- 

 comb. We can take off a super and feel 

 pretty sure that none of the combs are fas- 

 tened to the separators. The worst bees to 

 daub propolis over the sections and attach 

 the combs to the separators are in almost 

 every case among the yellow ones. The 

 most expensive queen we ever had was a 

 failure excepting in the color of her offspring. 

 They were unusually yellow; and if beauty is 

 worth any thing she was worth the price; 

 but the colony finally died late in spring 

 from dwindling. There is only one thing 

 that, in my experience, has been in favor oi 

 the pure Italian; and that is the ability to re- 

 sist the bee-moth, which they seem to be 

 able to do better than the darker bees. 



MOTHS DESTKOYED THE EMPTY COMBS. 



Speaking of the bee- moth leads me to tell 

 some more experience. Last winter we pur- 

 chased a number of colonies of bees that 

 were short of stores. These we fed until 

 after fruit bloom, when they had quite a lit- 

 tle honey on hand, and we supposed them 

 safe for the season. However, June was 



cold and wet, with hardly a day when the 

 bees could get out until the last week in the 

 month, and, before we knew it, our colonies 

 were dead. As we run only for comb honey, 

 surplus combs are rare with us, and we had 

 read somewhere that, if placed two inches 

 apart, the moths would give no trouble; so 

 we took a lot of empty hives and put in oc- 

 casionally a comb between empty frames. 

 We lost the whole lot. Had we been a little 

 more careful to look after them, and placed 

 them over our yellow bees, we could have 

 saved the combs. 



From our experience we have decided 

 that, instead of requeening with pure Italian 

 stock, it would be better to do so from the 

 best all-around stock in the yard, regardless 

 of color, race, or origin. There have been 

 so many Italians introduced into this section 

 that it would be difficult to find any of the 

 black bees not more or less mixed with them. 



Atlantic, Iowa. 



SETTING BEES OUT OF THE CELLAR. 



The Effect of the Wmd on the Drifting of 

 the Bees. 



BY E. D. TOWNSEND. 



In a Straw, June 15, 1909, Dr. Miller says: 

 "It may be that 'if there happens to be a 

 heavv wind it is liable to f'^rce the bulk of 

 the flying bees toward the leeward side.' I 

 don't know. I never took bees out in a heavy 

 wind. I couldn't be hired to do so." 



I understand perfectly, doctor, that you 

 never took bees from the cellar during a 

 windy time or you would not have left the 

 impression in the foregoing that bees drift 

 to the leeward in their first flight af er set- 

 ting out of the cellar, especially if they have 

 not wintered well. 



Many bees leave their hive without any 

 apparent thought of returning; or, in other 

 words, they do not mark their location. In 

 this case, if a heavy wind is blowing it some- 

 times seems as if nearly all the bees in the 

 air are being blown off to leeward; and one 

 would think they would surely enter those 

 hives where the bees are flying so thickly. 

 They won't, though. It is something like 

 this: As the gust of wind lets up, the flying 

 mass of bees will hover around the row of 

 hives at the leeward side of the yard. They 

 actually expect (according to their actions) 

 to enter this leeward row of hives. How- 

 ever, as they hover in front of this row the 

 ' 'homing hum ' ' is blown away from them, and 

 the bees hear only the call of the bees in the 

 hives to windwai d and they fly over to this 

 next row only to hear the hum or call of the 

 bees entering the hives further on to wind- 

 ward. Ttiis moving over to the windward is 

 continued until the throng is drawn over to 

 the windward side of the yard. The wind- 

 ward sidn, not the leeward, then, is more 

 likely to draw more than the proper share of 

 bees. 



Remus, Mich. 



