•296 



ULEAMN(iS I^T BEK CULTIKK 



May 1 



10xi)erinients and ohseival ions lia ve convinc- 

 ed me that swarming may be much reduced 

 l)y ventihition; but let us go slow with this 

 method of swarm control, lest we blindly 

 administer a remedy which is worse than 

 tlie disease, for I have also noticed that a 

 colony which is given as much as a ^ en- 

 trance seldom stores the surjjlus that one 

 <ioes when kept well shaded and left on a 

 y% entrance throughout the season. Now, 

 the question I am raising is, " How does 

 \entilation prevent swarming?" If I un- 

 derstand the swarming impulse, it is incH- 

 < (I by the bees filling their hive with honey 

 and brood, while conditions continue favor- 

 able for rai)id brood-rearing, and is cheeked 

 either by giving the colony more rooni or 

 by stopi)ing the tjueen in any way from lay- 

 ing at her best. Now, ventilation certainly 

 does not add room, so i)erhapsit retards egg- 

 |)roduction, and I think I have been able to 

 note that it does. Who knows for sure? 

 I'ntil I know more about it I shall restrict 

 ventilation experiments to a few hives, and 

 give the most of my bees store room and 

 brood room. When they will not make 

 comb honey they may make extracted; and 

 when a colony gets the swarming fever so 

 l)adly that it won't stay at home, even to 

 make extracted honey, it shall have a nice 

 young queen, unless I desire increase in 

 that particular vard. 

 Mesilla Park,"N. M. 



[This is a live and imi)ortant subject. We 

 should bei)leased to hear from others. — Ed.] 



IS THERE A " BEST BEE " ? 



Have the Italians been Given too much Credit? 



BY D. ]\r. MAODONALD. 



I have been a student of American bee 

 literature for about twenty years; and dur- 

 ing the last dozen of these, little if any 

 thing has escaped my eye. The feature of 

 all others which has" impressed itself most 

 on my mind is the all but universal cry in 

 favor of Italian bees. The i)ean of praise 

 runs something like this: 



" I have foul brood in my hives. What 

 can I do to rid myself of it ? " 



" Get Italians,'"' is the prompt reply. 



" Wax-moth troubles me a lot. What is 

 the best cure or preventive ? " 



"Italianize your bees, getting rid of the 

 blacks," comes the inevitable answer. 



"My bees seem to be working into scrub 

 stock. What can I do to energize them?" 



" Purchase Italian queens," comes the ad- 

 vice sure and quick. 



"My bees are so vicious that working 

 among them is becoming a terror to me. 

 What would you advise me to do? " 



"Get Italians, and you can handle your 

 bees as if they were flies." 



Now, my object in noting all this is not 

 to rail against Italians. They must be good 

 bees in America and for America; but I ob- 



ject to having it so reiteratedly dinned into 

 our ears that they are the only bee, and that 

 all other races are anathema. 



A good many years ago I put in a plea for 

 blacks, and recorded some twenty points 

 where, in this locality, they took i)recedence 

 of their cousins, ^'ou were good enough to 

 extract some of my i)ointsand reprint them 

 in Gleanings, but with some remarks add- 

 ed which read very much like a point of 

 interrogation after each. Four of them 

 were similar to the quartette I have named 

 in my opening sentences. I will deal with 

 each. 



Moths are at times an undoubted nui- 

 sance. In your A B C you give Italians as 

 both a preventive and a cure. I raise no 

 question of your correctness; but I do to the 

 fact that you confine the extiri)ation to the 

 influence of one class of bees. I may ])oint 

 out the fact, on the other side, that during 

 over twenty years I have never had a comb 

 mutilated by the de])redations of wax-moths, 

 either GaUeriei or Aehroia; nor do I know 

 of any bee-keeper, who attends to his bees, 

 who gives even a i)assing thought to this at 

 times deadly enemy. Yet all over the three 

 countries — England, Scotland, and Ireland 

 — the blacks stand in the ratioof 80per cent 

 to 20 per cent of all other races. The secret 

 of immunity, therefore, does not lie in the 

 possession of Italians. You will find it on 

 page 165 of "Cowan's Bee-guide,'' last line. 

 " If hives are kept strong in bees the wax- 

 moth need not be feared." I do not claim 

 a monopoly of this wisdom for this side of 

 the Atlantic, because if vou turn up Quin- 

 by (1866), page 244. you' will find that he 

 italicises the fact that " only when we know 

 that all our stocks are full of bees'' are we 

 safe from the incursion of this troublesome 

 pest. Then we are immvme whatever the 

 race of bees may be. 



If we ha\e had one (so called) fact more 

 than another emi)hasi/.ed over and over, it is 

 that Italians can cure foul brood. I know 

 that they have brought the fell disease both 

 to myself and others, but I have yet to learn 

 that they are any more preferable than our 

 own blacks in warding it off or aiding in ef- 

 fecting a cure when it finds a lodging in any 

 apiary. ( i leanings, as consistently as any 

 other American journal, has extolled the 

 virtues of ItaJians in working a cure; but I 

 note of late that its editor is taking broader 

 views, as on page 89, where he says, "It is 

 possible that, in certain localities, there is a 

 strain of blacks that will resist the plague 

 as much as or more than the Italians." 

 That is just my contention. Dr. Miller, )>. 

 100, gives corroborative evidence: "Any ex- 

 tra immunity is derived, not from the fact 

 that they are Italians, but because of their 

 extra vigor. If you get that same vigor in 

 any other bee you will get the same immu- 

 nity.'' Our blacks, I maintain, have that 

 vigor, and so have the well-bred queens of 

 the same race reared under jirojier manage- 

 ment in ( Jermany and Switzerland. In very 

 few countries has foul brood been put under 

 subjection more comi)letely than in the lat- 



