Vol. XVIII. 



OCT. 15, 1890. 



No. 20. 



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SYRIAN BEES. 



AN UNFAVORABLE OPINION OF THEM. 



A correspondent writes that he is thinking of 

 going into bee-keeping, and says: "I am 

 thinking of starting witli tlie Syrian bees. 

 Wliat do you think of them as lionoy-gatlicr- 

 ers? A bee-keeping friend tells me tliatthcy 

 are very prolific, and says he values prolitic- 

 ness in a queen above all other qualities. Is 

 this right?" 



Well, to a certain extent, yes; to a certain 

 extent, no. A queen should be prolific at the 

 right time; and if she is thus, it is of great val- 

 ue; if prolific at times when her brood comes 

 on the stage of action when there is no honey 

 to gather, her prolificness counts for naught. 

 If your friend had modified his statement so as 

 to make it read that he valued the prolificness 

 of a queen above all other qualities when it 

 could be so regulated that such prolificness 

 would be of the greatest value to the bee-keep- 

 er, I would hold up both hands for it; but if his 

 writing thus is to be interpreted to mean that 

 he regards the prolificness of a queen at all 

 times of the year above all other qualities, I 

 must say that I think he is making a mistake. 

 Here, where we have but about six weeks dur- 

 ing the whole season in which the bees make 

 any gain in honey, what we want is a queen 

 that can be coaxed to fill the hive to overflow- 

 ing with brood during a few weeks previous to 

 this honey-harvest, and lay just as lew eggs at 

 all other times as is consistent with accom- 

 plishing the above objt^ct. If your friend had a 

 piece of work which he must accomplish at a 

 certain time, if he were to receive any profit 

 therefrom \w, would liiri; his help before the 

 time expired or not at all. If he wished help at 

 a certain time and they did not come until it 

 was too late, surely he would not keep and 

 board them six or eight months because it was 

 not convenient for them to come sooner. Oh, 



no! he would tell them that he did not want 

 them, for it was too late. So I say, that, when 

 bees come to the stage of action in any great 

 abundance after the honey-harvest is past.it is 

 a damage to the apiarist rather than an advan- 

 tage. Why I prefer the Italian bees to all oth- 

 ers is for the reason that they are more sus- 

 ceptible of being handled so as to get the hive 

 overflowing with bees at just the right time 

 than are the bees of any other race. Also, as 

 soon as the honey-harvest arrives the queen 

 will cease her prolificness, and thus we do not 

 have a lot of "hungry hands" to board when 

 they are of no use to the apiarist. To show 

 that I am not alone in this, 1 will quote the 

 following from one of our largest honey-pro- 

 ducers: 



" I get very much the best results from my 

 purest and most yellow Italians. The Italians 

 seem to be very much more disposed to partial- 

 ly stop brood-rearing, and bend al'l their ener- 

 gies to honey-gathering, whenever there is a 

 heavy flow of nectar, than any other kind of 

 bees which I have tried, and this is a very great 

 advantage." 



Now to the question about Syrian bees. That 

 they can not be managed so as to fill the above 

 requirements in this locality, is why I am 

 averse to them, and I think that any one is 

 making a mistake in selecting them as the bees 

 with which to start an apiary. With me 

 thev would not start a large amount of brood at 

 any other time sav(! in a heavy flow of honey, 

 and this I think is one of the worst faults that 

 any race of bees can possess; for an extra 

 amount of brood during the honey-yield always 

 means a multitude! of mouths to feed after the 

 honey-harvest is past. When I tried the Syrian 

 bees it was with the only hope that they would 

 prove better than the beeswhicii I already had; 

 but when I found out that I could not coax the 

 queens of this race to lay eggs rapidly except in 

 tlie honey-harvest, I saw that it would be im- 

 possible for them to give a large yield of honey. 



