122 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



April 



The last man visited was Mr. F. W. 

 Lesser, manager of some 800 colonies, 

 scattered over quite a territory. Riding 

 with him in a "Tin Lizzie," we visited 

 an apiary located in the brush of a 

 hillside. The hives were tiered three 

 and four stories high and promised a 

 big crop. Mr. Lesser complained of 

 the same adult bees trouble of June, as 

 we mentioned in speaking of Mr. 

 House. But he ascribes this trouble to 

 unhealthy pollen. Time and experi- 

 ments only will give us a clue to this 

 problem. He does not think bees 

 work profitably at a distance of over 

 two miles, and says bees located in the 

 basswood timber will harvest twice as 

 much honey as those two miles away 

 from it. 



I have now reached the end of my 

 eastern visit. After a short stop in 

 Chicago, I arrived home at the conclu- 

 sion of the 32d day, glad to have met 

 so many, but gladder still to be among 

 my people again. 



Building Up a Strain of Bees 



H' 



BV G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



"OW may I build up a strain of 

 bees, and what are the dan- 

 gers of inbreeding ?" is a 

 question on which a writer requests 

 that I give my views through the col- 

 umns of the American Bee Journal. 

 Those who keep bees, with possibly a 

 few exceptions, keep them for the profit 

 they yield ; so I take it for granted that 

 the questioner wishes to build up a 

 strain of bees which will give him the 

 ■ most honey either comb or extracted. 



When I started in beekeeping, in 

 1869, there were no "honey bees "to 

 be had in these parts save the " black 

 bees," and they did not come up to the 

 high standard which I desired. In 1873 

 I procured an Italian queen, reared 

 queens from her and gave these young 

 queens to about half of my colonies. 

 The next year I kept a careful watch 

 of proceedings, and jotted down in an 

 old diary: "I find the Italians proof 

 against the wax-moth. They do not 

 desert their hives in early spring; and 

 whenever a small amount of honey 

 is obtainable they gain in stores, while 

 the black bees require feeding." 



Since then I have tried every variety 

 or strain of bees which has been 

 brought into the United States, but 

 found none, for my locality, which 

 could equal the Italians. Having set- 

 tled on the Italian bee as the best, I 

 found that ez'en these bees were not 

 alike profitable. There are few careful 

 observing beekeepers but have noticed 

 the lack of uniformity of yield between 

 colonies. This may be from two or 

 more reasons or a combination of 

 them. 



The colony giving the lesser amount 

 may lack enough bees of the right age 

 for gathering. The difference may be 

 in the bee itself. The thorough under- 

 standing of the right management of 

 colonies to secure the best results has 

 much to do with the yearly product in 

 honey, and the very best queens obtain- 

 able will never be a success where the 

 management is faulty. A management 

 that has no eye toward the date of 

 blooming of the flowers in the locality 

 will rarely give a satisfactory return 

 for the time and labor expended, even 

 with the best bees the wotld affords. 



But let us look at the bee side. From 



reports and a long experience in visit- 

 ing different apiaries, I am led to think 

 that the variation in yields is nearly if 

 not quite 50 percent between the 10 

 highest colonies and the 10 lowest, 

 where the apiary numbers 100 colonies. 

 That the strain of bees has much to do 

 with this is certain; and when apiarists 

 fully realize the difference in stock, the 

 question of breeding will receive as 

 much attention as is necessary for a 

 successful management. 



In my early work in the improve- 

 ment of stock, my thought was that the 

 queen that would lay the most eggs 

 must certainly be the best. The idea 

 proved to be a mistake. Some queens 

 producing not nearly the number of 

 bees that others did would give much 

 better results in surplus honey. A few 

 years of experience will convince the 

 close observer that it is not the most 

 prolific queens that have the strongest 

 colonies at the beginning of the clover 

 flow, or give the most substantial re- 

 sults for the season. These facts being 

 known, it remains for the apiarists to 

 find out the reason. If we cannot ac- 

 count for one colony collecting one- 

 half more or twice as much as another 

 in the same apiary, we can take the 

 short cut and supersede the queens of 

 the less productive ones with the strain 

 which gave twice as much. 



It is hardly necessary to argue why 



O.SCAR UlNES, OF NEW YORK STATE 



queens should be scientifically bred. 

 "The survival of the fittest " will not 

 develop a better bee than we have now, 

 for she cares for nothing save the per- 

 petuation of the species. How often 

 have I heard apiarists say, " If each 

 colony reached the high standard 

 sometimes reached by a single colony, 

 my honey crop would double." Care- 

 ful breeding will do much toward this, 

 and with it reduce in proportion the 

 cost of management and equipment. 

 This means a greater profit. 



We have been told by the successful 

 honey producers that the introduction 

 of new "blood " helps much by avoid- 

 ing the evil effects of inbreeding. This, 

 if we accept the theory, can be brought 

 about by bringing home colonies or 



queens from outapiaries, by exchanging 

 queens with other successful apiarists, 

 or by an occasional purchase of a good 

 queen. 



There are many points to breed for, 

 but the most eagerly sought is, as I 

 said at the outset, greater honey pro- 

 duction. But in breeding for profit we 

 often run against traits that are almost 

 a part of the bee itself; and to change 

 which would mean to change the bee. 

 To illustrate : Let us take the swarm- 

 ing impulse or the desire for increase. 

 By persistent breeding we can remove 

 some of the conditions which tend to 

 produce swarming, thereby reducing 

 this tendency to as low a point as pos- 

 sible, but to eradicate it entirely seems 

 out of the question. By rearing our 

 queen-cells in colonies whose desire 

 to supersede their queens is uppermost, 

 quite a gain can be made in this direc- 

 tion. The accounting for the difference 

 in productiveness of different colonies 

 is not always easy to tell. 



I incline toward the vitality and lon- 

 gevity of the workers of certain queens 

 as being very desirable, as such have 

 the power of continued endurance. 

 When workers emerging from Aug. 30 

 to Sept. 10 were found doing good 

 work at gathering nectar the next year 

 on June 20, with a few still holding out 

 on July 4, I was not "slow" in taking 

 the hint. I lost no time in rearing 

 young queens from their mother, so 

 that these young queens could replace 

 all inferior stock. When the mother 

 of this long-lived stock showed a dis- 

 position to place the maximum num- 

 ber of bees on the stage of action, at 

 the blooming of the flowers which gave 

 a surplus, without any special manage- 

 ment or manipulation on my part; and 

 when they entered the sections with 

 the first nectar, without a desire to 

 swarm, I considered this queen of 

 still more value in building up of a 

 strain which should be superior to 

 what I had before attained. 



Whenever such a queen is found she 

 should be kept as a breeder, even 

 should she live to be five years old, as 

 did this queen, rather than have her life 

 "snuffed out" annually, as is strenu- 

 ously advocated by many, in their de- 

 sire to have each colony presided over 

 each spring with a queen less than a 

 year old. As the queen is fundamental 

 to the colony, we should " strain every 

 nerve " toward better queens. I doubt 

 the wisdom of advocating the " baby 

 nuclei plan, "together with the caging of 

 fresh emerging queens from one to 

 eight days, as has been done to a con- 

 siderable extent during the immediate 

 past, in order that they may be cheaply 

 reared and fertilized through a saving 

 in nuclei. 



As to the "dangers of inbreeding," 

 asked about by the questioner, when 

 the fact is remembered that to all prac- 

 tical purposes all drones are the " sons 

 of their mothers," this inbreeding mat- 

 ter is little more than a myth. Inas- 

 much as a queen that has never mated 

 with a drone can lay eggs which will 

 produce drones having full procreative 

 powers, and the mating of the queen 

 seems to have no essential effect on 

 her drone progeny, the grand-daugh- 

 ters of any queen cannot become more 

 than half sisters unless they mate with 

 drones produced by their grandmother. 

 Therefore, if a certain queen is used to 

 rear queens, and another to rear drones, 

 even did the young queens mate with 



