152 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



May 



with the common race were difficult 

 to distinguish. 



At the Chicago meeting of the 

 North American Beekeepers' Asso- 

 ciation, in October, 1879, Rev. O. 

 Clute, later author of "The Blessed 

 Bees," under the nome-de-plunjc of 

 "John Allen," suggested the appoint- 

 ment of a committee to secure the 

 testing of various exotic races, Cy- 

 prian, Egyptian, Dalmatian, etc. H. 

 A. King, of New York, had nnpurted 

 two queens claimed to be Cyprians. 

 They were evidently pure, for all the 

 report showed their bees to be ex- 

 ceedingly cross. The following year 

 we tried this importation ourselves 

 and soon had enough of them. We 

 eradicated them as early as we could. 

 Mr. D. A. Jones, of Canada in cf.n- 

 nection with Frank Benton, ol 

 Washington, made a trip to the Holy 

 Land , the Island of Cyprus and 

 Egypt, bringing back a large impor- 

 tation of bees from those countries 

 None of them proved satisfactory. 

 The only foreign bees which have 

 proven of superior quality outside of 

 the Italian are the Carniolan and the 

 Caucasian, both of these races pro- 

 ducing bees slightly lighter in cohjr 

 than the common black bee, but 

 without the yellow rings characteris- 

 tic of the Italian race. Frank lien- 

 ton, later, made a trip around the 

 world, in the interest of the Urited 

 States Department of Agriculture, 

 seeking new races of bees. None 

 were found that proved of greater 

 value than the Italians. 



D. A. Jones deserves special men- 

 tion otherwise because of his enter- 

 prise in beekeeping at that time. He 

 kept bees on a large scale in Ontario, 

 educated a number of students in 

 beekeeping and founded the little 

 village of Beeton, which is now an 

 important agricultural shipping 



I 



THE GIVEN PRESS— (From an old wood cut) 



point. It was in connection with him 

 that McEvoy and others experiment- 

 ed on foulbrood. He established the 

 •"Canadian Bee Journal," whicli was 

 published for years at Beeton. In 

 the early eighties, a little pamphlet, 

 "Foul Brood, Its Management and 

 Cure," written by him, gave the re- 

 vived starvation method of Schirach 

 (1764-1770) for the cure of malignant 

 foulbrood. Schirach is really the 

 originator of this. 



Among the -mprovements which 

 modern beekeeping has brought to 

 us, we should range the Doolittle 

 method of queen-rearing, but in go- 

 ing back over the past we must say 

 that although Doolittle popularized 

 this method by adopting it with per- 

 sonal practical improvements, he was 

 not the originator of it. The publi- 

 cation of his book, "Scientific Queen- 

 rearing," in 1888, helped diffuse the 

 method among queen-breeders. To 

 find one of the originators, however, 



JOHANNES MEHRING. THE INVENTOR OF COMB FOUNDATION 



we must go back to "Gleanings" for 

 October, 1878, page 323. In this num- 

 ber, W. L. Boyd, of Hamilton, Ohio, 

 suggests that, since acorns or rudi- 

 mental queencells are to be found 

 readily in almost any hive of bees, it 

 might be well to "cut them out, keep 

 them on hand and get as many cells 

 as you want by taking a flat stick, re- 

 moving a larva that has just hatched 

 and putting it in the bottom of the 

 acorn ; for the bees will accept the 

 situation at once and soon have z 

 nice sealed queencell from every 

 acorn given them." The indefatiga- 

 ble A. I. Root, half in joke and half 

 in earnest, then suggested that some- 

 one had spoken of artificial queen- 

 cells and that they might be made by 

 dipping a wet stick of the proper 

 size and shape in melted wax. This 

 was the nucleus of the idea which 

 matured later and gave the "Doolit- 

 tle method," fine descriptions of 

 which were made in Hutchinson's 

 "Advanced Bee Culture" and repro- 

 duced in our "Langstroth Revised." 



We must not, however, neglect 

 mentioning the Alley method of 

 queen-rearing, which preceded the 

 Doolittle method and is still popular 

 in some of its modifications. His 

 "Twenty-Two Years' Experience in 

 Rearing Bees" became the "Bee 

 Keeper's Handy Book," published 

 from 1882 to 188S, in several editions. 

 His method is also given in "Lang- 

 stroth Revised" and consists of using 

 strips of brood combs containing 

 eggs, after removing every other egg, 

 for the production of queencells. 



Two of the modern leading books 

 on bees were published in 1877, 

 Cook's "Manual of the Apiary" and 

 "The A B C of Bee Culture," by A. I 

 Root. The latter named was first 

 published in installments in "Glean- 

 ings." In its present form, under the 

 title of "A B C and X Y Z of Bee 

 Culture," it is the largest book on 

 bees ever published, a real beekeep- 

 ing encyclopedia. 



It is out of the question to men- 

 tion, in these reminiscenses, every in- 

 vention made during the progress of 

 beekeeping from the skep or box- 

 hive times. In fact, many inventions 

 were the result of slow ameliorations 



