1917 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



233 



version in other localities is due to the 

 presence of black drones in wild colo- 

 nies, unsuspected by the beekeeper. 



With a locality stocked with so good 

 a race, no doubt some would question 

 the wisdom of making any experiments 

 with other races, but as our nights are 

 cool, springs often rather unfavorable 

 and altitude about 2700 feet, we began 

 cautiously testing other races in 1903 

 and today, our 1000 colonies are nearly 

 all of more or less Carniolan blood, 

 which we have never regretted. 



In the meantime, other races and 

 crosses have been tested. Some ten 

 years ago we had a tested CyprioCar- 

 niolan queen from Mr. Frank Benton, 

 which certainly gave a fine colony of 

 industrious bees not excessively cross. 

 From her we reared a number of daugh- 

 ters, all of which mated with Italian 

 drones. Some of them, in their mark- 

 ings, showed no trace of Carniolan 

 blood, and all were very good in every 

 way except that about one in ten pro- 

 duced bees which were very irritable 

 and difficult to handle. The liability of 

 the Cyprian temper cropping out caused 

 us to discontinue breeding them. 



In 1905 we had a very fine tested Cau- 



casian queen from the United States 

 Government. The bees were wonder- 

 fully gentle, but died the first winter, 

 as stores were not of good quality, and 

 the young bees produced by stimulative 

 feeding late in the fall (the season be- 

 ing one of failure) were apparently 

 tender. At various times we have had 

 Caucasian queens from other breeders, 

 but none has produced bees which 

 were very gentle. The Caucasians and 

 their crosses have been equal in pro- 

 lificness, hardiness and industry to any, 

 and are among the best bees for this 

 locality, but not so far as tested supe- 

 rior to Carniolans, while their habit of 

 closing the space just inside the en- 

 trance with a huge wall or curtain of 

 propolis every fall is against them, as 

 it is no small task to remove it so that 

 frame manipulations may be quickly 

 made. In the cut the propolis defenses 

 may be seen, not only attaching the 

 corners of the frames to each other, 

 but extending back two or three inches 

 between the bottom bars of the frames 

 and in places attached to both the end 

 and bottom-board of the live. The 

 hive body shown was the lower story 

 of the colony, and the colony only one- 



half Caucasian blood. 



Last, the least desirable of all races 

 tested, the Banats. No bees ever tested 

 have proved so inferior as storers. 

 Only one of many Banat colonies ever 

 made 100 pounds of comb honey, while 

 many colonies of other races have far 

 exceeded that amount. So bees ever 

 bred up better or tried to swarm more, 

 and as soon as a good flow begins they 

 "plug" the brood-nest with honey 

 worse than any Italian colony, and very 

 effectually prevent the rearing of 

 enough bees to gather a second flow. 



We have found no trouble with the 

 development of a so-called "mongrel" 

 type of bees, and while some colonies 

 are more excitable than others, yet 

 practically all of perhaps every possible 

 mixture and re-mixture of Carniolan 

 and Italian blood have proved good as 

 honey gatherers, hardy, prolific white 

 cappers of comb honey, and little if 

 any more liable to swarm than Italian 

 colonies of like strength, and our 

 locality is bad for swarming with any 

 and all races, large hives or small even 

 when producing extracted honey. 



Meredian, Idaho. 



CAUCASIANS ARK PROPOLIZERS 

 Notice how they have plastered the front end of the frames so as to contract the entrance 



Ventilation of Hives 



BY I. HOPKINS. 



I WAS more than interested in the 

 article by your Swiss correspon- 

 dent, Mr. H. Spuehler, on " Econ- 

 omy of Heat in the Hive" in your De- 

 cember number, more especially that 

 part of the second paragraph referring 

 to the size of the entrance to the hives 

 recommended by Mr. Kramer, as the 

 result of seemingly exhaustive experi- 

 ments. 



For the first few years of my bee- 

 keeping career I was always troubled 

 with moldy combs and soured food in 

 the hives, with more or less diarrhea 

 among the bees in early spring. The 

 position of my apiary on a hillside was 

 perfectly free from dampness, and the 

 district itself did not register an abnor- 

 mal rainfall, so that I began to think 

 that moldy combs constituted a nor- 

 mal condition of bee-culture in frame 

 hives. Subsequently, however, I 

 thought that the need of better ventila- 

 tion might have something to do with 

 the question, as the practice then was 

 to reduce the entrance to a very small 

 opening in winter, while the bees at 

 the same time blocked with propolis 

 all means of upward ventilation. My 

 friend, the late Rev. J. R. Madam, also, 

 for similar reasons, became interested 

 in the ventilation problem, and between 

 us we concluded to carry out a series 

 of experiments at my apiary. 



Your correspondent suggests that 

 Mr. Kramer, as far as he knew, was the 

 first man to solve the question with 

 thermometers 25 years ago. The first 

 of our series of experiments which was 

 conducted with the sole object of de- 

 termining how to secure efficient ven- 

 tilation of the hive, was commenced on 

 Jan. 15, 1889 (see record in March num- 

 ber of the Australian Bee Journal, 1889), 

 and continued through 13 series until 

 April 10. 1889, all of which are recorded 

 in the same Journal. This is exactly 28 

 years ago, three years before Mr. 

 Kramer experimented. The greatest 

 number of thermometers we used at 

 one time I think was 17, and although 

 we insulated them as far as possible 



