1880 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



527 



ITALIAN, vs. BLACK BEES. 



BOTH SIDES OF THE QUESTION. 



ELA V E had a good opportunity of posting myself 

 on the bees this summer and fall. B°es barely 

 made honey enough to last them till about the 

 middle of August. Black bees had hard work to do 

 that, while the Italians made enough to swarm well. 

 Not one swarm of blaek bees in ten in this part of ths 

 country has put out a swarm since Aug. 15th. Blaek 

 bees have about filled their hives, while the Itali uis 

 have tilled their hives and given us from 25 to 75 Lb«. 

 of surplus honey to the hive. This is the experience 

 of all the bee-men about here, and another year 

 many of them will Italianize all their swarms. 



My experience is this : In a- season when honey is 

 plenty, black bees do nearly as well as Italian; but 

 when honey is scarce and hard to find, one Italian is 

 worth three blacks. W. H. Shedd. 



Watseka, Iroquois Co., 111., Oct. 6, 1880. 



Your experience is about that of the mass- 

 es, friend »S.; bat even at this late clay we 

 find, once in a great while, one who favors 

 the black bees. We had one such visitor 

 yesterday, Mr. E. M. Johnson, of Mentor, 

 Lake Co., Ohio. Mr. J. has had both Italian 

 and black bees, for at least 10 years, to my 

 knowledge, and he has kept from one to two 

 hundred stocks, the greater part of the time. 

 He has lost as heavily as a hundred colonies 

 in a single winter, so that he has had experi- 

 ence in the ups and downs of bee-culture in 

 nearly all its phases. You know I have 

 said, until recently, that those who decide in 

 favor of the blacks, I could not but think 

 stubborn or contrary. Mr. J. does not seem 

 to be either. lie admits the points in favor 

 of the Italians, but claims the blacks to have 

 others to more than offset these. For in- 

 stance, the Italians, he admits, will gather 

 stores, and sometimes make a surplus, at a 

 time when the blacks would starve, during 

 a season when there was but little honey to 

 be had, but that, when a great Hood of hon- 

 ey came, such as basswood often gives, the 

 blacks would be ahead, especially when they 

 had to build the comb, as is usually the case 

 with comb honey. He also claims that the 

 blacks will draw out fdn. the faster. The 

 Italians, he says, will cram every i (article of 

 honey in the brood apartment, tilling every 

 nook and cranny, while the blacks would 

 go in a body into the boxes, and build comb 

 and store honey in a marketable shape. 



Friend J. has tried all strains of Italians, 

 and has had imported queens to breed from. 

 He was one of the tirst to order ( 'yprian and 

 Holy-Land queens of us, and so you can see 

 that he is on the lookout for any improve- 

 ment. 



One objection he named to the Italians 

 was. that they, in coming home to the hive, 

 had to gyrate around the entrance along 

 while before entering, while the blacks 

 would shoot right in, without any such "pre- 

 amble." During windy days in the spring, 

 the Italians would be* lost all around the 

 entrance, while the blacks would either 

 stay in, or get back so quickly that none 

 were lost. I am inclined to think he is part- 

 ly right here. Under some circumstances, 

 the Italians will dwindle down, and the col- 

 ony will be lost during bad spring weather, 



when the blacks, of exactly the same 

 strength, would survive. 



k 'But, friend J., the hybrids are certainly 

 better than the blacks; are you not going to 

 have some Italian blood in your apiary?' 3 



"Xo Italian blood at all, unless I change 

 my mind/' 



"But you will certainly admit, that some 

 of your queens are a great deal better than 

 others, even among your black bees? 1 ' 



••Most certainly ; some queens are twice as 

 good as others." 



"Then, in your new apiary of only black 

 bees, you will rear your queens from your 

 choicest stocks, will you not?" 



"Well, there is a point. I have raised 

 queens from my best and most prolific ones, 

 and some of them were good, while others 

 were perfect 'scalawags. 1 I have also raised 

 queens, as an experiment, from my poorest 

 stocks, and they have turned out just as well 

 as any." 



There is certainly a great point here, my 

 friends. Some of ray experiments in this 

 direction have turned out in just this way. 

 I fear Ave are often too hasty in expecting 

 great improvements from selections in 

 breeding. A customer once this summer, 

 in purchasing a red-clover queen, remarked 

 that he should expect me to warrant her to 

 produce bees superior to the common Ital- 

 ians. I told him I could by no means think 

 of doing such a thing. Xow, I would by no 

 means think of discouraging such attempts 

 to improve stock by selection, but I would 

 remind you that it is a work of toil and la- 

 bor, and that we can not expect to accom- 

 plish great results, without carrying it 

 through many generations, instead of one ; 

 and that, as soon as we stop, there will be a 

 constant tendency to settle back, as it were, 

 into about the original state of affairs. In 

 regard to the position that Mr. Johnson 

 takes, I would remind those who are in- 

 clined to take up with it, that, while he has, 

 without doubt, come to his conclusions 

 through practical work, there are a hundred 

 or more who have decided directly to the 

 contrary, in the same way, where there is 

 one that will agree with him. Do you ask 

 if he has been successful? I believe moder- 

 ately so ; but so far he has had at least half 

 of his colonies Italians and hybrids all the 

 time. 



TWO QUEENS IIV A HIVE. . 



AND HOW SOME OF THE "QUEEN TROUBLES " COME 

 ABOUT. 



jJPY last three queens have just arrived. If you 

 will always send me such nice dollar queens 

 as the last six I got of you, I will never call 

 on you for a tested one. The first lot I received are 

 filling every cell the bees will allow them, with brood. 

 I am sorry indeed to tell you my imported queen 

 is dead. I am almost ashamed to tell you what a 

 careless trick I did. I am 55 years old, and have 

 worked with bees a good part of my life, and for 

 several years I have done nothing else but handle 

 them, and was well aware that about four times as 

 many hives have more than one queen as most bee- 

 men think. The hive in which I put my imported 

 queen proved to be one of that kind. I first took out 



