1880 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



581 



small tree-top. I finally captured the queen; and 

 she is with a few of her colony in this bottle. She 

 has but very little black on her body, and is not so 

 pretty as her little attendants. C. D. Kino. 



Sibsagar, Assam (East India), Sept. 21, 1880. 



Many thanks, friend K. I read the letter 

 all through in almost breathless anxiety to 



have your brother tell us something about 

 the honey the bees gathered. Of course. 

 they produce honey, or honey would not 

 have been offered for sale as he mentions. 

 I fairly ached to tell him to take his queen 

 and bees out of the bottle, and get her to 

 stay in the hive some way. Tell him if he 

 starts to bring you some bees, to fix some 

 stout little boxes, about six inches square. 

 Put at least 1 lb. of candy for every oz. of 

 bees on one side of this box. Have it melt- 

 ed and poured in, so that it can by no means 

 break loose. Some cross-sticks would be 

 safer. On the other side have a bottle of 

 water, fixed with a slot in the cork, and have 

 it so it can be taken out to replenish, and so 

 it can be done, too, without endangering the 

 queen. Now, right between the water and 

 candy, fix firmlv a comb of their own. filled 

 with'honey. This honey will keep them un- 

 til they have learned surely how to use the 

 susar and water ; but the sugar and water 

 will be much healthier for them in their 

 long confinement. I would, if possible, let 

 them fly every week or 10 days. I presume 

 it will not be practicable to fly them on the 

 vessel. Has friend Jones ever tried this? 

 When you let them fly, watch the entrance 

 carefully ; and if the queen comes out, she 

 must be caught and put back. If she is 

 kept in the hive, there will be no danger of 

 the bees decamping. Perhaps a wire-cloth 

 tube might be fixed to let them pass out of, 

 so that the queen could be seen before she 

 got quite out, and the entrance then stopped 

 until she turned back. We should be very glad 

 to have this whole matter submitted to friend 

 Jones for hints and suggestions. We want to 

 see these little friends of ours tried in our cli- 

 mate, even if they are small. The descrip- 

 tion would almost lead one to think them 

 the same, or nearly so, as the Egyptian bees. 

 The large varieties, we should be still more 

 glad to see, of course. We will send your 

 brother the Gleanings, friend K. It al- 

 ready goes to a great many missionaries, 

 and if any of our friends have missionaries 

 of their acquaintance, in any part of the 

 world, we will send it to them free of charge, 

 as long as God gives us the means, and we 

 will feel it a privilege to do so, besides. 

 1— ■>■ ^ 



BLACK lilis IN ITALY. 



;oj EVEHAL times I have vouched that there are 

 j^i no black bees in Italy. During my visit, last- 

 ing five full weeks passed there, I was unable 

 to find a stock of hybrids, although I visited scores 

 of apiaries in Italian Switzerland and Piedmont. Of 

 course, even in the same apiary I saw some bees 

 darker than others; the queen sometimes being 

 dark, and the bees bright yellow? sometimes it was 

 the reverse, but the same differences can bo no- 

 ticed, more or less, in every race of bees,— in Cypri- 

 an as well as in Italian. 



While I was there I made inquiries about the pu- 

 rity of bees in the entire peninsula. Sumo inter- 



ested bee-keepers told me th it the bees in the north 

 are not as bright as those of Lombardy, whaie others, 

 disinterested in the question, told me that they are 

 all the same throughout the whole extent of Italy. I 

 know that black bees were found at Nice, but, by 

 looking at the map, you will see that Nice, nov a 

 French city, is outside of Alps— mountains that the 

 yellow bee must cross to mix with bla" • bees. \: 

 Mona, a well-known bee-keeper of It.'.li.tu Switzer- 

 land, has written and has narrated to me that, to as- 

 certain if the yellow bee was entitled to tho name of 

 "Ligurian" bee, or of "bee of the Alps," us she was 

 named at first, he had undertaken a journey around 

 the whole Italian peninsula, and that, from Pied- 

 mont to Calabria, and from Calabria to Venice, alo: x 

 the Adriatic Sea, he had everywhere found the pure 

 Italian bees. • 



Let us remark, that Mr. Mona is a breeder of 

 queens, and that such assertion was in discord with 

 his own interests. Mr. Jones, when be sajs that 

 there are black bees around Rome, is altogether in 

 discordance with a well-known Italian beekeeper, 

 Dr. Angelo Dubini, Treasurer of the Italian Bee- 

 Keepers' Society. For several years Dr. Dubini has 

 been accustomed to leave his patients, for a few 

 weeks in summer, during which vacation he makes 

 extensive trips in the different parts of Italy, visit- 

 ing apiaries. On bis return home he relates, in the 

 journal of the society, the incidents of his voyages. 

 Although he has thus explored every part of Italy, 

 he never found any black bees in the numerous api- 

 aries that he has thus visited. 



Now, the assertion of our friend Jones, and of 

 some other bee-keepers, that there are black bees in 

 Italy, can not be explained but in this way: The 

 Italian bees differ in color from the black bees, only 

 by the transparency of the first rings of their abdo- 

 men. You can see this transparency when a bee 

 flies against the glass of a window. Of course, the 

 thinner the shell the lighter the color. Tn an old 

 worker, the wing sometimes seems to be thickened, 

 for the transparency has decreased. In ihe fall, 

 when the bees eat dark honey, the wing<» have a 

 dark color, on account of the d*rk contents of tho 

 crop; and in spring the same bees seem splendid in 

 color; the honey in their stomach being lighter in 

 color. 



Some honey in Italy is very dark; such is th« 

 heath honey; some pollen there is quite black; such 

 as the pollen of the poppy. Of course, a beo filled 

 with such dark food will look as black as a common 

 bee. If anybody doubts the fact, let him feed a few 

 bright Italian bees with honey mixed with a little 

 lampblack. So, to my mind, our friends who saw 

 black bees in Italy did not look closely enough be- 

 fore pronouncing their judgment. 



Another accusation that I see in the report of the 

 convention held at Cincinu >ti, is, that the dark 

 Italian, or leather-colored Italian bees, are full of 

 vindictiveness, and ready for light. We have intro- 

 duced In our apiaries at least one thousand imported 

 queens, during about 14 years In the importing busi- 

 ness; and yet we have, without a single exception, 

 always found the Imported bees, even the darkest, 

 very gentle to handle; and we are sure of bciug in- 

 dorsed in this assertion, by the hundreds of boo- 

 keepers to whom we have sold imported queens. 



We can also vouch, that a great many of our cus- 

 tomers have found the leather-colored bee better 

 than the light yellow; probably on account of the 

 greater thickness of the shells of their wings-thick- 

 ness which gives to the bees a greater endurauce. 



Hamilton, lib, Nov. 0, 1880. Chas. Dadant. 



