1885 



GLEANINGS IN BEE (JULl'UliE. 



In the spring of 1882 I sent to A. I. Root for Ital- 

 ian queens, and Italianized my apiary. Now, one 

 and a half miles west of me a neighbor had three 

 swarms of black bees. To keep my bees pure, of 

 course I must Italianize his swarms. There comes 

 in the first strange freak. I took out the black 

 queens and gave each, 48 hours after, a cell from 

 my best Italian swarm. At the same time I made 

 four nuclei and safely introduced a cell to each. It 

 being September, and no honey coming in, most of 

 the drones, except in the hive where the cells were 

 raised, were destroyed. We took pains to open the 

 black swarm, and to kill every drone found, so as 

 to make a sure thing of purity in mating. Now, 

 mind you, his queens were I'i miles distant, while 1 

 mine were in the same apiary with the drones. One j 

 would naturally suppose that the chances were two 

 or three to one in favor of my queens becoming 

 fertile. The fact is, that only one of mine became | 

 fertile, while all three of friend Crandall's, lla miles 

 distant, met the drones and commenced laying in- [ 

 side of 13 days after hatching, and proved to be t 

 purely mated. It seems that three of mine pre- j 

 ferred to remain maidens rather than meet a drone 

 belonging to the same family. I kept the three for 

 2i days, fed half a teacupful of syrup each day, but 

 had to destroy them and double up the nuclei. 



From the above it would seem that it is the queen 

 that flies a distance to find the drone, rather than 

 the drone flying in search of the queen. Perhaps ' 

 nature has so ordered it, that there shall be no in, 

 or close bi-eedin?. There was no difficulty aljout 

 their flying, for the 14th or 15th day I threw them i 

 all in the air, in front of their hives (in the middle 

 of a warm day), and they took wing and flew finely, 

 and all three found their way back to the hives. 

 One was gone 3.5 minutes, and was seen to return : 

 to the hive. Neither met the drone, and, in my I 

 opinion, because there were no drones at a distance 

 to, meet. 



That winter, Mr. S. B. Best received a swaim of 

 black bees in a box hive, as a present. They were 

 set in his garden, just 27 paces from the corner 

 stake of the section line of his claim, which Is 7 

 miles in a direct line from section 28, where my 

 apiary stands, and 54 miles from neighbor Cran- 

 dall's three hives that I Italianized. The next sum- 

 mer, one of neighbor Crandall's young queens mis- 

 mated, and produced workers with oue and two 

 bands, and terrible to handle. That fall, friend C. 

 disposed of his bees and they were taken from the 

 island. 



The next summer one of my queens mismated. 

 There was a study. Could oue of my queens have 

 flown 7 miles to meet the drone, or even half that 

 distance? She had surely met a black drone some- 

 where, and there were no bees but Mr. Best's on 

 the island, except my Italians. 1 finally settled it 

 in my mind, that the black hive had cast a swarm, 

 and they had come my way and settled in the woods 

 within two or three miles of me. 



This fall, 1885, I was out at friend Best's place for 

 a few days* visit. While there he told me he had 

 had the bees several years, and had not received a 

 swarm of bees or a pound of honey from them yet, 

 and asked me to open the hive and see if they could 

 spare a few pounds of honey. Now you can judge 

 what was my astonishment, when I came to exam- 

 ine them, to find as fine a swarm of hybrids as I ev- 

 er saw. They had the peculiar characteristics of 

 the bees where the black queen meets the Italian 



drone. Part of the bees were perfect three-banded 

 Italians, while part were black, like the queen. 

 Here was no mistake. My drones must have met 

 this queen, and she or they together must have 

 flown 7 miles to meet, for neither myself nor 

 friend Crandall ever lost a swarm of Italians, 

 always keeping our queens clipped. Whether the 

 queen flies to meet the drone or the drone to meet 

 the queen, I can't tell; but between them they 

 managed to make 7 miles, that I can prove; and 

 more, every statement in this article I can prove by 

 affidavit, if necessary. H. A. Makch. 



Fidalgo, Wash. Ter. 



Friend ]SI., we are surely greatly obliged to 

 you for the trouble you have taken to give 

 us positive data on these unsettled points. 

 Are we to understand that you are on an isl- 

 and, all of you y If so, yoiJ are situated in 

 an unusually favorable position for such an 

 experiment. My opinion is. that the queens 

 will tly about as far as the drones, but that 

 it may happen that the drone might go the 

 greater part of the distance, or tiie queen 

 the greater part ; and it is not improbable 

 that either queen or drone may tly as far as 

 the worker-bees, say six or seven miles ; but 

 I feel (juite certain they will all of them go a 

 much greater distance over the water, or 

 over a prairie, than they will over hilly or 

 mountainous country interspersed withtall 

 forest-trees. Many facts have come to light 

 during years past, to indicate that diones 

 and queens do go quite a long distance— I 

 should have said from two to tliree miles in 

 all directions. This, you know, would make 

 a meeting possible from four to six miles; 

 and with such a locality as yours, 1 should 

 say seven miles might "not he the extreme 

 limit. 



SOME ITEMS. 



now .\NU WHY 1 CMP QITEKNS' WINGS. 



\M asked by several to tell in Gleanings how 

 I clip queens' wings. The first thing necessary 

 l is a sharp knife. I use one, oil A. I. Root's ;'>5- 

 cent counter, keeping the little blade sharp for 

 this and other purposes. By the way, I find 

 splendid stuff in these knives; for with one of them 

 I have shaved myself, it doing the work equal to any 

 razor. For clipping queens' wings I prefer a knife 

 to scissors, for the reason that, with scissors, one is 

 quite liable to cut off the legs of the queen, as she is 

 apt to get a leg between the blades just as they are 

 being shut. In clipping 1 catch the queen by taking 

 the wings between the thumb and fore-finger of my 

 left hand, when with my right hand I get out and 

 open the knife. 1 now gently place the sharp blade 

 of the knife on the wings of the queen, both hands 

 being lowered to within an inch of the tops of the 

 frames in the hive, when I carefully draw the knife 

 a little, thus cutting the wings and letting the queen 

 fall and run down into the hive. In this way the 

 queen is not touched by the operation, and is never 

 liable to be killed by assuming any strange scent 

 from ofl' the hands. The wings are also cut off, so 

 but mere stubs remain, just as I desire to have 

 them. There is no danger of cutting the fingers if 

 you stop drawing the knife as soon as the queen 

 drops. 



WHY I CLIP. 



The first reason is, to prevent the swarm abscond- 



