1901 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



383 



our work. The haphazard, guess-at-it rule-o'- 

 thumb ways have prevailed altogether too long. 

 We shall injure ourselves, and be held ac- 

 countable by those who follow us, if, knowing, 

 we do not set about to overcome the evils. 

 Providence, R. I., Feb. 26. 



[Very recently my attention has been called 

 to a series of articles in the Jersey Bulletin on 

 the subject of in-breeding to get prize-winning 

 stock. I was surprised to note how the breed- 

 ers of high-class Jersey blood in-breed. In 

 one or two instances I noticed that a mother 

 had been bred to her son, and sisters to broth- 

 ers, for the express purpose of accentuating 

 certain desirable traits. I observed, further, 

 that this practice has been carried on to great 

 advantage for many years. 



Bee-keepers have much to learn from the 

 breeders of other fine stock. But we have one 

 difficulty to contend with, and that is, that of 

 getting a particular queen mated to a particu- 

 lar strain of drones. Hitherto no certain 

 method has been known for accomplishing 

 this result, except having, at great expense, 

 the mating take place on an island or in some 

 isolated place on the prairie. If we can bring 

 about the union of queens and drones in con- 

 finement, as was described recently on pages 

 347 and 348, we should assuredly make an ef- 

 fort to in-breed on the lines already indicated. 



Here is another article on the same subject. 

 —Ed.] 



«>« 



MEASURING BEES' TONGUES. 



Objections to the Steel-rule Method; Scientific In- 

 breeding ; Long Tongues and Five Bands Com- 

 bined. 



BY J. H. GERBRACHT. 



Mr. Root : — I inclose a slight correction to 

 your comment on Prof. Rankin's article on 

 page 84. The principal importance of this 

 correction is that as Mr. Rankin has probably 

 measured many other lots of bees, the correct 

 ratio between the results obtained by the dif- 

 ferent methods is a matter of more or less in- 

 terest ; and as there was a difference in the 

 tongue-reach of the two lots it is only fair that 

 the comparison should be made with the right 

 one. As a matter of fact, the different parts 

 of a bee's tongue are not always in the same 

 proportion, so that the results of such com- 

 parisons can not be relied on ; and I will say 

 that, in my measurements of the two colonies, 

 using the same method as yourselves, the dif- 

 ference in average tongue-reach of the two 

 colonies measured by Prof. Rankin was a tri- 

 fle over .02 inch. 



In the letter that accompanied the second 

 lot of bees (the ones on page 924), I ran up 

 against the difficulty of not making myself 

 clearly understood. Those "924" bees were 

 the progeny of a daughter of the queen which 

 put up the 240 lbs. This daughter was dis- 

 carded, after laying about two months, on ac- 

 count of lack of prolificness. 



Incidentally, with just two exceptions, 

 every queen that I had last spring met the 

 same fate, though not for the same cause, for 



the five-banders were prolific enough (their 

 only good quality). The majority of their 

 successors are from my own " best " one ; the 

 rest are about evenly divided between daugh- 

 ters of a selected "Superior" queen and one 

 of your own red clover queens that I was 

 lucky enough to secure before their discovery. 

 This red-clover queen's bees average about .002 

 inch less than my best one, and the Superior 

 bees are just the same. There are no other 

 Italian bees in the neighborhood ; and with 

 this kind of queens and drones it will be 

 tough luck indeed if I do not have a few extra 

 good specimens to show for next season's 

 work. 



I think I will say a word right here about 

 in-breeding. There is not in existence to-day 

 a single strain of unusual superiority of either 

 cattle, hogs, or chickens, in which this prin- 

 ciple has not been employed to secure a fixed 

 type ; and after this has been done, the fixed 

 type can be maintained only by the most care- 

 ful and scientific line-breeding. Crosses be- 

 tween different strains produce just the same 

 unreliability and tendency to degeneration as 

 crosses of distinct breeds do, except in the 

 few cases in which, either by accident or the 

 exercise of most unusual good judgment, the 

 two strains happen to " nick " well. In cat- 

 tle and swine breeding, the infusion of one- 

 eighth new blood is considered enough to off- 

 set whatever ill effects close in-breeding may 

 produce, the idea being to use the least possi- 

 ble amount to maintain the vigor and stamina, 

 with as little disturbance of characteristics 

 and type as possible ; and the success of the 

 breeder depends to a great extent on his abili- 

 ty to do this accurately. In poultry-breeding, 

 particularly in the varieties which have va- 

 riegated plumage, in-breeding and line-breed- 

 ing are the only ways by which any fixity of 

 type can be secured ; and some breeders 

 boast of not having gone outside of their own 

 yards for breeding-stock for twenty years. 

 Of course, the results are sometimes the same 

 as those attained by some breeders of five- 

 banded bees — good to look at, but of no utili- 

 tarian value ; but this is by no means neces- 

 sarily the case ; and the best laying and most 

 vigorous-growing stock we have to-day is from 

 this same line-breeding. 



There is no earthly reason why we should 

 not have straight five-banded bees, of the 

 highest type of working qualities ; and the 

 fact that, as a class, they are what they are, is 

 a most humiliating confession of the standard 

 of efficiency of some of our queen-breeders. 



To get back to the original proposition, I 

 will say that many of the results obtained de- 

 pend upon the way bees are chloroformed. 

 Too much chloroform, or too long exposure 

 to a moderate amount, has a drying effect, 

 causing the bee's tongue to lose in a great 

 measure its elasticity. I obtained much the 

 best results by placing the bees in a bottle in- 

 stead of a cage, and consequently the stage of 

 asphyxiation could be watched and controlled 

 to a comparative certainty ; and I found that 

 a piece of common wrapping-twine dipped ^ 

 of an inch in chloroform was about right for 

 a half- pint bottle, the twine being long enough 



