546 



GI.EANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



July 1 



Herr Kramer, in Deutsche Bietienzucht, 

 speaks of certain American breeders who main- 

 tain that it is a matter of indifference whether 

 eg\5s or young or old larvae are used for queen- 

 rearing. There must be some mistake about 

 that. I think no American breeder uses lar- 

 vte more than three days old, and it is doubt- 

 ful that a three-day-old larva is as good as one 

 younger, seeing that queenless bees, when 

 given their choice, prefer the younger. [Herr 

 Kramer has misread or mistranslated your ar- 

 ticle on the subject. It is to be regretted that 

 we do not all have one universal language. — 

 Ed.] 



Complaint is made by some that, when no 

 queen-excluder is used, the queen goes up and 

 lays in the sections. The curious part is that 

 A says he has no trouble at all, while B has 

 brood in a fourth of his sections. Possibly 

 this explains it : There is no drone comb in 

 the brood-chamber in either case. B's bees 

 have only starters in the sections, and they 

 will build drone comb there, and the queen 

 will come up to lay where the drone comb is. 

 A's sections are filled with worker founda- 

 tion, and there will be no drone comb there to 

 bait the queen up. [In California, so far as I 

 have gone, perforated zinc seems to be gener- 

 ally used, even for comb honey. — Ed.] 



Raspberry-blossoms have interested nie 

 much. Acres of raspberries are on my place, 

 and Langstroth's mention of the " drooping 

 blossoms that protect the honey from moist- 

 ure ' ' may be all right for the wild plants with 

 canes 6 to 10 feet long, but here the blossoms 

 are upright. Work begins on these blossoms 

 in the early morning, and I've seen bees on 

 them at 7: 40 on a rather cloudy evening. At 

 first I thought no pollen was gathered from 

 raspberry ; but patient looking showed one 

 bee among a great many with a small load, 

 and by looking closely in the morning, with 

 glasses, I found nearly every bee had a very 

 small load. This makes me think it must be 

 a mistake that a bee does not gather nectsr 

 and pollen on the same trip. 



Elias Fox raises the question whether 

 drones from laying workers and drone-laying 

 queens are virile. I think it would be hard 

 to prove that drones from laying workers are 

 not all right, but I should not want them. 

 But I should have no fear about drones from 

 a well-developed queen, whether fecundated 

 or not. What change can fecundation possi- 

 bly make upon eggs that are in no case fer- 

 tilized ? Are not the drones of a played-out 

 queen just the same after the contents of her 

 spermatheca have become exhausted as be- 

 fore ? And why should they not be the same 

 before the fecundation of the queen? Of 

 course, that is not positive proof. There was 

 a case in Australia — possibly others in this 

 country — in which positive prowf was claimed: 

 a queen properly fecundated at a time when 

 it was known there could be no other drones 

 except those from a drone-laying queen. [If 

 we can make the matter of fertilizing queens 

 in confinement a success we might prove or 

 disprove the virility of drones from laying 

 workers. — Ed ] 



Jupiter Pluvius reigns this spring, 

 And gives the rain loose rein ; 



It conies in cloudburst, shower, and storm, 

 On city, field, and plain. 



\t/ 



BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 

 H. D. Burrill has a good article on the pre- 

 vention of swarming. He says, " A good deal 

 may be done to discourage swarming by giv- 

 ing plenty of surplus room, and ample venti- 

 lation and shade. Have no queens over two 

 years old in honey colonies." 



In my opinion, this (June) is the best issue 

 Mr. Hutchinson ever got out. He either sits 

 up nights to do such fine work or else he 

 studies on his plans after retiring. The front- 

 ispiece shows the main street in Flint. It is 

 spanned by several iron arches, each support- 

 ing 50 incandescent lights, and these alone 

 add greatly to the beauty of the street, which 

 stretches away into illimitable perspective in 

 the distance ; and, what a place for wheeling ! 

 the astonishing statement is made that more 

 vehicles are made in Flint than in any other 

 place in the world except Cincinnatij and it is 

 likely that it will soon stand at the head. 

 About 800 houses will be built there this year. 

 They have a thousand-dollar marble drinking- 

 fountain for people, supplied from an artesian 

 well 600 feet deep, all built by private sub- 

 scription. It seems that what they want they 

 get and pay for it. 



The star article is written by F. B. Simpson, 

 on in-breeding. As stated in Mr. Hutchin- 

 son's advertisement in this journal, p. 492, 

 Mr. Simpson may well be regarded as an au- 

 thority on this subject. "If practiced it 

 should be sparingly and with good judgment " 

 is the tenor of the whole article, occupying 

 four and a half pages, every line of which is 

 readable. After speaking of the advantages 

 that have resulted by in-breeding in case of 

 some plants and cattle he says: 



Until we can get some absolute proof that these 

 arguments are untrue in the specific case of beebreed- 

 ing, it would seem unsafe for any queen-bee breeder 

 to do any in-breeding with the intention of selling 

 the resulting stock; but only as a matter of research 

 until some absolute proof could be obtained by exper- 

 imental work through several generations of bees. 

 Few queen-bee breeders will consider that they can 

 afford to do even this amount of experimenting iu 

 view of the fact that out-crossing has none of the ob- 

 jectionable features in the public mind that in-breed- 

 ing possesses. One of the bottom facts of in-breeding 

 is, that nature never does it unless compelled to. 



Concerning bees with long tongues, Mr. 

 Simpson says: 



Other things being equal, I want long tongues ; but 

 if I were raising my ideal of a bee for sale, the " long- 

 tongue " part of my advertisement would be in small- 

 er type, while with great "scare heads" I would pro- 

 claim " Superior Suckers." Above all, 1 want a bee 

 that can suck and carry as large a load as possible, or 

 else make it up in increased number of loads. To my 

 mind, the long-tongue agitation is too much like 

 treating a symptom, instead of the disease itself. . . . 



