740 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Sept. 



about them. All the breeding- is done from very fine 

 home-bred queens, and mated with the finest 

 drones from tested imported stock. We are firm 

 believers in breeding from the best drones as well 

 as from the best queens. E. L. Pratt. 



Marlboro, Mass. 



Perhaps our readers may not all recog- 

 nize friend Pratt as the editor of the Queen- 

 Breeder's Journal. The picture seems to in- 

 dicate that his apiary is a very pleasant 

 place, and one would hardly think, from 

 the view of the shruhbery, that it is in 

 a city of 13,500 inhabitants. The descrip- 

 tive letter above sounds pretty strong for 

 the Carniolans, as well «is for the skill of the 

 proprietor; but it may be well, perhaps, to 

 bear in mind that friend Pratt is an enthu- 

 siast in the matter of queen-rearing. He 

 has certainly gone beyond any thing within 

 the scope of our experience if he has raised 

 hundreds of queens without losing one dur- 

 ing mating time. As we are told that the 

 Queen- Breeder's Journal has been recently 

 sold to another bee-paper, we infer that the 

 business of queen-rearing was too arduous 

 and exacting to admit of conducting a peri- 

 odical in regard to the subject at the same 

 time. 



JOTTINGS BY AMATEUR EXPERT. 



THE TEMPER OF CARNIOLAN BEES. 



TN a recent issue of Gleanings, Ernest remarked 

 fl[ that a stock of Carniolan bees placed in the 

 W care of a Mr. Harrington were not more docile 

 ■*■ than Italians. I should like to say, that plenty 

 of them are not so; but on the whole they are 

 a far more amiable race, although they can sting if 

 need be, and are good at defending their homes. 

 They need very little smoke, and do not rush about 

 on the tops of the frames during manipulation. 

 They are very still if you handle them carefully, 

 and they do not rush into balls, especially at the 

 lower corners of the frames, as some bees do. On 

 the other hand, they never seem to gorge so ex- 

 cessively as many bees, which makes it difficult to 

 change them from one hive to another, or run them 

 in at the entrance, as one sometimes wishes to 

 when uniting or adding to a stock. But all this is 

 running away from " temper." 



The question I wish to broach is this: If 1 get a 

 queen from a dealer who warrants her as from a 

 quiet strain, why are her progeny more or less sav- 

 age? I suggest, chiefly two reasons: 1. Because, 

 probably, she has been reared from the egg by sav- 

 age nurse bees; or, 2. After you get her you proba- 

 bly introduce her to a stock of very cross wretches, 

 because you hope to improve their tempers. I be- 

 lieve there is a little in the first reason, but there is 

 far more in the second. We know the effect of a 

 foster mother on a child. True, children bred on 

 goats' milk do not butt; and if on asses' milk they 

 do not work their ears backward and forward when 

 they tilk, although they may do mamy characteris- 

 tic things when they prow up; but many a weakly 

 child from a weakly parent has grown into a finely 

 developed adult through being brought up by a phy- 

 sically strong foster mother, and hasinherited many 

 of the physical and moral characteristics of the par- 

 ents and family who has nurtured them in child- 

 hood, instead of those of its natural parent. I beg 

 that lady's pardon, but I mention her name to draw 



her out of her silence. What has Mrs. Chaddock to 

 say to this? Well, if this is true of men, and how 

 much more true of animals, why not bees, who 

 have such control over the future of a bee through 

 the quality of the milk given it when young? So 

 much for theory. Now for a fact or two: 



I have a friend who is a very enterprising bee- 

 keeper; he is one of the first to get hold of every 

 new race; he makes his bees pay him well; he has 

 had every conceivable kind known; and the conse- 

 quence is, he has an apiary full of hybrids, and, to 

 use his own expression, they are all " naughty." 

 He has had Carniolans, and from several dealers 

 too; but even his Carniolans are the most savage I 

 ever met with. He has introduced his queens to 

 savage hybrid stocks to cure their tempers, but 

 only to find the young Carniolans are only a shade 

 " less naughty " than his young hybrids. 



Another bee-keeper, who sells bees with Carnio- 

 lan queens introduced, always finds the first batch 

 of Carniolan brood is not nearly so amiable as those 

 following later, and he confessed to me it has been 

 a great drawback to him. On one occasion I lent 

 an old tough-combed stock, in a straw skep, for 

 manipulation at a bee-show, in a tent, and a very 

 noted bee-keeper complained of their bad temper, 

 killed the queen, and gave me a nice young queen 

 from a very quiet race, and I was disappointed to 

 find her progeny were not much improved on those 

 of her predecessor in the way of stings, but that 

 same old stock afterward got to be as quiet as any, 

 and I took it to many shows, and it did not seem to 

 make them as bad as the original bees were, al- 

 though they had plenty of drumming and knock- 

 ing about. 



THE QUESTION OB" THE YELLOW BANDS. 



Some say they are not a pure race. Of this I am 

 not able to speak with authority. I have had them, 

 and seen them in other apiaries for the past nine 

 years; and although I have seen others' bees breed 

 yellow bands, mine have not, and this year I have 

 tested the progeny of from 40 to 50 queens purely 

 mated, and have had no yellow-baud breeders. 

 There are two things I have remarked; and that is 

 that, while many of the queens are as yellow as 

 Italians, others are very black; but it does not 

 seem to affect the color and markings of the prog- 

 eny; the second is more curious still; and that is, 

 the presence of a few workers, say one in about 

 1000, with their abdomens a jet black, and so smooth 

 that, at first sight, the ring6 are scarcely discerni- 

 ble. They work as well as any, and their heads, 

 legs, and thorax, are like their fellows'; but these 

 black bodies look very strange. Now you will kind- 

 ly give me credit for not mistaking them for the 

 black, hairless, shiny bees, which we often see be- 

 ingexpelled from their hives, and are suffering from 

 a disease known as bacilli depletus, and are often 

 mistaken for robbers. The bees I allude to are not 

 those. 1 have given some other facts about this 

 race, and also some of their vagaries, elsewhere in 

 another bee-paper, consequently I will pass on. 



SECTIONS BUILT OUT WITH COMB THE PREVIOUS 

 YEAR. 



If you wish these to be finished as fast, aud look 

 as well as others, you must, with a keen and warm 

 knife, pare them down to within nearly half an 

 inch of the midrib before you put them on; they 

 will still act as a bait to draw the bees into the 

 super, and will be built out with the other sections, 

 and look as well, 



