1889 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



747 



There are Italians which produce as nice comb 

 honey as the blacks, and I aim to keep only such. 



J. A. Green. 

 a. In Northern Iowa the light Italians gave me 

 the best honey-yields, b. 1 have had no experience 

 with the four-banded golden Italians, but I pre- 

 sume they are only a very light strain of pure Ital- 

 ians. O. O. Poppi.eton. 



a. The leather-colored, b. My prettiest, that is, 

 very yellow bees, are my poorest workers. A few 

 years ago 1 bought a beauty of an imported queen 

 of A. I. Root. Her progeny were perfect beauties, 

 and all just alike, and she kept the frames full of 

 brood, but they did not swarm, and gave no sur- 

 plus, while the apiary of To colonies, this one in- 

 cluded, gave an average of 60 pounds of basswood 

 honey to the colony. A. 15. Mason. 



' Spects that " leather-colored Italians " is mostly 

 a nice, gentle term for a well-established strain of 

 hybrids— imported bees by no means excepted from 

 this remark. If you want Italians, get Italians. 

 Then if you want them mixed, mix them yourself. 

 I have owned but few colonies of very yellow bees; 

 but I think very bright color is sometimes accom- 

 panied by lack of energy. The four-banded Italian 

 is an " animile " I am not familiar with. 



E. E. Hasty. 



a. According- to my experience there are three 

 strains of Italians in this country— the dark, or 

 what is called "leather-colored;" the orange, and 

 the light yellow, or lemon-colored. Of these 1 place 

 the orange-colored first; the leather-colored sec- 

 ond, and lemon-colored third, b. Why say "so- 

 called"? Bees either show four golden bands on 

 the horny scales to the abdomen, or the person say- 

 ing they do is telling that which is fallacious. If 

 said four-banded bees are as good workers as any 

 of the others, are we not a point ahead in keeping 

 them? for, surely, A. I. Root places a higher price 

 on queens of beautiful yellow color than he does 

 on the dark ones. Hence, according to Root, such 

 bees are the best, if they are as good honey-gather- 

 ers, which 1 claim they are. G. M. Doolittle. 



Well, well ! There seems to be far more 

 unanimity in this matter of leather- colored 

 Italians than in the former question. 

 Scarcely one favors very handsome bees as 

 honey-gatherers ; and yet what a deal of 

 wrangling there has been in years past over 

 this matter of nice-looking bees ! I have 

 found men who laid so much stress on the 

 looks of the worker-bees that they would re- 

 fuse to take a queen as a gift, because the 

 stripes were not just according to their no- 

 tion, paying no attention to the fact that 

 the queen might be extraordinarily prolific, 

 or that the bees might have gathered a 

 wonderful crop of honey. As a rule, how- 

 ever, the large honey-producers are not of 

 this class of people. Our good friend Dr. 

 Mason seems bent on pitching into A. I. 

 Root to-day. Doctor, what did you do with 

 that imported queen whose bees were such 

 beauties, and just alike? It must be that 

 was a strain of some sort of aristocracy that 

 did not propose to labor for a living. We 

 have occasionally had colonies of very hand- 

 some bees that were also excellent workers, 

 and several times I have been tempted to de- 

 cide that bees for honey are, pretty nearly 

 all, ugly to handle. 



Every boy or girl, under 16 years of age, who writes a let 

 ter tor this department, containing somk valuable fact, not 



GENERALLY KNOWN, ON BKES OB OTHER MATTERS, will receive 

 one of David Cook's excellent live-cent Sunday-school books. 

 Many of these books contain the same matter that you find in 

 Sunday-school books costing from 81.00 to 81.50. If you have 

 had one or more books, give us the names that we may not 

 send the same twice. We have now in stock six different 

 books, as follows; viz.: Sheer Off , Silver Keys, The Uiant-Kill- 

 er; or. The Roby Family, Rescued from Egypt, Pilgrim's 

 Progress, and Ten Nights in a Bar-Room. We have also Our 

 Homes, Part 1., and Our Homes, Part II. Besides the above 

 books, you may have a photograph of our old house apiary, 

 and a photograph of our own apiary, both taken a great many 

 years ago. In the former is a picture of Novice, Blue Eyes, 

 and Caddy, and a glimpse of Ernest. We have also some pret 

 ty little colored pictures of birds, fruits, flowers, etc., suitable 

 for framing. You can have your choice of any one of the 

 above pictures or books for every letter that gives us some 

 valuable piece of information. 



SOMETHING ABOUT BEARS, WOLVES, AND 

 OTHER WILD ANIMALS. 



WRITTEN FOR THE .1UVENIL.ES, BY UNCI.E AMOS. 



ELL, little friends, I have not told you 

 a story for quite a spell ; at least, I 

 have not written any thing specially 

 for your department; but I have 

 had one in mind for some little 

 time. When I went to visit that great bee- 

 man, Mr. E. France, I found one of his 

 out-apiaries away back in the woods. They 

 are all located near some farmhouse, as a 

 matter of course ; and when I came near 

 this special farmhouse there were several 

 things that attracted my attention. The 

 first thing was a brood of beautiful little 

 ducklings While friend France was un- 

 hitching his horse I looked over a low fence 

 and saw those little ducks in charge of a 

 speckled hen. The children had given them 

 a trough of water, and, oh my! how that 

 old hen did sputter and worry because the 

 ducks jumped into the water" and splashed 

 about, just as if water was ever so much 

 nicer than air during that summer after- 

 noon ! Pretty soon a very nice little girl 

 came out to look after the ducks, and I be- 

 gan to get acquainted. By the time friend 

 France had got around, the little girl's 

 mamma came up, and Mr. F. introduced 

 me as Mr. A. I. Root, probably not thinking 

 that Mrs. Craven had ever heard of such a 

 man as I. At the mention of my name, 

 however, she uttered an exclamation of sur- 

 prise, and replied : 



" Why, this surely can not be A. I. Root, 

 the author of the A B C of Bee Culture r " 



Then I pleasantly told her it was. Friend 

 France expressed surprise that they were 

 acquainted with the A B C book, as they 

 were not bee keepers themselves at all. She 

 replied that they once belonged to a horti- 

 cultural society, and among the books pur- 

 chased for their library was the A 1! <'. 

 When their society disbanded, the books 

 were divided up, Mr. Craven and his wife 

 receiving the A 15 C book, which, although 

 they owned no bees, had been read till they 



