April, 1912. 



American ^ee Journal 



III 



"Improvement of the Honey- 

 Bee" 



BY E. S. MILES. 



I wonder, Mr. Editor, when, if ever, 

 we will get this much-used-of late title 

 worn out ? 



There seem to be many and learned 

 reasons ic/ty the honey-bee can not be 

 improved: then, again, some of our 

 learned friends take a hitch in their 

 sails and tacking toward another quar- 

 ter, go on to show that it has not been 

 done, anyway! In short, their state- 

 ment is about like this: 



The honey-bee is " sot " in her ways — 

 you can't " improve '■ her; you can't 

 improve her much : she won't stay im- 

 proved after you get her improved ; and, 

 finally, you can't improve her suddenly 

 and permanently. And a knowing one 

 here and there adds, " And when she 

 is 'improved' it will be by a scholar 

 who has studied Mendelism. Partheno- 

 genesis, Darwinism, and all the other 

 /.<?«.-;. and whose mind is trained to 

 apply 'em to the task in hand." 



Now. it ought to be becoming for an 

 ignorant and unlearned man to con- 

 fess his ignorance before so much 

 learning, so I, for one, am willing to 

 do so. I hereby confess that in my 

 ignorance, when I found a colony of 

 bees better all around than any I'd seen 

 after several years' experience with 

 quite a number of colonies, I knew no 

 more than to suppose that if I'd rear 

 queens from that one I'd get more like 

 it! You see, I'd never even heard of 

 Mendel or ///.s- /.'.-;«.';. My! wasn't I hap- 

 py .' that is, if, as they say, "ignorance 

 is bliss." Yes, those were blissful days. 



Well, I reared those queens from 

 that good colony, and as sure as I don't 

 know much, the biggest share of 'em 

 zvere like their parent. 



How do I know that ? Well, may be 

 I don't, but I was under the impression 

 that they yielded more honey with less 

 labor than any other bees I had before 

 or since. Because, for one thing, 

 hardly any of 'em swarmed, and they 

 had a knack of getting strong early, 

 and always being out after any stray 

 "goods " that happened in reach. 



I heard a learned man say once that 

 a " man thought he had a non-swarm- 

 ing strain until after a short season he 



found they were not strong enough to 

 swarm!" Whew! such learning rather 

 makes a "pore, ignorant feller" like 

 myself dizzy! A man might keep "bees 

 for honey " a lifetime and not learn that 

 much ! You see /, mysclj\ was so ignor- 

 ant that I never knew my colonies were 

 too weak to swarm ; I thought just be- 

 cause they stored more than others, 

 and sometimes had hard work for all 

 to stay in the hive with .5 or 6 supers 

 on, and line up an inch from the bot- 

 tom-board, that they xcerc tolerably 

 strong. My! wasn't I happy ? 



Xoii.\ I'll never be happy again. I 

 can almost hear, already, the bee- 

 breeder of the (near) future, as he 

 leans back in his luxurious office-chair, 

 shout to his assistant, "John, I've got 

 it figured out to the 33d ancestor ac- 

 cording to Galton's law, so, now, go to 

 breeding from old No. 1, and if parthe- 

 nogenesis doesn't interfere, we'll put 

 our finger on this queen (old No. 1), 

 and our thumb on this drone (from 

 No. 2), then, according to Mendel, a 

 large proportion of these queens will 

 produce bees that -will yield so and so. 

 Do you hear me, John ?" 



" YeSy yes" says John ; ''you bet." 



Dunlap, Iowa. 



No Time to Read Bee-Papers ! 



BV I. D. V.VNCEV. 



' I have not time to read the bee-papers. 

 Bees did fairly well this year." 



I thought to myself when I read the 

 above. Did the bees do " fairly well " in 

 spite of a poor season, because their 

 keeper had spent the little time it 

 would have taken to read a bee-paper, 

 in giving them extra care and atten- 

 tion ? or was it probably a good sea- 

 son, and they did only fairly well be- 

 cause their owner was not interested 

 enough in his business to read the 

 papers, and apply the latest and best 

 methods to his work, but just left them 

 to their own devices, while he helped 

 " save the country" at the corner store 

 and post-office ? Of course, any one 

 with such an important job on hand 

 would not have any time to waste on 

 anything so trivial (?) as reading bee- 

 papers ; and he is, usually, not much 

 surprised if, at the end of the season. 



his bees have done only "fairly well." 

 He explains with the popular statement 

 that "there's no money in bees in this 

 part of the country any more," when 

 the chances are, there is just as much 

 "money in bees " as there ever was, if 

 he only had the sense and education to 

 get it out of them. 



Mr. Editor, all bee-keepers may be 

 classed under two heads — those who 

 read bee-papers and those who do not; 

 or, those who make a success of their 

 business, and those who fail or do only 

 fairly. This rule may be applied to 

 nearly every line of work that men 

 follow for a livelihood, and is especially 

 noticeable, in this part of the country, 

 in the fruit business. You will find the 

 successful fruit-grower a subscriber to 

 all the leading horticultural publica- 

 tions — not only that, but he finds time 

 to read them, too ; in fact, he considers 

 it just as important to keep himself in- 

 formed as to the latest methods in pro- 

 duction, marketing, etc., as the actual 

 field-work. As a result he produces a 

 bumper crop of fancy fruit, for which 

 there is always a big demand at fancy 

 prices. On the other hand, his neigh- 

 bor who "hasn't time to read" the 

 fruit-papers, plods along the old-time, 

 obsolete way. In a good season his 

 trees do "fairly well," but most years 

 he produces a small crop of inferior 

 stuff that is a drug on the market at 

 any price. 



If one remonstrates with such peo- 

 ple, they put up an argument just about 

 as sensible as the one given by a fellow 

 that I have often heard my father speak 

 of. He said : 



" There was once a young farmer 

 who raised a big field of pumpkins, 

 and was harvesting them with the aid 

 of a long-eared mule, a sack, and a 

 rock. He would place a pumpkin in 

 one end of the sack, and a rock of suit- 

 able weight to balance it in the other 

 end, then sling the sack across the 

 mule, get on, and ride to the barn, 

 when he would unload and repeat the 

 operation. One day a neighbor who 

 chanced to see this performance asked 

 him why he did not put another pump- 

 kin in the sack instead of the stone. 



"Well," the fellow said, "my father 

 always managed in this way. and his 

 father before him ; they both made a 

 living until they died, and what was 



No. 



-Honev-Tank for Ripening Honev. 



No. 10— L.^Ki.K Bki; Vaku and Honey Hol'se. 



