APRIL 1. 1915 



265 



no bees had left the hive going to the field, 

 and proved to my satisfaction that they 

 were returning from the previous day's trip. 

 But there the climate is quite different from 

 ours in the West. The night air is quite 

 often as warm as during the day, and the 

 only reason a bee would have for staying 

 out would be that of being overtaken by 

 darkness. I have made similar observations 

 in tliis state, but have concluded that, if a 

 bee is left in the field over night, it either 

 never returns, or is so late in the day re- 

 turning that it could not be told from any 

 othoi-s that were returning. This is ex- 

 plained principally bj' the fact that at 

 sundown here the air begins to cool rapidly 

 and they are warned of night's approach, 

 which drives them homeward. 



But our loss seems to be from chill that 

 occurs during the day, and holds them out 

 during the day or even longer. There is a 

 loss, and a heavy one; but why, I am not 

 able to say positively at this time. There 

 is a possibility that, when a bee is overcome 

 with cold when full of nectar, it may not 

 have the recuperative power that it has 

 when not loaded. The heat generated by 

 the bee's body may be sufficient to revive 

 it; but when cold nectar fills its sac, and it 

 is unable to disgorge it, it may not have 

 sufficient heat to overcome the cliill of the 

 nectar. We find them dead under orange- 

 trees and on the sage and other flowers 



after they have fallen victims to cool air. 



♦ • ♦ 



Mr. Doolittle makes some interesting 

 suggestions in the March 1st issue about 

 breeding bees for certain purposes. After 

 opening several phases of the matter he 

 asks if there is a reader who can give any 

 light. He has opened a good field for 

 thought, and as he has asked for light I 

 will give at least some suggestions. There 

 may be a difference worth breeding for in 

 the ability of some strains to reach the 

 honey of certain flowers that others fail to 

 reach. T am not ready to believe that a 

 strain of bees bred in Xew York or Iowa 

 will work differently than the same strain 

 would in this state. There is a possibility 

 that a strain bred for many years in the 

 South would not winter as well in the North 

 as northern-bred bees. The period of time 

 that would be required to bring about any 

 great change would he more than the al- 

 lotted time of man. 



Such changes come about with an evolu- 

 tionary rather than a revolutionary move- 

 ment. With the modern way of transport- 

 ing queens many hundred and even thou- 

 sands of miles, and the constantly changing 

 of blood from north and south, it is hardly 

 likely that any great variation will ever be 



noticeable — at least until many generations 

 have been bred under the same climatic 

 conditions. It is quite true, as Mr. Doo- 

 litle says, " It is one of the laws of nature 

 tliat the further north or south of the 

 equator any animal or plant can live, the 

 tougher and hardier it becomes." But this 

 very law of nature was established after 

 many years of gradual hardening and 

 adaptation. When we compare the life of 

 a bee to that of otlier forms of animal life 

 it is indeed very short, and I believe a 

 change in climate would not affect more 

 than a generation or two of bees. There 

 may be, however, a greater difference than 

 I am aware of. 



I have noticed that the bees from queens 

 shipped to this climate from the North are 

 more subject to paralysis than our native- 

 bi'ed bees ; but the same has been true of 

 queens from Texas and other southern 

 localities. I have never noticed that there 

 was any material difference in those raised 

 in the South from those raised in the Noi'th. 

 My experience with southern-raised queens 

 shipped to the North was made some years 

 ago, and I am somewhat hazy on the exact 

 results of my experiments. It is not my 

 intention to say that all queens from the 

 North produce paralytic bees in the South, 

 but, rather, that it is more prevalent than 

 with those bred in the South. 



On this line the thought comes to me that 

 we have the two phases of the situation very 

 near home. Some may remember an article 

 I had in these columns a year or so ago, 

 on bee life in the San Bernardino Moun- 

 tains. The bees that now inhabit those 

 higher altitudes, where snow covers the 

 ground from early winter until late spring, 

 are the bees that a short time ago nestled 

 under the orange-trees of the valleys. It 

 is even possible that the swarm of last 

 summer is now wintering near the timber- 

 line where the temperature hovers near the 

 zero-mark during the entire winter. I have 

 no doubt that a colony taken direct from 

 our valley apiaries to the zero weather of 

 the higher mountains would winter fully as 

 well a.s those that have been in the moun- 

 tains for many years. There has been an 

 effort for many years in this climate to 

 acclimate orange-trees to stand a lower 

 temperature; but the result was much like 

 the man's horse that he had trained to ea-t 

 less and less until, Avhen the job was finished, 

 the horse was dead. Tliere is, as Mr. Doo- 

 little says, " a difference in different colo- 

 nies in the same locality as to the successful 

 outcome at the end of the season." But we 

 find the colony that forges to the front this 

 year is, as a rule, behind the average the 

 following year. 



