60 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jan. 15 



he kept no record, and did not think it 

 would pay so to do." 



" Did you ask him if he kept any record 

 of his cows when he was tr3'ing- to improve 

 them? It turns out as I expected. If Mr. 

 Smith had been as anxious for the improve- 

 ment of his bees as he was for the improve- 

 ment of his cows he would have kept a rec- 

 ord, and w^ould have known that such a 

 record paid with the bees as well as with 

 the cows. Very little improvement can be 

 made with the bees unless a record is faith- 

 fully kept of each colony." 



" And it would not be a very serious job, 

 would it, to keep a record of the number of 

 pounds of honey each colon 3^ produced? " 



"It is not with me. I have a piece of 

 section tacked to each hive, and on this sec- 

 tion I jot down the number of pounds of 

 honey taken each time from the colony liv- 

 ing- within, and at the end of the season an 

 adding of the amounts gives the j-ield from 

 that colony. Some use a book, having a 

 page for each colony, the hives being num- 

 bered, and a page given to each number. 

 This may have the advantage that you can 

 ' post up ' the book evenings or on a rainj^ 

 day. But the section plan is very good, as 

 I know from experience." 



•' Do 3'ou keep any thing besides the hon- 

 ey-yield on this record? " 



" Yes. Proiificness, length of life of the 

 workers, whiteness of cappings, wintering 

 qualities, etc., are all looked after, and all 

 queens at all times are reared, as far as 

 possible, from those giving the highest num- 

 ber of points along all these lines, and in 

 this way any apiary can be kept steadily- 

 improving instead of holding its own or 

 retrograding." 



THE POTENCY OF THE MALE IN BREEDING; 

 SOME THINGS WE DON'T KNOW. 



Mr. Root: — In touch with an article on 

 p. 778, where you ask how Dr. C. C. Miller 

 knows that the father of the drone's sister 

 does not exert some potent influence on the 

 drone himself, and to which Dr. M. quotes 

 from Dzierzon, in Stray Straws for Oct. 15, 

 also some of his own knowledge of the other 

 facts in the human race, I quote only from 

 my own experience as a breeder of fancy 

 fowls and cattle. I once bred a Jersey of a 

 St. Lambert strain, and of registered stock, 

 to a Holstein bull, and had a black-and- 

 white calf, as I expected; and the same 

 cow, bred to a full-blood Jersey the follow- 

 ing year, brought a black-and-white calf, 

 the very image of the Holstein sire used be- 

 fore. This trait shows up more in the 

 breeding of dogs than in any other animal. 

 I once owned a fine female pointer, crossed 

 her with a spaniel, and for three litters aft- 



erward her 3'oung showed traces of spaniel 

 blood. Why not the same in bees? One 

 will often go into the poultry business with 

 the idea of raising fancj' fowls; but it is no 

 small job to have your stock purely mated. 

 I once paid a good sum for a setting of 

 Brown Leghorns, and got a nice lot of 

 mongrels. My watchword is, "Breed from 

 the best in the stock," as well as in the 

 poultry business; and if all is well in 1902, 

 that is going to be my watchword in queen- 

 rearing. W. E. Head. 

 Paris Station, N. Y., Oct. 21. 



[It is a well-established fact that the in- 

 fluence of the male may extend to offspring 

 not sired by him, even for some time to 

 come. It is reasonable to suppose, then, 

 that a drone may be blood-related to his 

 nominal sister. If this be the case an Ital- 

 ian queen that has met a hybrid drone 

 might, and probably would, produce drones 

 (as well as bees) having some of the char- 

 acteristics of the sire ; but if the Dzierzon 

 theory is correct in every particular, then 

 the drone in the case cited would be just 

 as pure as his mother. There are some 

 things here that are not proven yet. — Ed.] 



DOOLITTLE'S FOUR COLONIES; A QUESTION 

 ASKED. 



Should not G. M. Doolittle, in that, com- 

 munication of his, "The Season of 1901," 

 page 976, when giving his account of the 

 comparative test of those four lots of bees 

 as to the lengths of their tongues, and honey 

 product, have furnished us an explicit 

 statement of the quantity of bees and brood 

 in each hive at the start? He has left us to 

 assume they all started even, but he does 

 not say so. The omission is a serious one. 

 It renders the account given valueless. As 

 to how it happened that he made the omis- 

 sion it would be idle now to inquire. A 

 slight disparity at the start might make a 

 greatlj^ disproportionate difference in the 

 results. The comparison made is not be- 

 tween the total amounts gathered by the 

 several colonies, but between the amounts 

 of their several surpluses over and above 

 the quantity needed for support of each col- 

 ony — quite a dift'erent thing. 



How much honey will a colonj' consume 

 when working twelve hours in the day, 

 nursing, comb-building, ventilating, and 

 on the wing? W. C. Eastwood. 



Whitby, Ont., Dec. 22. 



[Mr. Doolittle says the four " were work- 

 ed as nearly alike as possible." He might 

 mean by this that they were nearly alike 

 in brood and bees; but the statement, as 

 you say, is not explicit. Of course it would 

 make a great difference if there was a va- 

 riation in the quantity of brood and bees. 



As to how much we must allow for con- 

 sumption, evaporation, etc., depends upon 

 the strength of the flow. The loss will be 

 from 25 to 50 per cent of the amount gath- 

 ered during the da3^ See article by A. B. 

 Cox in this issue. — Ed.] 



