1902 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



521 



lay no claim to the "structure" part; but 

 I do claim that 30 years of selection has 

 changed the '''' habit'"' part with my queens 

 very much, so that to-day they are suscep- 

 tible of management as regards brood-rear- 

 ing, while 30 years ago they apparently 

 did as the3' pleased, regardless of all man- 

 agement, or very nearly so. Mr. Miller 

 also says that if we desire to increase our 

 honey-yields "we must have improved 

 strains of bees." Well, yes, perhaps; but 

 that, of course, means a change in structure. 

 No doubt this change in structure is desir- 

 able; but I claim to have increased my hon- 

 ey-yields without paying any attention to a 

 change of structure, simply by the change 

 of habit. 



How about this queen-breeding, any way? 

 S. E. Miller, to whom A. C. Miller refers, 

 says on page 974, Dec. 15th Gleanings, 

 that there are no queen-breeders, but that 

 such persons as W. H. Laws, Henry Alley, 

 J. P. Moore, The A. I. Root Co., Doolittle, 

 and others who have so styled themselves in 

 the past, are only "queen-rearers," or 

 words to that effect. But whether breeders 

 or rearers, how should we work? For more 

 active bees? Yes. For stronger wings? 

 Yes. For longer wings? Yes. For longer 

 tongues? Yes. For larger honey-sacs? 

 Yes. For longer-lived bees? Yes, and for 

 many other structural changes where we 

 can consistently; but, above all, and beyond 

 all this, work for that queen whose habits 

 can be brought to such a state of perfection 

 that she will bring her maximum amount 

 ef brood in the combs at just the right time 

 relative to the main honey-flow. Any and 

 all of these structural points must jneld the 

 right of way to the one thing, numbers at 

 time of harvest. 



Suppose that, by the long line of structu- 

 ral breeding required, as by the articles of 

 the two Millers, A. C. and S. E., we had 

 succeeded, in 30 years of heredity breeding, 

 in reaching a point where, under certain 

 conditions, 99 of the more active, strong- 

 winged, long-tongued, large-honey-sac bees 

 would gather as much honey as 100 of their 

 progenitors did; is it not easy to see that 

 the same 30 years spent along the habit 

 line of selection, which has produced queens 

 which will put 150 bees on the stage of ac- 

 tion to where their progenitors put oh 100, 

 would give nearly a half greater results 

 than the proposed Simpson-Miller way? or, 

 in other words, that the latter plan would 

 give the apiarist, under the same conditions, 

 100 lbs. of honey to where the former would 

 give less than 70. And breeding along this 

 habit plan is what I have been doing dur- 

 ing 30 years. And that I might give the 

 readers the true results in the matter, I 

 have gone back to the records of 1877, at 

 which time, after six years of work on this 

 plan, I succeeded in producing the average 

 yield of 166% lbs. per colony, and I find 

 that the extremes that year were 53 lbs. 

 surplus from the poorest and 309 from the 

 highest, and this with a spring which was 

 the very best I ever knew for brood-rearing 



previous to the time the honey-flow came on. 

 Twenty-four years of the same kind of se- 

 lection and breeding elapse, and we come 

 to the spring of 1901, which, in this locali- 

 ty, was one of the poorest springs for rap- 

 id brood-rearing I ever knew; yet the re- 

 sult of that season shows the average yield 

 of 180 lbs. per colony, the two extremes be- 

 ing 127 lbs. from the poorest and 261 from 

 the highest. In the above I give only the 

 fully completed surplus. I will leave the 

 reader, and especially Arthur C, to make 

 his dwn deductions from these facts, as he 

 says Doolittle, in spite of his years of bee- 

 keeping, "is not successful in making cor- 

 rect deductions from the facts before him." 

 Of course, as A. C. says, this failure of 

 not making correct deductions "is not his 

 ( Doolittle' s) fault, but, rather, his misfor- 

 tune. ' ' I can not vouch for the matter, but 

 it has seemed to me that, could I have had 

 the spring for brood-rearing in 1901 that I 

 had in 1877, the average yield could have 

 been easily brought to 250 lbs. per colony. 

 And these bees, from this 30 years of breed- 

 ing along the habit line, do not prove suc- 

 cessful only in my hands and under my 

 manipulation; but I have scores and hun- 

 dreds of testimonials showing that my 

 queens and their daughters, when in the 

 hands of others, have shown this same in- 

 clination to bring their brood on the stage 

 of action at just the right time to give their 

 owners a much larger yield of honey than 

 they ever secured before. 



But there is another part to this matter 

 which I came near leaving out, which is, 

 that, in this breeding as above given, I have 

 also had an eye toward the habit of queens 

 slacking their brood-rearing as soon as or 

 soon after the harvest commenced, so that 

 there would not be a host of larval and 

 adult bee mouths to feed, which, according 

 to the very nature of things, could only be- 

 come consumers instead ef producers. And 

 I consider this part of the matter as scarce- 

 ly second to the other. 



Oh how I wish I could get bee-keepers to 

 do more thinking along these two lines of 

 breeding! for herein lies something within 

 the grasp of a lifetime. Paraphrasing a 

 sentence of one of old, were my voice thun- 

 der, I would go up and down all beedom 

 crying, '■'Breed for the queens which will 

 give the maxitnum amount of brood from 

 thirty to forty -five days before the honey har- 

 vest; and as little at all other ti-ines as is 

 consistent with the accomplish inetit of this 

 object. And with this ideal before all of our 

 bee-keepers, any advance which shall be 

 made along the structural line will be doub- 

 ly enhanced. 



But I notice in this article of A. C. Mil- 

 ler's, page 240, as in other articles of his, 

 he tells us what we "must" have, what we 

 "shair^ do, what we "have got to study," 

 etc. ; instead of telling us what he has done 

 and how he did it, and thereby giving 

 us something which he has proven to be 

 of value. In this he reminds me of the leg- 

 end of the crow and the hens. A tree grew 



