1908 



(iLEANISGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



281 



do not give them some inducement. Then 

 it is best not to forget that hard times are 

 harder on a large per cent of the city people 

 than on the producer, and hardest of all on 

 wage laborers. 



Now, having, to a small extent, studied 

 the situation, let us try to do what is right 

 as well as what we can. If the distant cities 

 will not pay us good prices it is better to de- 

 cide that the poor at home have as good a 

 right to "cheap eating" as those with large 

 capital. The poor man's dollar should buy 

 just as many pounds of honey as the rich 

 man's, and the poor man can have a chance 

 if you tell him in your local paper or by a 

 sign at your gate that your honey can be had 

 at the low price of the city markets, less the 

 cost of freight and commission Don't try to 

 add these on him; for if you shipped the hon- 

 ey, you would have these to pay. 1 find one 

 of the troubles about marketing our honey 

 at home, right among our own friends and 

 neighbors, is that, like many of our farmers, 

 we will not sell it unless we can get as much 

 for it at our door as it will bring in the dis- 

 tant city market. Let us be reasonable and 

 Honest in all our marketing projects, wheth- 

 er others are or not. 



YELLOW VS. LEATHER COLORED 

 ITALIANS. 



A Few Words in Favor of Yellow Italians; 

 Keeping the Brood-nest Clear, of Hon- 

 ey to 3Iake Room for Brood. 



BY E W. ALEXANDER. 



For some time many honey-producers have 

 shown a preference for the darker or leath- 

 er-colored Italians. This would be all right 

 if it were not that they have a tendency to de- 

 generate back to hybrids and blacks when 

 continued a few years. It is the same with 

 bees as with all our domestic stock. We 

 must have a standard to work for, and the 

 color line seems to be very essential in our 

 horses, cattle, swine, and poultry. Now, if 

 we fail to keep up to well-marked Italian 

 bees as a standard, then unprincipled queen- 

 breeders can send us their hybrid mismated 

 queens: and we, not having any fixed stand- 

 ard as to color, will have no chance to com- 

 plain, as they can say they sent us queens of 

 their dark Italian strain. 



I for one have my doubts if any of the 

 dark strains of Italians are superior to our 

 three and four banded bees— that is, taking 

 them as a whole in large apiaries there are 

 occasionally some exceptions in each class: 

 but one thing we must all admit: and that is, 



Italian bees are far ahead of our blacks or 

 hybrids in gathering honey; but in order to 

 acquire the best possible results we must 

 give them in some respects especial attention. 

 Their never satisfied desire to gather honey 

 causes them to fill the brood nest early in the 

 season; but if this honey is frequently remov- 

 ed so as to give the queen a chance to fill 

 and keep filled all the combs below the su- 

 pers with maturing brood, then you will soon 

 have a large working force, and you are then 

 quite sure to get a nice surplus ; but if you 

 neglect to keep this honey out of the brood- 

 nest, then you will have a weak colony and 

 little or no surplus, which will cause you to 

 become prejudiced against all yellow bees. 



Next season make it your especial business 

 to see every comb in all your colonies before 

 you put on your supers. See that each one 

 is full of brood from top to bottom and end 

 to end; remember that each square inch of 

 capped honey in those breeding- combs costs 

 you about 30 worker bees every 21 days. 



The convenience and time saved in look- 

 ing up twenty or more queens a day, as we 

 frequently do during the summer season, is 

 quite an item in favor of yellow bees. Some 

 think these bees do not winter as well as the 

 darker ones. I find that, where this it the 

 case, it is caused by the Italian bees crowd- 

 ing the brood-nest with honey in August so 

 as to stop all chance for breeding after Sept. 

 1; consequently they go into winter quarters 

 rather weak in bees; and those thev do have 

 are mostly old and nearly used up. If you will 

 remove two of the heaviest combs about Sept. 

 1, and put in the center of the hive two good 

 empty breeding-combs the queen will fill 

 them with brood, and your colony will be 

 much stronger and better in the spring. 



Still another thing in favor of our yellow 

 bees which is of more importance than all 

 other things combined is the fact that they 

 are almost immune to that destructive d s- 

 ease known as American foul brood. Those 

 of us living in this pirt of New York, who 

 lost thousands of colonies a few years ago 

 from the effects of that disease, know well 

 how much we owe to those yellow Italian 

 bees; for without them the production of hon- 

 ey in this part of the State would be a thing 

 of the past. Sometimes I think the great 

 loss we sustained was a blessing in disguise, 

 for now we have better bee-keepers, better 

 bees, and are securing far more surplus an- 

 nually from our Italian bees than we ever 

 procured from the black and hybrid colonies 

 we used to keep. 



When dividing or forming nuclei it is fre- 

 quently quite diflicult to keep the darker 

 strains from returning to the old stand; but 

 not so with the golden Italians. I find that, 

 if they have some brood, or a queen of any 

 kind, they will s^tay wherever we put them. 

 This is a good point, and often saves much 

 trouble; then they will defend their hives 

 from robber bees the best of any I have ever 

 had. 



Give these bees the special care they re- 

 quire and ynu will be surprised at the good 

 surplus yoa will receive during poor seasons. 



