AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



49 



Bees Moviiii Eis-CarnHtalians. 



Wiitten for the American Bee Journal 



BY EMEKSON T. ABBOTT, 



President of the North American Bee-Keep- 

 ers' Association. 



Willie Atchley has a long article on 

 this subject in Gleanings, in which he 

 claims that bees never move eggs. The 

 editor says he would like to hear from 

 the queen-breeders, especially Doolittle. 



Now, I am not a queen-breeder, 

 neither is my name Doolittle, but I think 

 I have positive proof that bees have 

 moved eggs. I am not prepared to say 

 that they make a business of it, but the 

 presumption is that what they have 

 done 07ice,'they can and will do again. 



Several years ago in Dutchess county, 

 N. Y., I obtained a lot of black bees in 

 the fall from farmers who wanted the 

 honey, but intended to kill the bees. I 

 put these bees on foundation, and fed 

 them enough sugar syrup to take them 

 through the winter. As they were 

 all black bees, I introduced Italian 

 queens as soon as I could. The black 

 queen of one of these colonies was killed 

 in some way in making the transfer; 

 and, as soon as they began to draw out 

 the foundation, I saw that they had no 

 queen, and were building queen-cells. 

 There was not an egg of any kind to be 

 found in the hive. 



Happening about that time to be in 

 the apiary of a near neighbor who had 

 Italians, I saw one of his weak colonies 

 come out of the hive and leave for the 

 woods. I went to the hive and found a 

 number of small, white, new combs, but 

 no honey. On examining these combs 

 closely, I found that two or three of 

 them were full of eggs. To try an ex- 

 periment I took two of these combs home 

 and put them in the outside frames of 

 the hive that contained the bees which 

 had neither queen, brood nor eggs. 



In three or four days I took the combs 

 out to examine them, and saw that every 



G^^ was removed from the cells. On 

 further examination I found a lot of 

 eggs in the center of the hive, and a 

 cluster of bees around them. I also 

 found a queen-cell with a larva in it. 

 This was a new experience to me, and I 

 concluded I must have overlooked the 

 black queen, and she had now begun to 

 lay, but I could not account for the dis- 

 appearance of the eggs which I had put 

 in the hive. There was no way to solve 

 the problem but to await developments, 

 and I did so. 



To make a long story short, in due 

 time the bees had an Italian queen, and 

 every one of the remaining eggs hatched 

 an Italian bee. Where did they come 

 from, if bees never move eggs ? 



CAKNIOLAN HYBRID BEES. 



In the same number of Gleanings the 

 editor, in speaking of Carniolans crossed 

 with Italians, says : 



" Possibly a cross would be desirable, 

 but how are we to distinguish them from 

 ordinary hybrids ?" 



In reply to this I would say they can 

 be distinguished in the same way that 

 we distinguish black bees from Italians. 

 The progeny of a Carniolan queen mated 

 with an Italian drone does not resemble 

 the bee produced by a cross of the Ital- 

 ians with the blacks, any more than a 

 black bee does an Italian. 



In 1886 the writer published a little 

 book in which he said : 



"A Carniolan queen mated with an 

 Italian drone produces a very fine and 

 desirable bee. We have a number of 

 such colonies that are very fine workers, 

 and easy to manipulate. Not quite so 

 gentle, perhaps, as the pure bred, but a 

 single pufl of smoke sends them down 

 on the combs where they will remain 

 quiet." 



More : I want to say that by breeding 

 out the silver-gray color, in a few gen- 

 erations we would have a bee which 

 would show no trace of the gray blood 

 which is found in the Carniolans. I 

 have never seen but one Carniolan 

 queen whose progeny did not show yel- 

 low bands, and I have seen a great 

 many Carniolan queens which came 

 direct from Carniola, through Mr. Ben- 

 ton. I want to say further, that pure 

 Carniolan bees bear no resemblance to 

 the blacks. 



St. Joseph, Mo. 



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