54 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



March 



was in a locality that was quite good 

 for buckwheat and poor for clover and 

 other early sources of honey, i bought 

 a few box hives— this was in '73— se- 

 lecting the best colonies— black bees— 

 from apiaries a few miles apart. These 

 gave much larger yields than the bees 

 that were in my neighborhood. I trans- 

 ferred them and tried some Italians. 

 To get breeders I selected stocks from 

 apiaries a few miles away, and was so 

 well pleased that in 1879 (I think it 

 was) I went to A. W. Lundy and paid 

 an extra price for the colony of Ital- 

 ians that had made the largest amount 

 of honey the previous year out of some 

 fifty or sixty colonies of Italians. 



The season opened up with the best 

 flow of honey from apple bloom that I 

 ever saw, and this colony superseded 

 the queen during the flow from apples, 

 rearing five cells. All produced fine 

 queens, which in due time were used in 

 small colonies. The season gave very 

 little surplus, and one of these queens 

 was wintered in a strong nucleus with 

 four combs and surrounded with chaff. 

 They wintered well, and by giving 

 combs of honey with the cappings 

 broken, they bred up and did about as 

 well as the average. The season was 

 only medium, but they went Into win- 

 ter quarters with almost solid combs of 

 honey. 



The next spring they were in fine 

 condition. I gave them a hive with 

 fifteen frames, lOVaxlBi/s inside meas- 

 ure. June 1st they had brood in four- 

 teen frames and by measure contained 

 1,200 square inches of brood. The 

 eight middle frames contained as much 

 brood as a good average colony. June 

 10th it swarmed. I removed eight of 

 the best combs of brood, leaving six or 

 seven, and a frame of foundation in the 

 center, and hived on the old stand, cov- 

 ering sides and top with boxes. In just 

 a month I took off eighty pounds of as 

 fine honey as I ever saw, and later for- 

 ty-five pounds more. The brood re- 

 moved to another stand lost their 

 queen in mating, but another was sup- 



plied and they gave fifty pounds, mak 

 ing 175 pcunds and one swarm. 



The colonies with the four sistei 

 queens gave 140 pounds, 125 pounds, Hi 

 pounds and the other but little mort 

 than the average of the yard, which 

 was seventy pounds. All except tht 

 last were very prolific. Besides these 

 I only had two or three stocks thai 

 gave over 100 pounds (all was box) 

 I had Italians of other strains, anc 

 blacks, and hybrids; all told about fif- 

 ty colonies. None of my neighbors go' 

 as much as 100 pounds from their bes' 

 colonies. I bred from this strain unti 

 I left New Jersey, in 1884, and com- 

 pared with other selected stocks thej 

 were superior as workers to any : 

 could get and quite equal to any in oth 

 er respects. 



At this time I was using a modifica 

 tion of "Doolittle's" system of side anc 

 top boxing, with usually seven to eigh 

 combs in the brood apartment. Thest 

 queens, though two years old, hac 

 never had much incentive to over exer 

 themselves in egg laying, as both pre- 

 vious seasons had been poor and very 

 very poor. 



In the following years I noticed tha' 

 queens bred from the best queen men- 

 tioned above, averaged better thai 

 those from any other queen that ] 

 raised from. I was not in the queen- 

 rearing business, but I used all th< 

 available cells from swarms, wher 

 needed, always preferring those fron 

 the best stock, and did not attempt t( 

 rear any artificially. But it woulc 

 have paid big to have re-queened al 

 my inferior colonies with queens fron 

 the best one that I had, as I hav( 

 proved to my own satisfaction since 



As this is my first article for Th( 

 American Bee-Keeper, I will close, oi 

 perhaps the editor will invite me t( 

 stop. 



Port Orange, Fla. 



—[Too much cannot be said regarding the im 

 provement of our stock; and we are especiallj 

 pleased to give space to the discussion of the sub 

 ject by one so thoroughly qualified by nature ant 

 long experience, as our friend Case.— Ed.] 



