THE AMERICAISt BEE JOURNAL. 



565 



Explanatory The figures before the 



names indicate the number of years that the 

 person has kept bees. Those after, show 

 the number of colonies the writer had in the 

 previous spring and fall, or fall and spring, 

 as the time of the year may require. 



This mark © indicates that the apiarist is 

 located near the centre of the State named: 

 6 north of the centre ; 9 south ; O east ; 

 KJwest; and this 6 northeast; N3 northwest; 

 0»southeast; and P southwest of the centre 

 of the State meutioned. 



For the American Bee Joomai. 



Fertilization of Queens. 



REV. M. JIAHIN, D. D. 



Mr. Henry Alley, in his very valua- 

 ble " Ilandy-Book of the Apiary," 

 expresses tlie opinion that if one has 

 a considerable number of colonies of 

 Italian or Syrian bees, and half a mile 

 away there are numerous colonies of 

 blacl< bees, not one queen in 25 will 

 be mismated. From this opinion I 

 must respectfully dissent. If one has 

 a small number of one race of bees, 

 and from one to two miles away there 

 are a considerable number of another 

 race, it is not uncommon, as I know 

 by observation, for one-half the young 

 queens to mate with drones of the 

 other race. When I had the only 

 Italian bees in this vicinity, a black 

 queen five miles away produced 

 banded bees ; and it is almost an ab- 

 solute certainty that she had mated 

 with one of my drones. 



It is impossible to tell with any cer- 

 tainty how far drones and queens will 

 fly. It is probable that the former fly 

 several miles, and queens may fly 

 further than is generally supposed. It 

 is my opinion that a young queen is 

 never fertilized on her first flight, no 

 matter how many drones there may 

 be in the air in the vicinity of her 

 hive. I have watched a great many 

 for the purpose of finding out all that 

 may be known concerning their 

 habits, and my observations are to the 

 following effect : 



A young queen, before she comes 

 out in earnest, familiarizes herself 

 with the locality of her hive. She 

 comes out and flies around in the 

 vicinity of tlie hive for not more than 

 five minutes at a time, and then en- 

 ters the hive and remains for about 

 five minutes. During the time she is 

 on the wing, she may be observed to 

 approach her hive, in some cases 

 several times, without entering, and 

 she is probably not out of sight of it 

 at any time. I have observed five of 

 these five minute excursions in less 

 than an hour ; but I have never 

 known a queen to return, having 

 mated with a drone in less than 17 

 minutes from the time she left the 

 hive. I do not say that they never do 

 mate and return in less time than 

 that, but none that I have observed 

 Lave done so. This gives a queen 



time to travel several miles, if n^ed 

 be, and her frequent short flights 

 seem designed to enable her to take 

 a longer tliglit, if necessary, without 

 getting lost. 



Now I venture the opinion that, 

 other things being equal, a queen is 

 quite as likely to mate with a drone 

 belonging to a colony half a mile or 

 more away as with one from a colony 

 in the same apiary. The.instinct that 

 prompts the queen and drone to fly 

 abroad, prompts them to leave the 

 vicinity of their homes, and thus pre- 

 vents in-and-in breeding. 



I think it beyond dispute that 

 drones have places of rendezvous, 

 where, from I know not how far, they 

 congregate. In my early bee-keeping 

 days, from 12 to \h years ago, the place 

 of meeting was in the edge of a 

 woods a quarter of a mile east of my 

 house. In 1883 and 1884 the play- 

 ground seemed to be partly over my 

 own premises, and this year over a 

 woods pasture just south of my place. 

 Now, it is a question of some impor- 

 tance whether in a given locality 

 there may not be more than one place 

 of congregating, and also whether the 

 resort of my drones may not be 

 farther away than that of some other 

 drones. In that case my queens would 

 be more likely to meet drones from a 

 neighbor's apiary than from my own. 



The above facts and surmises have 

 a bearing upon what I am about to 

 relate. I had in the spring ,"0 colonies 

 of bees, all except a very few were 

 Syrians, the rest being Italians. 

 There were but 2 colonies showing 

 any black blood, and I presume that 

 in an area of two miles in diameter 

 there are not as many colonies of bees 

 belonging to other persons as I have, 

 and I am confident that there is not a 

 colony of blacks within half a mile. I 

 have purposely allowed my bees to 

 have a liberal supply of drone-comb, 

 and the number of drones has been 

 large ; and yet, out of 31 queens 

 reared, 23 have mated with black 

 drones, and of the 8 remaining 2 or 3 

 are doubtful. 



I have never before had such an ex- 

 perience, and I am at a loss to account 

 for it. Have black drones come from 

 a mile or so away and established a 

 resort into which my queens have 

 gone? Or have my queens passed by 

 the resort of their male neighbors, 

 and gone to that of the drones of 

 some other locality ? Or is there 

 somewhere in this vicinity a colony of 

 blacks having drones that are more 

 amorous and enterprising than my 

 Italians and Syrians ? One of these 

 hypotheses must be true, but which 

 one I have vainly tried to ascertain. 

 Can any of our apiarian savants throw 

 any light upon it V There is no doubt 

 at all that these queens mated with 

 black drones, and not with mixed ones, 

 because they produce many bees that 

 are entirely black ; and the queens 

 themselves are pure Syrians and 

 Italians. 



It is commonly recommended to 

 rear queens early in order to have 

 them purely mated. In this I have 

 generally failed. My early queens 

 would not mate with my early drones 

 until the weather became warm— al- 



most hot— and by that time black 

 drones were plentiful. More of my 

 queens are purely mated in the late 

 summer and early autumn than in 

 the earlier months. The reason may 

 be that at that time drones and queens 

 do not venture so far from home. I 

 hope to supplant my mongrels by 

 purely-mated queens before the sea- 

 son closes. 

 New Castle,ot Ind., Aug. 22, 188.5. 



For the American Bee JoumaL 



Excellent Season so Far. 



B. T. BALDWIN. 



I commenced the season of 1885 with 

 39 colonies, sold one, and bought one 

 4frame nucleus. I divided 3 other 

 colonies for queen-rearing, so I did 

 not obtain any honey from them. I 

 have sold $102 worth of bees, have 

 taken 5,400 pounds of extracted honey, 

 and have increased my apiary to 75 

 good colonies. My bees made some 

 of the largest daily gains that I ever 

 heard of, from English clover. 



Basswood bloomed here on June 29, 

 and ceased blooming on July 8. It 

 did not seem to secrete mtich honey 

 in proportion to the amount of bloom; 

 or if it did my bees failed to pay the 

 necessary attention to it. I got only 

 two barrels of honey with basswood. 

 flavor, and could scarcely tell, by the 

 bees, when it ceased to secrete honey. 



On July 10 I put a fair colony of 

 hybrid bees on the scales, and it 

 gained 2A}4 lbs. that day ; on July 11, 

 it gained 28 lbs, ; on the !2th, 31 lbs. ; 

 on the 13th, 27 lbs. ; on the 14th, 23 

 lbs. ; on the 1.5th, 11 lbs. ; on the 16th, 

 4 lbs. ; and on the 17th they lost IJ^ 

 pounds. 



All of this was from English clover, 

 making 148J^ pounds in seven days. 

 I had more than a dozen men to time 

 them, and they all say that the colony 

 did not gain less than 2 pounds in any 

 hour of any day that they were timed; 

 and the colony was not nearly my 

 very best. I ^had nine combs in the 

 upper story, and exchanged empty 

 combs at night for full ones ; and I 

 believe if I had taken as good care of 

 all the rest, some of them would have 

 done better than this particular 

 colony. 



Last fall, when I packed my bees 

 for winter, there was one little colony 

 of hybrids that I intended to tinite 

 to some other colony ; but when I 

 opened the hive they had 12 pounds of 

 honey in four combs, and about 2 

 quarts of young bees, so I thought 

 that I would try and winter them. To 

 my surprise this spring they were as 

 healthy as any colony in my apiary, 

 and began to breed lively when clover 

 commenced to bloom. I put them in 

 a Ileddon hive with a crate of 28 one- 

 pound sections, and when they had 

 the foundation drawn out, I raised up 

 the crate and put on another ; and 

 they had them both finished in a short 

 time, excepting 8 sections, when I 

 took the crates off and put on an ex- 

 tracting super, and I extracted 175 

 pounds after that. 



The grass-hoppers have ruined the 

 clover-seed crop in this locality this 



