AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



479 



this too cold for nuclei, and too warm 

 for large colonies. I try to average ray 

 colonies as to amount of bees in the hive, 

 and divide for increase. I have read the 

 books of Langstroth, Quinby, Cook, 

 Root, etc., and the American Bee Jour- 

 nal for 12 years ; and yet I do not 

 know it all, by any means. 



I enjoy the way the Italian queen- 

 breeders write of those who speak well 

 of the black bees. They have my sym- 

 pathy, for I know how hard it is to keep 

 pure stock. The little black or brown 

 bee for me; less work, more honey, 

 more money. 



St. Mary's, Ohio. 



Some Settleil Facts In Apiciillure. 



M. MIIXER. 



That the Langstroth frame hive is the 

 hive of the future for comb-honey. 



That the Langstroth frame is the 

 standard frame of America — in point of 

 numbers in use. 



That the best hive cover we have used 

 so far has been the old flat cover — just a 

 plain board, with a grooved cleat nailed 

 on each end. We will never get a better 

 cover than that — the grooved cleats 

 nailed on the ends prevent the cover 

 from warping. 



That the break-joint honey-board is 

 necessary where thin-topped brood- 

 frames are used. 



That the queen-excluding honey-board 

 is very necessary on newly-hived 

 swarms, but not necessary in a colony 

 where the brood-nest is established. 



That 1%-inch spacing of brood-frames 

 is just about as near right as we will 

 get it. 



That thick top-bars are all that is 

 claimed of them. But how about that 

 exact spacing ? Must we adopt closed- 

 end bars to get the exact spaces ? Is not 

 the cure worse than the disease ? 



That cellar wintering is the best 

 method of wintering bees, all things 

 considered. 



That the T-super, and the wide-frame 

 super, are the best, all things considered. 



That all hives and supers must have a 

 bee-space at the top, and that bee-space 

 should be 5/16 of an inch. 



That all enameled cloth and rags are 

 a nuisance about hives in time of a 

 honey-flow. Here is where the flat hive- 

 cover is best, again. 



That an outer case or upper story to 

 pi'otect the supers, when supers are on 

 the hive, is a good thing, but finds few 

 friends among large honey-producers. 

 But upper stories are all right where 

 bees are wintered on the summer stands. 



That contraction of the brood-chamber 

 is not practiced as much as it has been 

 heretofore, as contraction has been 

 sometimes overdone. 



That Spring protection of bees is a 

 good thing where one has not too many 

 "irons in the fire." 



That it is best to leave the bees in the 

 cellar until outside protection is not 

 needed. 



Le Claire, Iowa. 



MarMiigs of HytiriJ Bees. 



GEO. P. ROBBINS. 



On page 855, Mr. Aten observes that 

 some writers of the American Bee Jour- 

 nal claim that a pure bred Italian 

 queen mated with a black drone will 

 produce well-marked Italians. Of course 

 he should have said three-banded bees. 

 He adds : "Of course, this is all guess- 

 work." 



I think I can give Mr. Aten some facts 

 which, if they do not convince him that 

 he is mistaken, will at least be hard for 

 him to account for. 



In 1883 I purchased 2 colonies of 

 Italian bees. At that time I had 17 

 colonies of blacks, some of them with a 

 strip or two of yellow. There were no 

 Italians in the neighborhood, although 

 one man had a few that showed some 

 of the Italian markings. Within a radius 

 of two miles there were perhaps 75 to 

 100 colonies of bees nearly all pure 

 blacks, as I have intimated. I proceeded 

 to rear queens from those two Italians, 

 hoping that I might get that many more 

 queens purely mated. Out of 13 queens 

 thus reared, the progeny of 12 showed, 

 so far as I could tell, uniformly and dis- 

 tinctly three yellow bayids. The queens 

 reared in turn from them produced bees 

 marked all the way from three-banded 

 bees to pure black, all in one colony. I 

 claim that necessarily the majority of 

 these queens must have been impurely 

 mated. Does it not look so ? 



I gave the above facts in an article 

 which was published in the American 

 ApicuUurist of November, 1890. That 

 paper brought me a letter from Mr. Geo. 

 S. Wheeler, of New Ipswich, N. H., in 

 which he stated that his experience had 

 coincided with mine. When he procured 



