150 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



particle, Avith the exception of their using their 

 share of the flour in early spring. 



All this time, while the blacks and the mixed 

 bloods were starving unless fed, my Italians were 

 rearing brood in abundance, and would have 

 swarmed if I had allowed it ; but they did not 

 gather enough to induce them to build a particle 

 of comb. If away from home two days, I would 

 find my blacks and mixed bloods helpless on my 

 return ; and one strong stock, which by some 

 hocus pocus. happened to be overlooked, was on 

 the third day found dead past redemption. In 

 the whole forty stocks, Italians and all, there 

 ■would on some mornings not be a single ounce of 

 honey ; yet, in the evening, the Italians would 

 have three or four hundred cells filled with the 

 shining nectar. My black swarm, that came out 

 on the 11th of June, I returned to its parent stock 

 after feeding it fifteen days, as the parent stock 

 had lost its" queen. The Italians, that came out 

 on tiie 10th, filled their hive and stored forty 

 pounds of excellent surplus honey Avithout a par- 

 ticle of feeding. 



This was the worst season for queen-raishig 

 that I ever knew. Out of one batcli of thirty young 

 queens I had four tliat were partially fertilized, 

 three drone-egg laying queens, and four barren 

 ones— all the rest were lost. Now, you will want 

 to know about the partially fertilized ones. Well, 

 they laid all their eggs in worker cells and in 

 regular order ; but a large proportion were drone 

 eggs, and all mixed promiscuously— say two or 

 three, and sometimes five or six w^orkers, and 

 then from eight to ten, or at times fnnii fifteen to 

 twenty drones ; and occasionally a solitary worker 

 entirely surrounded by drones, and vice versa. 

 Among this lot of queens I had one tiuit laid an 

 abundance of eggs, but not one ever hatched ! I 

 kept these partially fertilized queens forty-five 

 days, and their worker-egg laying ability regu- 

 larly th finished, and uitionitely failed altogether. 

 My disposition to experiment cropped out in 

 full force during this time of scarcity ; and I will 

 give the reader the results, without going into 

 detail : , , ., 



First.— I found that a strong colony, whjle 

 breeding rapidly, consumes two quarts of sweet 

 water per day. 



Second.— That sealed brood, not mature, intro- 

 duced into a strong stock fed just sufiicient to 

 keep the bees alive, would perish and become 

 putrid in three days. 



Third.— That queens started in such circum- 

 stances did not mature under eighteen or twenty, 

 and in one case twenty-four days. 



Fourth. — That eggs introduced into a strong 

 colony fed barely sufficient to keep it trom starv- 

 ing, would not hatch until the bees commenced 

 gathering honey, or until they were fed more 

 plentifully. 



Fifth.— Th&t a colony deprived of its queen 

 during such time of scarcity, and while there was 

 no brood in the cell, could not be induced to ac- 

 cept a queen cell in any other manner than by 

 introducing eggs, larvae, and unsealed brood, and 

 feeding them abundantly for forty-eight hours. 

 Then the queen cell would be accepted. Under 

 other circumstances I kept colonies without a 

 queen eight days, and the cells would be de- 



stroyed, in every instance, soon after being 

 introduced. 



The result of the season's operations is that I 

 have made a miserable, and I may say an almost 

 total, failure in my endeavor to Italiauize all my 

 stocks. My blacks and mixed bloods have been 

 a bill of expense to me ; and I liave had to use all 

 the force and energy of my Italians to get my 

 other stocks into wintering condition. Two 

 stocks of Italians that I did not allow to swarm, 

 and from which I took very little brood, have 

 stored, tlie one thirty-five and the other forty 

 pounds of surplus honey. My Italians are all 

 extra heavy ; while the blacks and mixed bloods, 

 after all my feeding and strengthening, are only 

 in fair condition, and some of them rather indiff'er- 

 ent. What I mean by my mixed bloods is, a ma- 

 jority of them are two-striped. My workers from 

 pure queens, or queens reared from pure mothers 

 and fertilized by impure or black drones, have 

 required very little feeding ; but those raised from 

 impure mothers, or the two-striped fellows, were 

 the greatest pests, as robbers, I ever saw. They 

 intruded into the house, into the pans of milk, on 

 the table, into your pies, sauce, and everything 

 eatable. They even endeavored to rob the pure 

 three-striped Italians, and were eager to rush into 

 all manner of mischief; whereas I would ahnost 

 warrant a pure colony to mind its own business. 

 I will remark here that I think it is the impure 

 Italians that have given the pure their bad name 

 for robbing, &c. The reason why I have kept 

 such fellows heretofore was because prominent 

 bee-keepers have informed me that on the whole 

 they considered them the most profitable ; and 

 the seasons of 1867 and lbG8 had almost con- 

 vinced me that they were correct. But tliis season 

 has got me altogether out of conceit of the little 

 rascals. Mr. H. Faul, of Council Bluffs, thinks 

 I may have queens to sell. Well, I will sell him 

 some of those hybrids mighty cheap next spring, 

 since he likes them so well and I do not ; or I 

 will trade with him for pure ones. (See what he 

 says about Gallup in one of the back numbers of 

 the Bee Journal.) Understand that I arn by 

 no means discouraged ; for if I have gained 

 nothing else, I have become satisfied on some 

 points that I have long felt an interest in solving 

 for my own satisfaction. See my second state- 

 ment above. I have long thought that brood 

 perishing as there stated, in consequence of a 

 lack of animal heat, might be what some people 

 call foulbrood, or might be the cause and source 

 of that disease. Elisha Gallup. 



Osage, loica. 



[For tlie American Bee Journal.] 



Pollen as Bee Feed. 



I 



Mr. Editor :— I beg leave to clip from our 

 country dail}^ if you think it Avorth insertion 

 in your columns, the following article on bee 

 feeding : 



FEEDING BEES. 



" It is sometimes very difficult to enable bees 

 to live through the Avinter, OAving to the ex- 

 haustion of their store. The bee-bread is their 

 special feed, and that is decidedly better for them 

 than the pure, liquid honey. It appears to be 



