THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



198 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Is there a Four-banded Variety of Italian 

 Bees? 



■The Baroness of Bevlcppch, in lier "Five 

 Questions Answered," vol, 5, page 141, of the 

 Bee Jouknal, answers question "l, respecting 

 the "three yellow bands," tlius : "The Italian 

 bee, bred in Italy, has generally but two yellow 

 bands, and, including the narrow strip next the 

 thorax, three. But Dzierzon has raised a much 

 more beautiful race. The workers of his full- 

 blooded bees have three yellow bands, exclusive 

 of the narrow strip." 



This statement must be surprising to a number 

 of qucen-bieeders who have purchased from 

 Dzierzon. A queen bee which Rev. L. L. Lang- 

 stroth showed me on my visit to his apiary, five 

 years ago, as one imported from Dzierzon, had 

 no such worker progeny. The workers showed 

 only three bands, the narrow strip near the 

 thorax included. They differ only from those 

 reared by myself from direct imported queens in 

 having a brighter color, and with the third stripe 

 somewhat wider. 



Italian worker bees reared by Mr. Dathe, in 

 Eystrup, Hanover, (whom I visited on my trip 

 to Italy, two years ago last September,) reared 

 from a daughter of a queen purchased from 

 Dzierzon at one of the great Bee-keepers' Con- 

 ventions in Germany, had no more and no wider 

 yellow bands than my own Italian bees which I 

 had taken along for comparison ; and those had 

 but three bands, the narrow strip included. 



Shall we draw from such facts the inference 

 that ]\Ir. Dzierzon sells and sends off as full- 

 blooded, stock that is not such ? I, for one, cannot 

 do so. I am well aware that occasionally a queen 

 is produced, some of whose workers show, when 

 much extended, a very narrow fourth band ; yet 

 I cannot believe that Dzierzon would sell an in- 

 ferior queen, whose workers do not come up to 

 the standard of full-blood Italians. But no cor- 

 respondent or writer has ever, to ray knowledge, 

 made such a statement as that of the Baroness of 

 Berlepsc'h. The Rev. Mr. Kleine, in his article 

 on the purity of Italian bees, (Bee .Journal, vol. 

 2, page 17,) says: "Those woikers are pure 

 whose first three abdominal rings are bright- 

 orange or buff-colored ; the first being slightly, 

 the second more strongly, and the third broadly 

 bordered with black, while the terminal rings are 

 fringed with a gray or whitish down." Dathe, 

 another celebrated German apiarian and breeder 

 of Italian bees, in his pamphlet " Directions for 

 Italianizing and breeding the Italian bee," page 

 9, says : " Of the three abdominal rings of the 

 worker-bees, the first two are orange-yellow 

 colored ; the third one, according to greater or 

 less purity, is more or less j^ellow or whitish ; 

 the succeeding ones are whitish." Neither he 

 nor Mr. Kleine anywhere remarks that Dzierzon's 

 bees have four bands, or three without the nar- 

 row one near the thorax. I think it would have 

 been the duty of both of them to mention it, if it 

 were so ; and tlie}^ there doubtless as well ac- 

 quainted with the markings of Dzierzon's Italians 

 as the Baroness, since each of them procured 

 queens fiom him repeatedly. It is my opinion, 



therefore, that the Bafoness must be mistaken in 

 tliis matter. If, however, Dzierzon, or anybody 

 else, has succeeded in propagating Italian queen 

 bees, all of whose workers have four yellow bands, 

 and whose queen progeny — daughters, grand- 

 daughters, and great-granddaughters — again 

 produce similar four-banded workers, then I 

 should like to purchase a queen from such a 

 stock; provided she be as prolific as Italian 

 queens whose workers show only three ja-llow 

 bands. a. Gui:.i.m. 



Jefferson, Wis., ^an. 10, 1870. 



[For the American Bee .Tournal.] 



A Bee Puzzle. 



In the December number of the Bee Jour- 

 nal, page 117, under the head of " Introducing 

 Queens," a correspondent is puzzled, and so am 

 I. But he is puzzled in a different manner from 

 myself. In his case the introduced queens were 

 the ones that produced the eggs. Of this I have 

 not a particle of doubt. I have had at least 

 twelve cases similar to the one he mentions. In 

 October, 18G3, after the native queens had stopped 

 breeding, I removed five queens, and introduced 

 hybrid queens in their stead. These queens were 

 accepted apparently all right. All five com- 

 menced breeding ; and, in from eight to twelve 

 days, four of the queens were destroyed, and 

 young queens raised from the introduced queen's 

 eggs, in from twenty-four to thirty-one days from 

 the time the queens were introduced. 



These beingthe first cases of the kind, I did not 

 observe as closely as I should have done. But, 

 since then, I have had the best opportunities for 

 observation. In twelve cases of introducing 

 queens, when the native queen was not breeding, 

 1 have finally lost all but two. I have in those 

 cases introduced the queens by various methods, 

 so that the mode of introducing did not have any 

 influence on the results, so far as I have been able 

 to observe. 



August 12th, 1869, I received a queen from Dr. 

 T. B. Hamlin, of Edgefield Junction, Tennessee, 

 by mail ; and she was as handsome a queen as I 

 ever saw, of a bright golden color throughout the 

 entire length of the abdomen — the very apex of 

 which was only slightly browned. I introduced 

 her to a hybrid stock. There was no brood in 

 the hive at the time of introducing her. She 

 commenced breeding very rapidly, and I exam- 

 ined her daily for five days after introducing her. 

 On the ninth day I examined again, and she 

 was gone. She had filled four frames full of eggs. 

 There were five queen cells started, and an egg 

 in each. Those five queens all hatched out, and 

 were perfect duplicates of their mother. Four of 

 them were lost in being fertilized, and one proved 

 to be a drone layer. (Here I may remark that I 

 have only succeeded in having five queens prop- 

 erly fertilized this season.) The workers from 

 the old queen were perfect beauties. What puz- 

 zles me is this : in introducing a queen at any 

 time when the queen is not breeding, or when 

 there is no brood in the hive, why do the bees 

 accept her temporally, feed, nurse, and pay every 

 attention to her, and then, after the lapse of from 



