1907.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



197 



To those who enter the vocation as 

 a snap game and crowd their neigh- 

 bors with an unreasonable number of 

 colonies which consume the forage to 

 no benefit to anyone, or run their af- 

 fairs in a manner where they and 

 their bees are pinched all the time 

 and "close out" at a ruinous price at 

 last there should be small encourage- 

 ments held out. The larger share of 

 our skill is of the unseen, unrealiz- 

 able order which, from mutual con- 

 tact with the simple affairs of life con- 

 stitute a degree of second nature. 

 What the unskilled do for bees must 

 be thought out on the strength of 

 memory of books or other instruc- 

 tion. The bee keeper should do for 

 the bees because it is a part of his 

 inside life — the activity of sympathet- 

 ic nerves — that disturbs one's repose. 

 It should enable us to think and act 

 from the standpoint of the bees and 

 not our own. By this plan we lend 

 to the bees our intelligence, yet we 

 ourselves obtain all our mtelligence 

 from the study of the simplest laws in 

 nature. We gfather and store the 

 knowledge and deal it out again in 

 a different form or quantity. 



Chatsworth, California. 



br5:eding bees. 



GEO. B. HOWE, 



THERE IS NOTHING in the 

 bee business that has been neg- 

 lected as much as breeding bee.* 

 f'.<r honey. They have bred the gol- 

 den-all-over. Italians. Now what is 

 tin re to hinder breeding them all 

 over black with the same characteris- 

 tics? 



When it comes to comb honey, the 

 yellow bees, as a rule, are such poor 

 cappers, while her darker sisters are 

 equal or nearly so, to the black or 

 German bee. When any one claims 

 that their Italians, or any other race 

 of bees, cap their honey whiter than 

 the blacks, I wonder if they really 

 know what black bees are. I have 

 produced tons of honey with black 

 bees, and cannot ask for, or expect, 

 my Italians to excel them as to cap- 

 ping their honey. 



By careful breeding and selecting 

 for eleven years, I find that I have a 

 strain of Italians nearly equal to the 

 blacks for white cappings of their 



honey. What we have got to have to 

 breed from is a thoroughbred. I 

 find that breeding from a hybrid is un- 

 reliable and unsatisfactory. Some of 

 our best bee men seem to carry the 

 idea that with a good queen we need 

 not worry about the drone part. I 

 find this is a mistake. With the most 

 careful selecting and testing, Tdo not 

 know which is the most important. 

 Would you expect to get a fast colt by 

 crossing a race horse with a draft 

 horse? Or, would you get a non- 

 setting strain of fowl by crossing a 

 leghorn with a brahma? My exper- 

 ience teaches me that it is just as es- 

 sential that we look after the drone as 

 the queen if we expect to succeed. 



Do you not think we get better 

 drones if we raise less by using worker 

 comb and restricting them as to drone 

 comb? The bees certainly feed them 

 much better than when they have an 

 abundance of drone brood. The same 

 is true in raising queen.^-. Do not 

 make a colony raise more than two 

 good batches of cells. One batch 

 would be better if you want good per- 

 fect queens. You will find that to raise 

 good queens, you cannot transfer half- 

 starved larvae and get good results. 

 What we do want is queens from the 

 egg and the colony that is to raise 

 them to be in the condition of a col- 

 ony that swarms as near as you can 

 get it without unsealed brood, only 

 what you give for queens. I would 

 let them go without larvae from four 

 to six hours. Now if >ou must trans- 

 fer the larvae, put a clean -omb in the 

 center of the brood nest of your 

 breedin;-: colony and get al! the eggs 

 you want. Now take this comb out 

 and put it in the center of the col- 

 ony prepared. There is no guess work 

 then about the age of your larvae. 

 Y.->u know just hovv oM thov are and 

 they will be floating in food and not 

 stuck to the bottom of the cell'^. W-,^ 

 shc'uld be very careful not to expose 

 the larvae to the cold air. After trans- 

 ferring give cells back to prepared 

 colony. 



I have inbred for over seven years, 

 a-i'l can see no bad results. Dr. Phil- 

 lips told me two years ago tc Ireep at 

 it, and I will as long as I am imjjrov- 

 ing. Now I am not a queen breeder, 

 but a honey producer and what I am 

 after is the bees that will produce the 

 most fancy comb honey. 



