204 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



[September. 



ENGLAND. 



It is stated in "BienenVater" that 

 England has a map with every apiary- 

 located on same giving the size of 

 each, etc. Thus is shown the extent 

 of apiculture in England. 



AUSTRIA. 



Rev. Tobisch, Wotsch, divides his 

 apiary into two lots; one is run for 

 honey the other for increase princi- 

 pally. The colonies of the latter class 

 are in such hives as straw skeps, box 

 hives, log gums, etc., and are kept on 

 the "noli-me-tangere" plan. The ex- 

 tracting from the former class is done 

 at the close of the season, about July 

 15, when the preliminary work for the 

 wintering of the bees may be done at 

 the same time. 



Some retail packages for extracted 

 honey offered are so arranged that 

 they can not be opened without tear- 

 ing the label. This would prevent their 

 being refilled by another party and 

 palmed off as the original a^-ticle. 



CAUCASIAN BEES. 



A correspondent of the Deutsche 

 Illustrierte Bienenzeitung, M. A. Shil- 

 ling, alludes to this race of bees, that, 

 he says, the Americans are praising, 

 and which is to eclipse even the so- 

 called Red Clover Queen. They have 

 even sent out Mr. F. Benton to pro- 

 cure these bees for the department at 

 Washington. This appeared necessa- 

 ry, as Dr. Phillips, who replaced Mr. 

 Benton during his absence, stated that 

 the only pure Caucasian queen they 

 had was dead, and they were unable to 

 obtain a further supply from the Cau- 

 casus. Mr. Pratt also asks Pfarrer 

 StrauH of Switzerland where Cauca- 

 sian bees can be procured outside Rus- 

 sia. Mr. Macdonald, of Banff, a con- 

 tributor to the British Bee Journal, 

 looks upon these bees as worthless, 

 but the Americans think that he has 

 never had a pure Caucasian queen, and 

 therefore has been led into error. 

 M. Shilling says he procured directly 

 from the Caucasus a queen of guar- 

 anteed pure race, but he is not at all 

 pleased with his purchase. She was 

 no larger than any other, the extrem- 

 ity of the pointed abdomen was shin- 

 ing black, and she only had two and 

 a half yellow bands fringed with grey 



hairs. She lived three years, and her 

 progeny, which varied considerably, 

 showed her to belong to a race of no 

 fixed type. Most of the bees had 

 only two yellow bands, others had on- 

 ly one, and lastly quite a large num- 

 ber were completely black, with no 

 trace of yellow bands. Caucasian bees 

 are as good workers as Italians, but 

 persistent robbers, and, notwithstand- 

 ing the amount of brood raised, the 

 colony was always weak, and it is 

 probable that the bees wore them- 

 selves out in working, and especially 

 in robbing. They wintered very badly, 

 and must be put into cellars to shelter 

 them from variations in temperature. 

 To sum up, they are not so good as 

 Italians, and certainly very inferior to 

 the common German bee. 



(With reference to the above we 

 would inform our readers that Mr. 

 Root wrote to the Chief of the Bu- 

 reau of Entomology stating that they 

 had as yet received no information as 

 to the result of Mr. Benton's trip in 

 the East in search of new races of 

 bees, and the reply is printed in Glean- 

 ings:— 



"United States Department of Agri- 

 culture, Bureau of Entomology, 

 Washington, D. C, May 29, 1907. 



My Dear Sir — I am in receipt of 

 your letter of May 16 asking for in- 

 formation concerning the results of 

 the trip by Mr . Frank Benton in 

 search of new races of bees. 



I regret that I am unable to give 

 you a report of this trip, since the 

 Bureau of Entomology has received no 

 such report from Mr. Benton, and he 

 is no longer connected with the Bu- 

 reau of Entomology. The only in- 

 formation which we have on the sub- 

 ject is a verbal statement from Mr. 

 Benton to the effect that he found 

 very few bees, and was unable to ship 

 any of them to this country. The tone 

 of his statement concerning them 

 would indicate that they are not de- 

 sirable. 



Respectfully yours, 

 G. L. Marlatt, 

 Acting Chief of Bureau. 

 Mr. E. R. Root, Ed. Gleanings in 



Bee-Culture, Medina, O." 

 The above is sufficient explanation 

 why nothing has been heard lately 

 about these bees. — Eds. B. B. J.) — 

 British Bee Journal. 



