26 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



February 



Italian possesses to keep on hand a 

 large store of honey as near to the 

 brood as possiable. 



The evil of this appears as soon as 

 the spring opens. The Italian is slow 

 to attack capped honey especially that 

 in the outer combs. She wants 

 enough always in store to provide for 

 some possible season of dearth. She 

 chooses to rely on her 'own prudence 

 and economy, rather than to exercise 

 faith in the bounty of the opening 

 season. The consequence is that the 

 spread of the brood is not increased as 

 rapidly as is desirable, and it requires 

 considerable manipulation to over- 

 come the disadvantage resulting this 

 tendency. 



Again, at the opening of the season 

 for surplus honey, and from that time 

 till the close of the season in the 

 autumn there is an ever increasing 

 inclination to clog the brood combs 

 with honey, so that the force of the 

 colony is greatly reduced before the 

 close of the clover and linden season 

 and rendered almost worthless so far 

 as surplus from fall flowers is con- 

 cerned. You may extract from the 

 brood-chamber ; but, granting that 

 that would in any degree remedy the 

 evil, undertake to extract from two 

 to three hundred comb-bridged brood 

 chambers filled with clinging Italians 

 in the height of the season, with 

 swarms issuing and all the seasonable 

 work crowding, and you will readily 

 agree that it is impracticable. But 

 suppose you should succeed in the 

 work of extracting, what would be 

 your chagrin to hear your yellow- 

 banded economists chuckling with de- 

 light that you had given them a place 

 to bestow their burdens without the 



necessity of prolonging their journey 

 to the sections. 



Someone may say, you have not 

 tried "my" strain of Italians. I 

 may not have tried the best strains of 

 Italians, but suffer me to say that I 

 have no faith in the purity of any 

 strain that does not possess the above 

 trait. There could not be a more 

 fickle standard of purity than that of 

 color. Many years ago I obtained 

 two Italian queens, the first I had ever 

 seen. From their first eggs I reared 

 a lot of queens, which were mated be- 

 fore the}^ were any Italian drones in. 

 my apiary, and I believe there were 

 none in my neighborhood, as there 

 never had been any indications of 

 Italian blood among my bees until I 

 had introduced it as above, yet one- 

 half of this lot of queens produced 

 bees as yellow as any I ever saw, the 

 progeny of one of them being very 

 plainly and uniformly marked with 

 four yellow bands. Let him who is 

 incredulous cross a white leghorn 

 cock with dark brahma hens, and if 

 color be the sole standard, the chicks 

 from this cross will usually be the 

 finest sort of white leghorns. 



Second : my second objection to the 

 Italian is the tenacity of her foothold. 



This is some advantage in searching 

 for queens and in other manipulations 

 when it is not desired to divest the 

 combs of bees, but in all other cases a 

 vexatious, time-consuming drawback. 



Smoke has little effect on your pure 

 bur-footed Italians so far as driving 

 them from the comb is concerned. 

 In removing comb honey during the 

 height of the honey flow this can be 

 overcome without much difficulty. 

 But the difficulty iucreases as the sea- 



