150 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



lu my opiniou the Caruiolau bees 

 are the outcome of some yellow race 

 and from which the Italian bees origi- 

 nated. Perhaps Mr. Bentou might give 

 us some valuable information on this 

 point. I had an order in the season of 

 1889 for a few Italian queens mated 

 to Carniolan drones. When the bees 

 hatched from the queens so mated they 

 were all yellow-banded. Why was 

 this? Why were there not some of 

 the "steel blue" worker bees in the 

 lot ? W hen a drone from a black col- 

 ony has mated an Italian queen, about 

 half the worker bees will be solid black 

 and all the young queens will be very 

 black. It is a fact which I have found 

 in my experience, that if pure Carni- 

 olan bees are left to themselves a few 

 years they will nearly all be yellow 

 bees, while if the purest Italians are 

 left to breed and mate as they natur- 

 ally will, say four years or more, they 

 will degenerate to solid black bees. 

 There would, no doubt, be a few bees 

 in the colonies with a very narrow 

 yellow band, but a large majority of 

 the bees would be black. 



Will some of our readers who have 

 given this subject study and serious 

 thought give the readers of the Api 

 their ideas on this point ? 



You will see by what I have said 

 what an easy matter it was for me to 

 originate the race of yellow Cartiiolan 

 bees. Some one will say -'he bred in 

 to do it." No, I did not ; we found a 

 more practical way than that to reach 

 the desired point. 



Age of the different sexes of bees. 

 The honey bee is a short-lived insect 

 iu any event. In the honey-gathering 

 season a worker soon wears itself out, 

 say iu about six weeks. Yet the bees 

 born in the months of August and Sep- 

 tember will live well into the month of 

 the following May. The drone bee is 

 abused and ill-treated nearly all his 

 days. As soon as his services are not 

 wanted he is unceremoniously pitched 

 out the hive. Pitched out the hive is 

 the word to use as they are pitched out 



and no mistake about it. The drone's 

 life is a little over two mouths when 

 permitted to live it out, yet very few of 

 them ever reach sixty da3^s of age. 



Mr. Doolittle tells the readers of the 

 Am. Bee Journal that drones will live 

 over the Avinter. He says : 



"Many seem to think that drones never 

 live over tlie winter, Avhich is the rule 

 tliougli not always tlie case, for at two dif- 

 ferent times my hives have been so well 

 supplied with lioney during the fall and 

 winter, that the bees did not seem to rea- 

 lize any need of retrenching, so kept their 

 drones, which were flying ever_v fine day 

 during tlie fall and winter, the excess of 

 honey causing the bees to allow them to 

 live as long as life held out. It was really 

 amusing to hear their merry hum from 

 ]nany hives on warm days during February 

 and IMarch. As the pheasant, days of 

 April came on, they gradually grew less 

 and less, until all were gone about the 

 middle of that mouth." 



Mr. Doolittle is certainly mistaken 

 in this matter. 1 have found it impos- 

 sible to preserve drones alive even 

 three monthe. The drones found in 

 Mr. D's hive in the spring were cer- 

 tainly reared late in the winter. I have 

 often found drone-brood, that is, a few 

 cells in some hives early in March, and 

 have had drones tlying at the last of 

 March. The simple fact that Mr. D. 

 saw drones flying from his hives iu 

 April is not sufficient proof to con- 

 vince me that those drones were reared 

 the fall previous. 



The life of the queen bee varies ac- 

 cording to circumstances and condi- 

 tions. Queens will live from one to 

 three 3'ears when kept in such small 

 hives that their productive powers are 

 restricted to about one-half of their 

 egg-producing capacity'. I believe the 

 practical thing to do is to introduce 

 3'oung queens as often as eveiy alter- 

 nate 3"ear. Young queens are tlie ones 

 that produce the most hone}- and bees. 

 A mnjorily of old queens l)egin to fail 

 and lose vigor when in the second year. 



Another patent swarm-hiver. 

 Some one who claims a patent on a 

 swarm-hiver describes the same in the 



