THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



sary to have jiU queens clipped, 

 otherwise this labor may be 

 avoided. 



But some will sa^', the labor of 

 opening hives and tearing down 

 queen cells to prevent after-swarm- 

 ing would be about as much as 

 artificial swarming ; and that leads 

 me to say : 



4. Bees can tear down queen 

 cells more cheapl}' than we. After- 

 swarming can be prevented in every 

 location in which I have had any 

 experience, and I believe it can, 

 anywhere, by introducing a young 

 queen immediately after the first 

 swarm issues. Any young queen 

 will do — virgin or fertile ; and the 

 beekeeper should be sure to have 

 them ready by the swarming time. 

 Either kind can be smoked right 

 in at the entrance, at that time, 

 without danger of loss ; and with 

 the few bees then left in the hive 

 they go right to work to destroy 

 the queen cells without hinderance. 

 In locations where it is necessary 

 to clip queens, they should be fer- 

 tile and clipped before introducing 

 them to a full colony, as it would be 

 too much work to find them for clip- 

 ping afterward. 



5. Bees are the cheapest help to 

 lift honey from the lower story to 

 the upper. I will admit that a 

 large quantity of honey can be 

 taken in side-boxes if it is raised 

 to be capped ; but not enough, I 

 think, after long trial of that 

 method, nor of good enough qiuil- 

 ity , to pay for the greatly increased 

 trouble and labor of manipulation. 

 In these things, and I am not sure 

 but in some others, it appears to 



me almost self-evident, that we 

 cannot afford to work against cheap 

 Italian labor. 



Bound Brook, iV. J. 

 Nov. 14, 1883. 



THE YELLOW AND BLACK 

 RACES OF BEES. 



By G. W. Demaree. 



REMINISCENCE. 



Soon after the Italian bee was 

 imported to tliis country, and 

 queens of this race were adver- 

 tised, I learned that an acquaint- 

 ance of mine, who lived some 

 distance from me, had purchased 

 some Italians and had them in 

 their purity. I went to see the 

 new race of bees and found that 

 the owner had paid as high as ten 

 dollars each for his queens, and not- 

 withstanding the high price, the 

 progeny of these queens came so 

 far short of the description I had 

 seen of them from tlie pen of Mr. 

 Langstroth and others that I de- 

 parted from my friend's house 

 pretty well satisfied that the great 

 Italian was a great humbug — a 

 penny trap in which to catch the un- 

 wary. If all the Italians then sent 

 out were such as those bees were, 

 I do not wonder that man}^ apia- 

 rists of that day disputed their 

 rights — on the point of merit — 

 to supersede their native bees. 

 Those bees were simply third-rate 

 hybrids. Since then I have 

 " pinched" hundreds of better 



