90 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



distended or contracted. Which is correct? 

 Again, suppose a queen is purchased of a ven- 

 dor of these one-banded d Is and her workers 



do not all show phiinly even one _yellow band, 

 will another queen be sent? Or will the buyer 

 be coolly informed that the Italians are a variety 

 of tlie common bee, and are liable to '■'strike 

 bach to the original type;'''' that "my bees have 

 improved since I purchased them, and must be 

 pure?" 



Now, dear Journal, is there not considera- 

 ble, if not more, humbug about this Italian bee 

 business? Are not purchasers semi-occasional- 

 ]y, if not oftener, victimized in purchasing 

 queens? It so seems and feels to me to the 

 tune of the first cost of the queens, the loss of a 

 bundled dollars' worth of surplus honey esti- 

 mated, and the time and trouble of hybridizing 

 an apiary, to say notbing of the extra slings. 

 As I am a novice in ^)?(re Iialian bee-keeping, 

 I do not propose to enter into the present dis- 

 cussion in relation to these vaiious tests of 

 purity, but hope it will be continued until some 

 standard of purity is established, upon which 

 all parties can agree. It has been seven years, 

 I think, since they were first brought to the 

 United Slates — quite long enough for somebody 

 to have learned something about Italian bees. 



Victim. 



^ eii 



[For tlie American Bee Journal.] 



OverstcJeking. 



There are often too many bees kept together. 

 I got more honey from forty old stands last 

 season than I ever got from two hundred; and 

 bees carried away, when I had many at home, 

 did better. 



There never will be bees enough to get all 

 the honey, or to rob the air of the fragrance 

 that exhales from opening bloom. But honey 

 secretes faster than it exhales, and the success 

 of bees depends on the amount of surplus. If 

 there are so many bees that they find nine out 

 often places already rilled, and the tenth with 

 only a small supply from having been recently 

 visited, much of that little will be needed to re- 

 pair the wear and tear of collection, as the bees 

 lose the greater part of their time and labor in 

 flying from place to place examining empty 

 blossoms. 



If there are so few bees that they find three- 

 fourths of the flowers they visit supplied with 

 a good accumulation of honey, more will be ob- 

 tained in less time and with less labor, and a 

 smaller proportion will be needed to sustain 

 the laboring bees. 



A small" apiary will therefore afi'ord more 

 honey in proportion than a large one. 



Lemont, III. T. H. Miner. 



P. S.— The dearth here is severe. Bees doing 

 poorly. More honey in proportion to combs 

 and bees than usual. 



i i ii 



An Iowa bee-keeper travelling through that 

 State recently, remarks: "A few Italian stocks 

 which I chanced to find, worked busily on the 

 flowers of the great Western prairie. 1 counted 

 twenty-six varieties of flowers visited only by 

 the Italian bees." 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Purity of Italian Queens. 



It appears from a foreign paper in my posses- 

 sion that Mr. John Lowe, of Edinburgh, with 

 a view to test the Dzierzou theory, set to work 

 to obtain hybrids between a-pis mellifica and 

 apis Ugustica, and also between apis mellifica 

 and ajns fasdata. The result of his experi- 

 ments, which I give in his own words, was 

 "that Ligurian queen-bees fertilized by Englisli 

 drones, and Egyptian queen-bees fertilized by 

 English drones, botii produced drones, which, 

 as well as the workers, were hybrid in their 

 characters and bore unmistakeable evidence of 

 the influence of the male parent." From this 

 Mr. Lowe drew the conclusion "that the eggs 

 of a queen-bee which has been fertilized by a 

 drone of another race, whether they develope 

 into drones or workers, are in some way af- 

 fected by the act of fecundation, and that both 

 sexes of the progeny partake of the paternal 

 and maternal character of the parents or race, 

 from which it follows that Dzierzon's is not the 

 true theory of reproduction in the honey-bee." 



Now while I fully endorse the conclusion ar- 

 rived at by Mr. Lowe, "that drones are in some 

 way afl'ected by tlie act of fecundation," yet I 

 cannot say with him that the Dzierzon theory 

 "is not the true theorj^ of reproduction in the 

 honey-bee." I fail to see that the Dzierzon 

 theory is materially crippled by the f;ict of the 

 drones being in some rcay alTected l)y the act of 

 fecundation. The pith of the Dzierzon theory 

 is that all the eggs in the ovaries of the queen- 

 bee are uuimpregnated; that the eggs Avhieli 

 produce Avorkers are impregnated when passing 

 through the oviduct by coming in contiict Avith 

 a sperm reservoir and receiving a minute por- 

 tion of its contents, Avhile the eggs that proauce 

 drones pass the sperm reservoir Avilhout com- 

 ing in contact Avith it, and hence are not im- 

 pregnated. This may be true, and still it may 

 be a fact that drone eggs are in some toay af- 

 fected by the act of fecundation. But the de- 

 duction generally draAvn from the Dzierzon 

 theory that drones are therefore pure^ cannot 

 be strictlj^ true, if a queen has mated with a 

 drone of another race. Neither is Mr. Lowe 

 correct in saying that such drones arc hybrid 

 in their character. The truth lies betAveen the 

 two extremes. Mr. LoAve has simply discov- 

 ered Avhat others had discovered before him, 

 namely, that di ones are in someioay alfected by 

 the act of fecundation. He does not attempt to 

 explain that "some way," but jumps at the 

 conclusion that they are hybrid. I Avill, there- 

 fore, for the benefit of the honest breeder of 

 Italian queens, explain hoAV drones are afiected 

 by the act of fecundation. The truth is that 

 the Avhole system of the queen-bee is atfected or 

 changed by the act of coition. In other A\'ords 

 the lile-giviug principle received from the drone 

 by the queen into the sperm reservoir is also, 

 by absorption and circulation, carried through 

 the Avhole system and becomes a part of her 

 very nature," and hence is transmitted to her 

 progeny. It Avill then at once be seen that if a 

 pure Italian queen cohabits with a black drone, 



