44 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



cross-bred queens or bees as the 

 case may be. 



As lo the purity of the drones 

 of mismated queens our apiculturul 

 scientists have investigated much 

 and given us a theory ; but there is 

 something wrong somewhere, as 

 tlie theory in practice don't pan 

 out. Time and again have tiials 

 been based upon that part of tlie 

 Dzierzon tlieory rehiting to fecun- 

 dated queens, as follows: — Alias 

 an apiary of all black bee.s, with no 

 other bees near, and wishes to 

 Italianize it. He gets a pure Ital- 

 ian queen and raises a queen for 

 each of his black stocks, and each 

 queen is mated to a black drone. 

 The following season he has only 

 "pure" Italian drones. 80 he 

 again rears queens from his pure 

 stock and supersedes all of his hy- 

 brid queens ; theoretically, he 

 should now have all pure Italians, 

 but the outcome is that he has only 

 a lot of hybrids, for among the 

 hatching brood of his "Italiauized" 

 colonies there are man}' black bees ! 



A remarkable fact in connection 

 with the ]3zierzon theory is that 

 few of our prominent beekeepers 

 will advise anyone to Italianize in 

 the above manner, yet the theory 

 has been held without serious ques- 

 tion for a long time. 



ANSWER BY H. ALLEY. 



I do not believe a pure Italian 

 queen mated to a black drone will 

 produce pure Italian drones. Cer- 

 tainly, I would not think of using 

 the drones from such a queen in 

 my queen-rearing apiaries. 1 have 

 always used the drones from the 

 queens that gave the best worker 

 bees, and never the drones Irom a 

 queen whose worker progeny were 

 not handsomely and purely marked. 

 Anyone so disposed can decide 

 this matter in one season. Mate 

 a pure Italian queen in June to 

 a black drone. In August rear 

 some pure queens and mate to the 



drones of the queen mated to a 

 black drone. I am thinking that 

 in less than one year the third gen- 

 eration of queens thus mated would 

 produce about half black bees. 

 Some of these who have answered 

 this query have spoken about un- 

 fertile queens laying drone eggs. 

 That proves nothing. Such queens 

 do not seek out the drone cells 

 in a hive in which to deposit her 

 eggs, but like the fertile worker, her 

 eggs are generall_y found in the 

 worker cells, and the drones from 

 such queens are dwarfs the same 

 as those of the fertile workei'. No 

 one seems able to prove by actual 

 experiment any statement in reply 

 to this query. 



Why cannot Professor McLain 

 use his apparatus for fertilizing 

 queens in confinement in trying to 

 have queens fertilized b}' drones 

 from a virgin queen, or by drones 

 reared from a fertile worker? The 

 results of such experiments would 

 be much more important and in- 

 teresting than his experiments in 

 trying to fertilize queens in con- 

 finement by the drones of a fer- 

 tile queen. 



We hope Professor McLain will 

 act upon this suggestion and try his 

 hand at an early day, or during 

 the season of 1888. 



American Bee Journal. 



THAT CONVENTION. 



Below will be found a lew of the good 

 points made and tlie k<)<><' things said at the 

 last meeting ot llie North Anievicau Bee- 

 keepers' Sooii'ly. 



Franklin Wilcox — How much 

 more extracted than comb honey 

 can you secure ? 



J. A. Green — If first-class honey 

 is produced, about twice as much ; 

 such extracted honey as is usually 

 produced, I would say three times 

 as much. 



President Miller — Mr. Green, do 

 you secure a poorer class of honey 

 by using drawn combs in the sec- 

 tions ? 



