THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



177 



bees returiiiiiir from tlie tteUls. Riijlit liere 

 let us Siiy, it' our iiieinory serves us right- 

 ly, friend Doolittio or soiiie otlicr good 

 brother has meiilioneil tiirowiiig the l)ees 

 up witli tlour on tiiem to tell from what 

 hive tiiey came. We have sometimes taken 

 the queeu from the swarm ami allowed 

 them to return themselves, as tjjey will 

 usually do after Hndiug themselves queen- 

 less, but tliere is a risk to run in this mat- 

 ter, and that is tliis : if it is a second 

 swarm tiiat issues, there is very frequent- 

 ly a mimber of queens; and, though we 

 shouUl lind several, it does not prove that 

 we have found all, and should one queen 

 remain with the colony ihe bees would be 

 liable after clustering a short time to leave 

 for the woods and the colony would be lost. 

 So it does not do to take any chances in 

 this matter. Where there are one or two 

 hundred colonies iu a yard, even thongli 

 the Inves have got second stories on them 

 or plent}' of room, it will pa}' to keep a 

 large number while the honey flow con- 

 tinues, as there are sure to be more or 

 less swarms issue almost every day. Very 

 frequently, from colonies least expected, 

 where queens are being superseded or the 

 old queen has been killed, and they have 

 raised young queens, the first that hatches, 

 if not allowed to destroy the others, is 

 liable to issue with the swarm. We hope 

 to have more encouraging reports in fu- 

 ture after the tine rains and favorable 

 weather which we are now having. — Ca- 

 nadian Bee Journal. 



From the Beekeepers' Magazine. 

 An easy way to find any queem. 



I have had one year's experience at bee- 

 keeping; commenceil in the spring of 1887 

 with one swarm, and had a varied experi- 

 ence, and very, very much solid pleasure 

 (no honey); transferred, increased by di- 

 vision, and had one swarm come out, and 

 now have, or had last fall, five swarms iu 

 chafl' hives, one black and four Italians; 

 but my great feat, if I can call it such, 

 was in Italianizing a swarm of black bees. 

 I followed the directions as laid down ia 

 the books at my command and all told me 

 to open the hive and examine each frame 

 carefully for tiie queen ; if not found, close 

 the hive and wait twenty minutes and 

 look again. This I did again and again, 

 every tinie with the same result, till 1 al- 

 most came to the conclusion that it was a 

 queenless swarm, and looked at my beau- 

 tiful yellow queen in her cage at a loss 

 what to do with her. I thought of the 

 following plan, and it worked well. 1 

 opened the hive again, gave the bees plenty 

 of smoke, jarred the hive and gave time 



for every bee to fill with honey, then took 

 each frame out ami brushed every bee in- 

 to the box, set the frame back anil put a 

 trap made of perforated zinc at the en- 

 trance of the hive, placed a newspaper on 

 the ground in front of the hive, and 

 brushed all the bees out of the box on the 

 paper, and let them run in tiirough the 

 trap into the hive, and as the queen could 

 not get through the openings in the zinc, 

 she was found and caught. As soon as I 

 had her safe, I put the cage containing 

 the Italian queen in the hive between the 

 frames, and closeil the hive. This was 

 done about noon, wiien most of the bees 

 were out. The next morning I looked in- 

 to the hive, found all quiet, so let the 

 queen run out. In the afternoon looked 

 again, found heron a frame, and think she 

 had been laying that day. Everything 

 went well after and I am in hopes to see 

 her sometime again this spring. X 



Eaces of Bees. 



From the Am. Bee Journal. 



By C. a. Bunch. 



Different varieties of bees and the plants 

 they prefer. 



Quite likely a great many beekeepers 

 have noticed that certain kinds of bees 

 prefer some kind of flowers, while other 

 races of bees work on difl'erent kinds of 

 bloom at the same time, and as a gen- 

 eral thing brown or German bees work 

 on weeds more than the Italians do. I 

 have all Italian queens, except one which 

 is a Syrian queeu; some of those queens 

 are pure Italian, and some were mated 

 with black drones. 



One Italian queen I have reason to be- 

 lieve was mated with a Syrian drone, on 

 account of the ditterent markings on the 

 abdomen of the workers, and the great 

 number of queen-cells that they will build ; 

 also their difl'erent disposition. This 

 queen was reared iu 1886, and last year 

 through the month of August its colony of 

 bees gathered about flfteen pounds of 

 comb honey from the common blue-thistle 

 (this is not a large amount of honey, as 

 we had a drought at that time) and was 

 capped a pale white, but the honey was 

 quite white. 



The cross between the black and Italian 

 races were hauling iu and sealing the yel- 

 low (or amber) honey, the cai)pings of 

 which were so much difl'erent when the 

 sections were mixed with the sections 

 from the Syrio-ltalian colony; they could 

 very readily be picked out, though they 



