232 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



[April, 



find no difterence, :ind therefore prefer the more 

 practicable ones for that ])urpo.se, and use the 

 doalile story Langstroth hive, with no honey- 

 board. Still I would not condemn any movable 

 comb hive, when they have no extra moth traps, 

 and the frames are of course movable. 



P. Lattner. 

 LaUner\^, Dahuqiie Co., January 19, 1872. 



[For tlie Ameiicsin Bee Journak] 



On Pure Italian Bees- 



Mr. Editor : — On page 149 of the January 

 issue for 1873, Mr. R. M. Ar^^o, asks the follow- 

 ing question : Can a pure Italian queen whose 

 jjrogeny for the first few weeks all show three 

 yellow bandsdistinct afterwards produce workers 

 half black bees. In reply, I would say no, pro- 

 vided the queen be pure, and is fertilized by a 

 pure Italian drone. I have had several such 

 cases as he mentioned in the article referred to, 

 and I have also had queens whose workers 

 during the first three months showed them to be 

 but little if any better in color than such as are 

 commonly termed hybrids ; after which they 

 assumed a color almost if not quite equal to the 

 finest specimens of Italians. 



I do not in such cases claim that tlie queen 

 and drone are both pure Italians, as such a state 

 of affairs will never be witnessed except one of 

 the parents be bastardized. 



If a jHire Italian queen be fertilized by a pure 

 black drone, the worker and queen progeny will 

 both atford unmistakable evidence of impurity 

 from the beginning. 



And this state of affairs will continue to exist 

 as long as the queen lives and remains fertile, 

 ■with little if any perceptible difference in color 

 during the time. Such at any rate is what my 

 experience has led me to conclude upon. But 

 if we have bees that are ever so slightly dashed 

 with blood differing from themselves in variety, 

 we may look for and confidently expect just 

 such occurrences as Mr. Argo has described. 



And from what I can learn I am well con- 

 vinced that he is not the only person who meets 

 with such cases, as they are of frequent occur- 

 rence but are seldom reported. To report these 

 occurrences it is too much the custom to think 

 it would injure the sale of Italian bees and 

 queens ; when the facts in the case are that 

 eventually all will be forced to occupy the posi- 

 tion either that we do not succeed in having 

 perfectly pure bees imported to this country or 

 that they are not an original and distinct variety 

 of bee-. The latter position I am disposefl to 

 favor, as I have made it a part of my business 

 to search after pure bees, and have found Mr. 

 L. L. Langstroth, Mr. J. T. Langstroth, Mr. A. 

 Gray, and Mr. A. Benedict, in company with 

 myself, to occupy the same position, and time 

 will bring all to the same stamlpoint, except it 

 be, that we do not, as already stated, have pure 

 bees shipped from Italy. But if it turn out (as 

 1 believe it will) that the Italians are not dis- 

 tinct in variety, then the sooner we s]>eak out 

 plainly upon tliis subject the better. For I am 



confident that wo can by careful breeding im- 

 prove our Italian bees until any dash of foreign 

 blood that may exist among them will only occa- 

 sionally make itself manifest. Our Chester 

 white hogs are not an origimil variety. Neither 

 are our Durham cattle original, yet careful 

 breeding has brought them to such a degree of 

 perfection that time will declai-e them distinct 

 as thoy already very nearly duplicate themselves 

 in every instance. Our Italian bees do not as 

 yet maintain this degree of purity except in 

 perhaps a very few cases where parties h ive se- 

 lected their finest specimens to breed from and 

 have l^en exceedingly careful as to what kind 

 of stock they introduce into their apiaries. I 

 will state further in regard to our Italian queens, 

 that I do not regard them as being fully tested, 

 until I have .seen a number of their queen off- 

 spring ; when if they are fair duplicates of their 

 mothers I regard them as being good queens to 

 breed from. All queens who will thus duplicate 

 themselves will show unifoimly tiiree banded 

 workers. But a queen whose workers may all 

 appear to be in possession of three bands may 

 lack a few in perhaps twenty thousand workers, 

 and an ordinary inspection will not detect their 

 presence among several thousand three banded 

 bees, hence the difficulty in depending upon 

 this method of testing Italian queens. And the 

 farther the mother queen is from distinctness in 

 variety the more frequently will the error in de- 

 pending upon three banled test manifest itself. 



A dash of impurity does not always manifest 

 its presence, but remains sometimes in a latent 

 state through several generations, and then 

 shows itself to both the surpri.se and disappoint- 

 ment of the breeder. This fact seems to have 

 been lost sight of by many of our queen raisers. 

 If not, they have been too credulous and have 

 too long regarded the Italians as an original 

 distinct and con.sequently pure variety of bees. 

 Or it is possible that they overlooked both of 

 these facts ; I say facts, because I feel thoroughly 

 convinced that we have no perfectly distinct 

 and pure Italians in this country. Then I would 

 say, let us send competent persons to Italy in 

 search of pure bees if they are to be found. 

 And if procui-ed let us breed them in apiaries 

 entirely isolated and beyond the reach of black 

 bees. And if pure bees, cannot be found let us 

 improve such as we have until tliey become so 

 nearly distinct as to be depended upon. Then 

 and not till then will we see the Dzierzon theory 

 thoroughlj'' tested in practice, and also the fact 

 fully proving the fertilization of the Italian 

 queen by a black drone will not render her 

 drane progeny impure. 



G. BOHRER. 



Alexandria, Lid., January 25, 1872. 



[For the American Brie Journal.] 



Italian Bees at the Cleveland Convention , 



While for years various parties in the United 

 States have been raising and selling Italian 

 Queens on their supposed superiority over the 

 common variety, nothing very definite as to 



