872.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



263 



[For Wagner's American Bee Journal.] 



Color, in Itilian Queens. 



I had charge foi- awhile of the only surviving 

 Italian queen of those brought over by Mr. 

 Samuel P. Parsons, of Flushing, Long Island. 

 These bees came in the original hollow logs or 

 gums, which had been carried on the backs of 

 njules over the mountain passes of the Alps. 

 They were purchased in a district where the 

 Italian variety was believed to be in the highest 

 purity. I transferred the only queen that had 

 not perished from the old log to a movable frame 

 hive, a large colony of black bees having been 

 added to the mere handful of Italians. I saw 

 the first queen that hatched from her progeny, 

 she was very beautiful, but I'rom an adjoining 

 cell emerged a very dark sister. This has been 

 my experience with most of the imi^orted queens. 

 The Italians report the same, and as far as I 

 know they are confirmed by the most reliable 

 breeders in Germany, and other parts of Europe. 

 I never had a queen which would ^'duplicate 

 herself in her queen progeny evei'y time," 

 although I have had some which came very 

 near to doing it, but fiom such queens if kept for 

 a considerable time, and largely used for queen 

 breeding, I never failed to see, sooner or later, 

 the inevitable dark lady. 



Some of the drones from this Parsons' queen 

 were beautifully colored, real golden drones, 

 while others were quite dark. At first we con- 

 demned this queen as not pure, although it 

 i^eemed impossible that she should be otherwise. 

 Experience with other imported queens taught 

 us that the sporting in color of her queen and 

 drone progeny was not exceijtional, but the 

 general law, and there has been no better stock 

 imported then the Parsons. 



From the darkest queen bred from pure Par- 

 sons stock, when purely fertilized, I have raised 

 as brilliant queen drones and workers as from 

 the most highly colored queens. Such queens 

 are undesirable, because tliey are not so easily 

 seen on the combs, and are in my experience, 

 more likely to mate with black drones, the atten- 

 tion of such drones being probably more at- 

 tracted to queens which so closely resemble their 

 own variety in color, than to those of a more 

 golden hue. 



In one of my importations, I had a small 

 queen so poorly colored that few could see in 

 her any traces of Italian blood. After laying a 

 few worker eggs, she became a drone layer and 

 quickly disappeared. I raised only one queen 

 from her ; she was large and handsome, and for 

 many generations my son and myself preferred 

 her stock to any in tiie apiary. 



Long before ihe Egyptian bees were imported 

 into Europe, I noticed that many of the workers 

 of a certain colony had a peculiar yellow luft on 

 their corselets, the same that I afterwards recog- 

 nized in the Egyptian bees first imported into 

 this country by Langstroth & Son. Vogel, who 

 first introduced them into Europe, affirms that 

 he has produced the veritable Italian bee from 

 crosses between the black and Egyptian varie- 



ties. What would be more natural, we might 

 say more certain, than that the Greeks who had 

 such extensive intercourse with Egypt, at a time 

 when honey was almost the only sweet that 

 could be largely and cheaply obtained, should 

 bring this bee across the short stretch of the 

 Mediterranean, and thus produce a mixture 

 between it and their own native black bee? 



The laws that regulate the reproduction of 

 crosses from difterent varieties, are often seem- 

 ingly inexplicable. Long after a variety has 

 seemed to assume a permanently fixed type, it 

 will occasionally " breed back" to some older 

 type. Many years ago, a certain breed of swine 

 (called the Byberry, I think) was introduced 

 into this country ; not answering the expecta- 

 tions of breeders, in time it ceased to exist as 

 a distinct variety. An intelligent breeder in- 

 formed me that many years after, a sow would 

 occasionally produce a litter with one original, 

 veritable, Simon Pure Byberry ! 



Years ago, I call attention in the Country 

 Gentleman to the fact that color in Italian queens 

 was a very "uncertain quantity;" that I had 

 often taken two just hatched queens of equal 

 beauty (they may be taken from the same 

 mother), had put one in a full colony or strong 

 nucleus, and removed tlie other to a cotton or 

 woollen tube placed in a warm room without any 

 attendant bees, oftering it at intervals, honey 

 on the head of a pin. While the first queen 

 retains her beauty, the other will often, in a few 

 days, become quite dark ! For other facts, prov- 

 ing that beauty of color in Italian queens is 

 often only "skin deep," I must refer the reader 

 to the original article. 



]t would seem that the Italian bee has not 

 assumed the same fixed type in all the Italian 

 districts where it is considered to be pure. This 

 is precisely what we might expect, if it is not 

 a distinct variety, but a mere cross between the 

 black and Egyptian races. On some queens we 

 cannot find the spots or dots so distinctly seen 

 on the sides of the abdomens of others. The 

 workers from some districts, have light orange 

 rings, while those from others have rings of a 

 dark chestnut or chocolate color. 



Those breeders who have made high color of 

 queens the chief desideratum, and have bred " in 

 and in" very closely to secure it, have generally 

 wound up with a weak and degenerate race, 

 beautiful to look at, but very unprofitable for 

 work. My experience is the same with that of 

 Mr. Grinun, on this point. Some years ago, I 

 found that many of the queens obtained from a 

 celebrated European breeder, were very short 

 lived, could seldom keei) up the strength of their 

 colonies, and were as a rule, prematurely super- 

 seded by the bees. Some of their queens when 

 fertilized, would drop their eggs anywhere ; 

 others would pile them up into a few cells, until 

 these celis looked, on a small scale, like measures 

 nearljr filled with grain ! Such queens seem to 

 be semi-idiotic, re.'^embling much some degener- 

 ate specimens of the royal Bourbon families in 

 Euro])e. I need hardly say that I quickly got 

 rid of that blood. 



L. L. Langstroth. 



