THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



[July, 



Profuse Blossoming of the Locusts. 



On the last day of April, 1871, a very severe 

 frost so injured the common locust ( Robinia 

 Pseudacacin) , that it blossomed very sparsely in 

 southern Ohio. This year it has blossomed very 

 profusely, and with suitable weather would have 

 afforded a large yield of honey. Cool, wet and 

 windy weather has, however, made it of very 

 small service to the bees. In 1801 some of my 

 strongest stocks gathered 50 pounds from this 

 source. L. L. L. 



Color of Italian Queens. 



As few of our readers have access to our arti- 

 cle on this subject, published originally in the 

 Rural New-Yorker, we reprint it with some ad- 

 ditional remarks. 



THE BEEKEEPER. 

 On the Color of Italian Queen Bees. 



Eds. Rural New-Yorker :— It is a fact well 

 known to breeders of Italian bees, that the color 

 of the queens raised from a pure mother is far 

 more variable than that of the workers. Some 

 of the queen progeny of females brought from 

 the districts in Italy where none but the pure 

 race are found, have abdomens of a brilliant yel- 

 low, the tip alone being of a black or brownish 

 color ; others have only one or two yello iv rings, 

 while others again are even darker than com- 

 mon queens. 



Various theories have been advanced to ac- 

 count for these facts. Dzierzon and other Ger- 

 mans are of the opinion that none of the Italian 

 bees are absolutely pure, but that all have a 

 taint or dash of black blood, which can only be 

 got rid of by a long course of careful breeding. 

 After ten years of assiduous labor, he does not 

 claim to have entirely overcome this taint, but 

 thinks he has purer bees than can be found in 

 Italy, and that in ten years more he will be able 

 to breed out all traces of the black blood. 



Some attribute the tendency to sport in color 

 to a mysterious influence exerted upon the queen 

 larva} by the hybrid or black nurses by which 

 they are often reared. Mr. Kirby believes that 

 their larvae are fed with the semen of black or 

 hybrid drones, and in this way obtain a taint of 

 the black blood ! — a theory which must be re- 

 jected, not merely because it appears contrary 

 to all analogy, but because it is directly contrary 

 to facts. The same tendency to sport has been 

 noticed in districts where no common bees are 

 found ; and the queen larvaj of black bees, when 

 entrusted to Italian workers, are not found to 

 have any traces of the Italian blood. Moreover, 

 those breeders who persist in rearing their 

 queens in colonies of black or hybrid bees, are 

 now, after an experience of four seasons, able to 

 secure as large a proportion of beautiful queens, 

 as when they first began to practice — a result 

 which could not be obtained, if, according to 

 Mr. Kirby's theory, they had been getting fur- 

 ther and further from the pure blood. 



I shall communicate to your readers some facts 

 which seem to me to throw considerable light 

 upon this perplexing subject, if they do not 

 fully account Cor all its difficulties. 



In May, 1862, I reared a number of very beau- 

 tiful queens from a brilliantly colored Italian 

 mother, and for some time all her progeny were 

 of this type. After a while some of her queens 

 were small and poorly colored. I now began to 

 suspect that the condition of the colonies 'in whih 

 the queens are reared might have a decided effect 

 upon their color, as well as their size, and was the 

 more confirmed in this view when I subsequently 

 obtained from the larva? of the same mother; 

 reared in the same colonies, few but handsome 

 queens. The first lot were raised when the nu- 

 clei, or small colonies to which the Italian brood 

 was given, were vigorously getting both honey and 

 pollen ; the inferior ones were reared when forage 

 was so scarce that the nuclei had to be fed. Later 

 in the season when forage was abundant, the 

 young queens were nearly all of the beautiful 

 type ; while later still, when the colonies had to 

 be fed again, the color and often the size of the 

 queens again became indifferent. 



A year ago, last spring, I suggested to Prof. 

 J. P. Kirlland, of Cleveland, that T believed tha 

 color of the Italian queens depended very much 

 on the condition of the colonies in which they 

 were reared ; and that small and discouraged 

 nuclei, out of heart, produced a largely dispro- 

 portionate number of poor queens. The year 

 before he bred his queens in very small nuclei, 

 and was perplexed to find so many of them of 

 an inferior quality. Using, by my advice, a box 

 holding nearly three times as many combs and 

 bees as the one he had been using previously, 

 and breeding his queens when forage was abun- 

 dant, he obtained last summer the most grati- 

 fying results. In a latter adressed to me, he 

 says that nearly all the queens he raised were of 

 a good color, while two other persons, who reared 

 queens in small nuclei, from the same mother, 

 had many poorly colored queens. 



My experience this season, is thus far the same 

 with that of last year — leading me to believe 

 that I have discovered an important law upon 

 this subject, and that queens require, for their 

 perfect development in size and color, to be fed 

 with all the royal jelly they can possibly con- 

 sume. In queen cells, reared in large colonies 

 during the swarming season, a large accumula- 

 tion of the jelly is often found after the queen 

 is hatched ; while in those reared in small or 

 discouraged colonies, there is seldom found any 

 excess of it. This season 1 have examined, in 

 swarming colonies, a number of uncommonly 

 large queen cells, and in some of them have 

 found nearly half an inch of jelly at the base of 

 the cell. Soon after the queens creep out from 

 such cells, this jelly may often be found of the 

 color and consistence of a rich quince jelly. It 

 is very seldom that any jelly is found in the 

 cells of queens reared in small colonies, after 

 these queens have emerged. 



As small colonies frequently attempt to rear 

 a number of queens entirely disproportional to 

 the number reared in large colonies, it must 

 often happen that some of those queens are 



