1873.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



223 



I am glad to say that I am not the only one in this 

 vicinity keeping bees on the improved system, but 

 have a brother bee-keeper within a few miles, who 

 also makes it a business, and he, too, uses the 

 Langstroth hive. We are doing all we can to intro- 

 duce it, and consider that in so doing we are doing 

 a real good to the community ; for when a man is 

 the means of saving thousands of pounds of honey 

 from going to waste, is he not a blessing to the 

 place? And from the manner in which my bees 

 brought in honey last year, and comparing it with 

 what my neighbors obtained with box hives, and 

 their reports of past seasons, I am convinced that 

 thousands of pounds of honey have gone to waste 

 every year. I am also convinced that the Italians 

 are far superior to the black bees. I am satisfied of 

 this from last year's experience, for I made it a rule 

 to weigh the honey produced by each colony sepa- 

 rately, and I found that during the first two weeks 

 of honey gathering eleven stocks of Italians pro- 

 duced three hundred and fourteen (314) pounds, 

 and seventeen stocks of black bees only produced 

 fifteen (15) pounds. Now there is a great disparity 

 between those two figures. In one of my colonies, 

 I have a little Egyptian blood, and, Mr. Editor, I 

 will endorse what has been said about their stinging 

 propensities, but yet do not wish to lose them, for 

 they are business on honey gathering, as well as in 

 stinging. 



I don't know how I should feel in regard to a 

 whole apiary of them; but I tell you what it 

 is, Mr. Editor, a few of them in an apiary are as 

 good as a watch-dog or two. I have not been 

 troubled much by having honey taken or borrowed, 

 for I don't tell everybody which are the Egyptians, 

 only that I have some, and that they are apt to 

 sting if any one comes in close proximity to their 

 habitation . Not that I have much reason to suspect 

 that such a thing might occur if I had not those 

 little pets, but coming into a strange place, it is 

 well to be careful and on guard. 



I use an extractor, not a patented one, but one 

 that I believe has no superior as yet ; a stationary 

 can, such as Novice talks about, twenty-five inches 

 in diameter, containing a galvanized wire-cloth 

 frame, capable of holding six, four, three, or two 

 frames of comb, and yet maintain its balance. One 

 great advantage is, that the top is all open, the 

 gearing working from the bottom. I have no doubt 

 that many of the bee fraternity have had their pa- 

 tience tried with having new comb, heavy with 

 honey, break down in the extractor. The bar com- 

 monly used across the top for the gearing to rest 

 upon, is just where one does not want it. Another 

 improvement that I have is a large strainer, the 

 size of the can, fitting in the bottom, so that when 

 I open the faucet to draw off the honey, it comes 

 out perfectly clear. The tin will hold 50 pounds, 

 or over, below the strainer. I have spoken of this 

 because I think that whenever any bee-keeper has 

 something suggested to him by his own experience, 

 it is his duty to let the fraternity know it. I am 

 not an old, experienced bee-keeper, having had but 

 four years experience, but one finds out more by 

 working in the apiary one season, than by two 

 years of studying theories. 



I like tan bark around my hives in preference to 

 sawdust, for it will not take fire if a spark should 



accidentally fall on it, and I presume that rotten 

 wood is more generally used than anything else. 



I was very much surprised to read in the January 

 number of the Journal that Mrs. Tupper made the 

 statement that "the extractor should never be used 

 on comb that had brood in it, in any stage, as from 

 careful experiment she had ascertained that in 

 every instance the brood, even after it was capped 

 over, was destroyed." Now, last summer I had 

 not a frame of brood in my apiary but passed 

 through the ordeal of melextracting every week 

 during the extracting season, and I noticed that 

 some of the brood was thrown to the mouth of the 

 cells, from turning too rapidly, and could not escape 

 on account of the wirecloth obstructing the entrance, 

 and in no case was the brood thus displaced des- 

 troyed, which convinced me that the bees removed 

 them back. Avis. 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Dark-Colored Queens. 



In ' the A. B. J. for January, page 177, Mr. 

 MacGaw complains of the color of the queen he 

 has received from my last importation. While in 

 Italy, I accepted all the tolerably good looking 

 queens, if they were very prolific. The boxes con- 

 taining the brightest were carefully marked, for I 

 know the prejudices of the majority of queen- 

 breeders against the dark-colored queens. 



I intended to preserve, for Mrs. E. S. Tupper and 

 for myself, all the dark queens, for we both know 

 very well that the light-colored queens are less 

 prolific and less vigorous than the dark. In so 

 doing, we were sure to satisfy everybody — those 

 who preferred the color rather than the quality, 

 and those who, like ourselves, preferred the quality 

 rather than the color. 



But on my arrival at New York, three-fourths of 

 our queens were dead, and those remaining alive, 

 needed immediate care to rescue them. In the 

 hurry, the queens having been changed of boxes, 

 it was impossible to select the lightest for our 

 patrons. I selected but one for myself, because 

 she was nearly, if not quite, black. 



I will return to Italy this summer, and if Mr. 

 MacGaw will send us another order, I will choose 

 for him one of the lightest-colored queens I will be 

 able to find, unless the dark-colored queen that he 

 has received prove to be so good that he changes his 

 mind as to the desirable color for the queens. 



As I have already said in my articles entitled 

 "Travel in Italy," and which are being published 

 in the bee journals, there is not a queen in Italy 

 which will duplicate herself every time. Consequently 

 the color of the queen is a bad test of purity. Fur- 

 thermore, it is a means which would tend to the 

 degeneracy of the race ; for the light queens have 

 less vigor and less fecundity than the dark. 



Some two or three years ago, one of the best 

 queen-breeders of this country exchanged queens 

 with me. I sent him two queens, which he has, no 

 doubt, found too dark; for he is, or was at that 

 epoch, quite an amateur of light-colored queens. He 

 sent me two very yellow queens. One was sick on 

 her arrival, and died two days after having been in- 

 troduced ; the other was so little prolific, that I super- 

 seded her the next season. I am in the habit of 



