232 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



[April, 



the Alps, it would have also taken place on the 

 other side. I ascertained de visfi, and also by in- 

 quiry, that there were no Italian bees on the north 

 side of the Alps in the districts of Vaud and Valais. 

 It is, therefore, natural to suppose that if the mild- 

 ness of the climate of the plains of Italy has modified 

 the color and temper of the bees, the labor that the 

 mountains imposed upon them in the vicinity of the 

 Alps, together with a more changeable and inhos- 

 pitable climate, must have diminished, if they have 

 not altogether prevented this transformation, al- 

 though the latter must have been considerably 

 helped by the proximity of the apiaries of the 

 plains. 



Some apiarians will ask whether it is not to be 

 feared that the Italian bees will turn back to the 

 old race again, when they are removed from the 

 country of their birth ; for if the circumstances of 

 the Italian climate have modified these bees, the 

 absence of such circumstances must have the con- 

 trary effect. It is to be supposed that at some 

 remote time, this return to the old race may possibly 

 take place. But as the change for the better has 

 taken a long succession of centuries to be effected, 

 the reversion, likewise, will not take place for a long 

 time to come, and neither ourselves nor our chil- 

 dren, nor even our great-grandchildren, will witness 

 the deterioration of this beautiful race. 



Another point on which I wished to become en- 

 lightened was this : Do Italian queens produce 

 daughters exactly similar to their own selves? I 

 saw over five hundred queens, and even in Lom- 

 bardy, where the bees are the nicest, I did not find 

 all the queens alike in color. 



Those who give this quality as a sign of purity, 

 are therefore completely in error. 



I saw queens of all shades, from yellow to black, 

 and the officers of the Central Society of Bee-Cul- 

 ture of Milan, confirmed to me what I already 

 believed, viz. : that the dark queens are the best. 

 During the trip that I have related above, I saw a 

 queen whose abdomen was entirely black. Sartori 

 was going to kill her, but I noticed that the bees 

 were good looking, and that the hive was full of 

 brood. I kept her, and as I could not deliver her 

 to any of our American breeders, I marked the box. 

 She was alive at the arrival, and I introduced her 

 in a hive. I am convinced that she will prove as 

 good as any of the queens that I preserved. 



I have a few words more to say about the impor- 

 tation of Italian bees, and the risks of this com- 

 merce. Mr. II. A. Burch asks, whether some 

 Yankee could not devise some means of succeeding 

 in this business. The importation of queens, like 

 the wintering of bees, is not a matter of imagina- 

 tion, but of experience. 



The shippers know how they pack the bees, but 

 as they do not see them on their arrival, they do 

 not know the causes of failure. On the other hand, 

 the person who receives the bees can hardly under- 

 stand the true causes of mortality during the 

 journey. 



Having packed with my own hands three hun- 

 dred and forty-eight queens, and having ascertained 

 their condition on their arrival, I could readily per- 

 ceive the true causes of mortality. I will not give 

 them here, but I will say, that for this, as for win- 

 tering, apparently trivial causes will bring a disas- 



ter, and that I now understand why I received an 

 invoice of queens alive after thirty-one days, when, 

 from the same breeder, other invoices were all 

 dead after twenty-three days only. 



As it is important for apiarians to procure queens 

 of uncontested purity, to breed from, not only for 

 queen-breeders, but for bee-keepers, who, like my- 

 self, raise bees mostly for the yield of honey, I 

 intend to renew the trip that I made last year. I 

 will start in June, so as to come back earlier. That 

 time is the best to procure young queens from 

 second swarms. 



Many bee-keepers complain of having had im- 

 ported queens that did not live more than one or 

 two years. This is certainly caused by the age of 

 the queen. Importers should always order young 

 queens, even if they have to pay a higher price for 

 them. And if the .shippers are honest, they may 

 be certain of getting long-lived queens. 



Let me, therefore, say to those who are willing to 

 go to some expense to procure the best Italian bees, 

 help me by sending early orders, either to Mrs. 

 Tupper or myself, and I will try to prove that I 

 have at last found the true conditions of success in 

 the importation of Italian bees. Ch. Dadant. 



Hamilton, III. 



Keports, Experiences, and Opinions. 



James Bolin, of West Lodi, 0., writes: 



The yield of honey in the season of 1872 was 

 generally very light in this section. This was not 

 owing so much to the want of honey in the flowers, 

 as it was to the want of bees at the right time, 

 when honey was to be had. 



The weather was too cool for bees to be out of 

 their hives the most of the time during the blos- 

 soming of fruit trees ; so they missed, or nearly so, 

 their first harvest, and as a consequence did not 

 begin to breed freely until white clover was in 

 bloom, and by the time they had become strong 

 enough to do anything the honey harvest was about 

 over, so that a great many stocks did not collect 

 more honey than it will take to winter them, and 

 some not even that much. The result of last 

 season, with us, shows that the adage that "every 

 man must be the architect of his own fortune," 

 applies to bee-keeping with as much force as to any 

 other pursuit ; for where bees were stimulated by 

 feeding in the spring, so as to have them strong 

 when the honey harvest came, the yield of honey, 

 although not equal to that of former years, was 

 reasonably good. My best stock gave me one hun- 

 dred and sixty-eight pounds of honey and one 

 swarm ; and I have a number of stocks from each 

 of which I obtained over one hundred pounds of 

 box honey. I extracted all the honey from one 

 swarm on Monday, and again on Friday at the 

 same hour, and the yield was forty-eight pounds the 

 last time. 



I am using the Langstroth hive ; the caps, as I 

 make them, holding twelve four pound boxes. I 

 found last summer that when I had twelve such 

 boxes on some strong stocks and they were full of 

 bees, that there would still be a large cluster hang- 

 ing outside. I did not want to divide them at that 

 time, as I wished to get all the box honey I could ; 

 I therefore resolved to try an experiment, and see 



