1873.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



243 



and by cultivation and selection it has been brought 

 up to its present state. It comes back to America 

 so much of a foreigner that we call it Irish. 



The honey bee, we have seen, is in a state of 

 variation, whether we take the Italian or the black 

 bee, but unlike the turkey or the potato, man has 

 had but little to do in shaping the change. Until 

 within a few years, man had very limited means at 

 command to do it. In the first place, bee-keeping 

 was locked up in superstition, and in the next place, 

 the workings of the bees were locked up in logs and 

 boxes. The whole thing was a sealed mystery. 

 The discoveries that culminated in the Dzierzon 

 theory unlocked the one, and the movable comb 

 hive gave us the key to the other difficulty. 



Until within the last dozen years, a bee was a bee, 

 and no one thought of one bee being better than or 

 different from another. Just then the Italian bee 

 stepped in, and revealed the fact that the law of 

 variations applied to insects as well as to higher 

 animals, and to vegetables ; not only that the Italian 

 bees, as a class, differed from our native bees, but 

 that the Italians differed among themselves, and our 

 common bees were not all alike. 



Now this condition of things, instead of being a 

 difficulty, is just what we want in order to get 

 superior varieties, and if taken hold of properly, 

 will result in a very few years in doubling the utility 

 of this already most useful insect. 



It is not reasonable to suppose that the bee will 

 prove an exception in nature, and we may therefore 

 conclude that it is subj ect to the same laws that have 

 enabled man to fashion almost at will the whole list 

 of domesticated animals that serve him. 



It is probable that most of the improvements that 

 have been made in our domestic animals have been 

 accidental, and were carried out without 

 pursuing any system, or understanding how it was 

 done, merely by selecting the best to breed from, 

 and thus encouraging desirable deviations. But a 

 proper understanding of all the conditions necessary 

 will help us to more speedy success. 



Now, the only use we have for bees is to produce 

 honey, and therefore we should cultivate such in- 

 stincts as will contribute to that end. What are 

 they? 



A small colony of bees cannot gather as much 

 honey as a larger one, therefore fecundity in the 

 queen should be increased, and the swarming 

 instinct suppressed. It is estimated that the ovaries 

 of a queen contain the germs of about 500,000 eggs, 

 and when they are laid she dies. If the laying in- 

 stinct can be cultivated so that all of these can be 

 deposited in one season, instead of extending the 

 period over three to five years, as is generally the 

 case, it is evident that a great advance will be made. 

 But if the swarming impulse is retained, and the 

 colony is continually being disorganized by swarm- 

 ing, the gain will be of doubtful value. All bee- 

 keepers of experience know that there is a great 

 difference in the productiveness of different queens. 

 In every apiary the owner can point out certain 

 colonies that are continually more populous than 

 others. Such should be selected to breed from, and 

 all unprolific queens should be destroyed, and their 

 places filled with others produced from eggs of 

 the most prolific, although the infertile queen 

 should be Italian, and even imported. The tendency 



to productivess may be encouraged by the treatment 

 that is given the young queens. Their early habits 

 have much to do with their usefulness. When your 

 young queens begin to lay, keep them at it, and 

 never let them stop a day if you can prevent it. If 

 the natural supply of honey gives out, feed — feed all 

 the time and never let the queen be at a loss for 

 empty cells in which to deposit her eggs.* Throw 

 away your hives of 2,000 cubic inches capacity, and 

 put your bees in hives of double that size ; for you 

 cannot put a gallon into a quart measure, and so 

 long as you keep your bees so pent up, the queen 

 will be prevented from developing her full capacity. 

 The Chinese make dwarf trees by planting them in 

 pots, and so confining the roots that they cannot ex- 

 pand, and thus after several generations, produce 

 apple and peach trees, and even the oak, that bear 

 fruit when only a foot high. The greatest injury, no 

 doubt, that the productiveness of bees has sustained, 

 has been occasioned by the Procrustean hive of 2,000 

 cubic inches. Mr. Gallup, in the A. B. J. for 

 August last, says, "When I read in a small pam- 

 phlet of Mr. Adair's that a queen would occupy a 

 hive of 4,000 cubic inches, with brood, * * * 

 I thought Mr. Adair's climate was different from ours, 

 or he was mistaken. Somebody was mistaken, and 

 instead of crying out liar, etc., we went to work 

 to find out where the mistake was ; and we soon 

 found that, Gallup was mistaken." 



If you want to improve your bees, don't put them 

 into "$1 hives," for that will not pay for material 

 enough to build a hive to accommodate a prolific 

 queen. It is false economy to buy anything that 

 does not suit you, because it is cheap ; besides, if 

 you want to control the swarming instinct, your bees 

 will never vary their instinct in that particular, so 

 long as they are in such hives. They have already 

 been too long subjected to the Chinese method of 

 dwarfing. 



Another rule should be observed. Raise your 

 queens at that season of the year when your colonies 

 are the most industrious and populous, and from 

 the youngest queens you have, that are prolific, 

 that they may inherit the vigor of youth, and not 

 the exhaustion of old age. 



Next to fecundity, perhaps, the most desirable 

 thing is quietness. If the bee could be deprived of 

 the stinging instinct, a new impetus would be imme- 

 diately given to bee-keeping, for a large majority of 

 persons are deterred from engaging in the business 

 through fear of being stung, while many who hare 

 bees fail to give them the proper attention from the 

 same cause. Fortunately we find that this instinct 

 varies in different colonies of bees. The gentleness 

 of the Italian bee was urged as its principal rec- 

 ommendation by the first introducers, and many 

 queens that have been imported produced a gentle 

 progeny, but only under favorable conditions, while 

 others, with equal claims to purity, were vicious and 

 unmanageable. The gentleness of the Italian bee is 

 not docility, it is more of a stubborn cowardice. 

 When disturbed, they immediately retire to the 

 recesses of the hi ve, and instead of sallying out to drive 

 the intruder off, they stick themselves tenaciously 



* On this principle short-horn cattle have been caused to ac- 

 quire the habit of rapid growth, so that in two years they will 

 attain the weight of four or five years-old steers as formerly 

 raised, and after a few generations the habit became so estab- 

 lished that their character in that respect became permanent. 



