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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



June 7, 1906 



they are the result of rigidly selecting the brightest colored 

 queens for breeding purposes from the highest grade of 

 purity found among the Italians. If this course has been 

 pursued, and Cyprian blood has been entirely excluded, I 

 can see no good reason why the 5-banded Italians should 

 not prove to be the most satisfactory bees to keep. But 

 in all cases where Cyprian blood has been permitted to creep 

 in, their "hand-writing" is quite likely to show up in the 

 way of most undesirable fighting qualities. I got 2 of these 

 golden queens, the worker progeny from both of which were 

 reasonably quiet when being handled, but I have been in- 

 formed that some of these bees are as cross and wicked as 

 bold hornets. 



Now, I hope not to be taken to task by our queen-breed- 

 ers for speaking as I do concerning the grades of purity 

 among Italian bees ; for they all, or nearly so, advertise 

 tested queens at one price and breeders at another, which 

 means, of course, that unless a queen has been tested by her 

 queen progeny and found not only to duplicate herself in point 

 of color, but to repeat it in perhaps hundreds of cases, and 

 possibly improve her queen offspring in both size and color, 

 she is not looked upon as being a thoroughbred queen, so that 

 it is most unquestionably true that more or less of mixed 

 blood exists among our Italian bees. And for fear of doing 

 a positive injury to our bees. I will urge queen-breeders not 

 to tamper with Caucasian bees until they have been fully 

 tested in isolated localities. When I say isolated, I mean, to 

 test them in apiaries so far apart that there can be no possi- 

 bility of crossing them with other bees, for I feel fully justi- 

 fied in saying that the highest grade of Italian bees the 

 bee-keeper who gives them proper care in a good honev- 

 producing locality will have good reason to be fairly well 

 satisfied with results. 



In the meantime, I would not by any means discourage 

 carefully conducted experiments, but as conducted in many 

 cases so far, I regard the results as being far from satisfac- 

 tory, the Italians, Carniolans and Cyprians being mixed to 

 the detriment of bee-keeping. 



In con-elusion, I wish to . state that I have no queens 

 for sale, and never expect to have. I am keeping bees for 

 the pleasure I find in it, and if possible for the betterment 

 of bee-keeping interests. Lyons, Kansas. 



# 



Breeding Queens— How and When to 

 Select Them 



BY HENRY ALLEY. 



THE most important thing in connection with queen- 

 rearing is the selection of the mothers for both the 

 young queens and the drones to be used. The selec- 

 tion of the breeding queens should be made the season be- 

 fore they are to be used. Even then all that should be done 

 can not be completed until the following season, as it is 

 actually necessary to test all breeding queens bv rearing 

 more or less daughters from them. Not only should the 

 mothers of both drones and queens be very prolific, but their 

 worker progeny be uniformly marked, and be great hustlers 

 for honey, etc. 



For breeding queens, select the best from among the best 

 and most promising in the yard. This is about all that can 

 be done until a thorough test has been made, even going so 

 far as to test young queens. 



I have always made it a practice to rear a few queens 

 the fall before a new breeding queen is to be. used. Color, 

 prolificness, and many other points, can be determined by 

 doing this. I am careful to test the drones to be used, in the 

 same way. I must know months before I use either queens 

 or drones what I am to get by certain combinations of blood. 



In any event select only the finest queens for breeders. 

 The principal points to look for are these : See that a queen 

 puts but one egg in a cell, and that the eggs all cant the 

 same way — point down. The eggs should be large and quite 

 plump. Now this may seem to some bee-keeprs rather fussy. 

 I am able to see a great difference in the size of eggs laid 

 by different queens. By close examination any one can see 

 that some queens lay quite small eggs, while others deposit 

 eggs nearly twice as large. When I find a queen whose 

 eggs are small, and canted in all ways but the right way, 

 her head comes off quickly, as such queens are worthless 

 for any purpose. 



Queens that produce gentle bees, and bees that have 

 quiet dispositions, have some claims as breeders. Some 

 queens do not produce bees that can stand long and hard 



winters. Such queens should not be used for any purpose. 

 I have had queens that produced bees that would winter 

 with the loss of hardly any bees. But they were not very 

 good honey-gatherers. Really, it is quite a scientific under- 

 taking to select a good breeding queen. 



In the above I have given a few of the necessary points 

 in selecting a queen-mother. I believe the more important 

 of the two is the selection of the drone mothers. My experience 

 shows me that both bees and queens inherit their good points 

 from the drone-bee. I do know that drones not handsomely 

 marked, even when they are from golden-colored mothers, 

 will not produce handsome bees when mated to handsome 

 queens. Drones that are nearby all yellow will produce 

 5-banded bees. No others have done it in my yard. Now 

 this is one thing that surely shows that from the drone-bee 

 comes the color or beauty of the worker-bee. I am well 

 satisfied that from the drone comes all the good points of 

 the worker-bees. By transmission from the male or female 

 we get all the desirable points in breeding animals — such 

 things do not appear to come equally from both parents. 

 In no event select breeding queens simply because they pro- 

 duce beautiful bees and queens. Color is all right if the 

 other points come with it. 



Here is another good point to be observed when se- 

 lecting a breeding queen, or even when selecting a good 

 colony of bees : During the first days of pollen gathering 

 in the spring, just watch the bees for awhile in the middle 

 of the day as they enter the hive with their loads of pollen. 

 It will be found that some colonies carry pellets nearly as 

 large as split peas, while the bees in other hives have pel- 

 lets about the size of the head of a pin. Now from which 

 of the colonies would you select the queen to breed from? 

 The queen in the hive whose bees are carrying the large 

 quantities of pollen is the best one. The large amount of 

 pollen going in shows that the colony has a very prolific and 

 vigorous queen. Colonies that use but a small amount of 

 pollen have old or very inferior queens. Such hives contain 

 but little brood, and the bees have no use for pollen. 



Even queenless colonies will carry more or less pollen. 

 But such colonies never carry in large pellets of pollen. 

 Queenless colonies have no interest in work. 



When bees have been working several weeks, if the 

 weather is warm, the hives may be opened and the condi- 

 tion of the brood examined for the purpose of selecting a 

 queen. If every cell, or nearly every cell, in the combs cov- 

 ered by the bees contain eggs or brood in some stage, this is 

 one good point in favor of the queen. If the combs have 

 more or less honey in them, while other colonies that seem 

 strong have little or no new honey, that is another good 

 point. 



It is not necessary for the practical bee-keeper to open 

 a hive to know that his bees are gathering honey. This he 

 knows by the way the bees are working. When bees are 

 gathering honey, they rush in and out of the hive as though 

 they had but a few days to live, and no time must be lost. 

 When bees are carrying water only, they do not work with 

 so much vigor as when honey is abundant in the fields. 



Some races of bees will fill the brood-chambers with 

 honey, and do that, too, before some other colony gets to 

 work. But such bees refuse to enter the supers, and the 

 next thing they do is to swarm. Such queens will not do 

 for breeders. 



Then, again, there are colonies that not only fill the 

 brood-combs with honey, but are working in the supers, and 

 the first thing the bee-keeper knows about it is, the sections 

 are nearly full. That hive contains a queen that is suitable 

 for a breeder. 



I want queens that will fill all the brood-combs with brood, 

 and when the honey season comes on the bees to quickly 

 <mter the sections and fill them with the first flow of hone}'. 

 Colonies that do this are the ones to propagate from. 



Bees that persist in clustering outside the hive, and 

 refuse to enter the supers when everything is favorable for 

 them to be gathering honey, are worthless, and the queens 

 in such colonies should be destroyed. 



Now about the disposition of bees. I am not very anx- 

 ious to have bees that do not have life enough to sting 

 when they think they should be on the defensive. Usually 

 the bees that are ready to "bite" a fellow come from the 

 strong and vigorous colonies. Haven't you all noticed this? 

 Don't be afraid of a few bee-stings. We all know at this 

 age how to handle bees and get but few stings. For my use 

 I would not reject a queen as a breeder if her only fault was 

 in the fact that her bees were a little cross. Nor would I use 

 a queen i<> breed from if her colony were bound to sting 



