(Entered at the Post-Office at Chicago as Second-Class Mail-Matter.) 

 Published Weekly at $1.00 a Year, by George W. York & Co., 3.54 Dearborn Street. 



GEORGE W. YORK, Editor 



CHICAGO, ILL, AUGUST 23,1906 



Vol. XLVI-No. 34 



editorial ^otes 

 and Comments 



Honey-Producer Improving His Stock 



It is pretty safe to say that any attention 

 given toward improvement of 6tock will be 

 better than the present course of the majority 

 of honey-producers. Possibly that is too 

 severe an arraignment; let us say, then, the 

 present course of many bee-keepers, which is 

 to let their bees go on year after year with no 

 thought given to selection or the introduction 

 of fresh blood. 



Two courses are advised: One is to breed 

 always from the best, the other is to buy from 

 time to time a queen of pure blood from 

 which to breed. 



When it is advised that each bee-keeper 

 shall make his own selection, and breed from 

 those queens whose colonies give best yields, 

 the reply is made: " Yes, that look6 plausi- 

 ble; but a first cross is likely to give fine re- 

 sults in honey, and when the attempt is made 

 to breed from such first cross, no reliance can 

 be placed upon re6ult6, for stock reared from 

 it will be of the most widely varying charac- 

 ter. The only way is to buy a queen of the 

 best quality from a reliable queen-breeder, 

 and rear young queens from her. That will 

 give you a fixed type, and you may count on 

 the perpetuation of the qualities of the 

 mother." 



But the very persons who insist so strenu- 

 ously upon breeding from pure blood will in 

 the next breath tell you what a fine thing is a 

 cross between this and that variety of bees, 

 and urge the advisability of fixing the type. 

 And what is fixing the type but persistently 

 breeding in the direction of desired qualities? 

 And why can the honey-producer not do that 

 as well as the queen-breeder? 



Let us assume, however, that the best thing 

 is to breed from nothing but pure blood ; it 

 remains still true that it is better to breed 



from the best than from the poorest. So it i> 

 safe to 6ay to the beginner — indeed, to any 

 one — breed from the best you have, paying 

 equal atlention to drones as to queens, and 

 introduce constantly fresh blood just so long 

 as you can buy a queen of better stock than 

 that already in your possession. 



Bees Mixing When Taken from Cellar 



It is not an uncommon thing, when bees 

 are taken out of the cellar in spring, in the 

 joyous excitement of their flight, to have some 

 hives almost depopulated and others doubled 

 or trebled in numbers. In a few cases dis- 

 aster has been reported. How to avoid this 

 has been a problem. E. W. Alexander re- 

 ported in Gleanings that he had practised 

 taking bees out at night, and believed that 

 was the secret of success. 



Editor Hutchinson, of the Review, tried 

 this plan, and his graphic account of it makes 

 interesting reading, albeit rather trying on 

 one's sympathies. He says: 



The bees were carried out of the cellar in 

 the night, the hives placed in rows, but quite 

 a distance apart. The next day was not very 

 warm, but the bees flew some. I watched 

 them from the window, but there was no 

 " drifting" or mixing up. I had been sick, 

 and was not very strong, but ju6t at dark I 

 bundled up and managed to go from hive to 

 hive and lift the covers. All were clean and 

 healthy, clustered nicely, and about the same 

 number of bees in each hive. The next day 

 was warm, and for awhile the air was fairly 

 bla<:k with bees over the hives. Along about 

 noon they seemed to be gathering at one cor- 

 ner of the yard. The fronts of the hives in 

 that part of the apiary became black with 

 bees, and finally the sides and tops of the 

 hives were covered with bees. Every bee 

 that left a hive seemed in duty bound to join 

 the whirling "circus" of bees at that par- 

 ticular part of the apiary. Only a few bees 

 could be seen flying at other parts of the 



yard. When night came, and I went out 

 again and lifted the covers, I found mere 

 bandfulsof bees in some of the hives— bees 

 between only 2 or 3 combs. Twenty or 30 of 

 the hives at the corner where the bees had 

 congregated were jammed full of bees— some 

 were filled to overflowing. 



I had read, and been told, that if bees were 

 put out in the night, the start for a flight 

 would be started gradually, and there would 

 be none of this mixing or drifting. There 

 was this time. Always before I have carried 

 the bees out in the daytime, on a warm day, 

 scattering the hives as carried out, and had 

 no trouble with their mixing. There is only 

 one precaution that I neglected, and it is pos- 

 sible that it might have saved this trouble, 

 and that is, I didn't contract the entrances. 

 If the entrance is contracted so that ODly 1 or 

 2 bees can pass, a strong colony can make no 

 more of a demonstration than a weak one. 

 But I had heard so many times that carrying 

 the bees out in the night would do away with 

 this difficulty that I pinned my faith to it. 



Dr. Miller reports that he has always taken 

 his bees out in the daytime, as early as pos- 

 sible in the day, and with large entrances has 

 had some mixing, but never much. Of late, 

 immediately after being taken out, entrances 

 have been closed down to a hole % to 1 inch 

 square, and no mixing whatever has been 



observed. 



-•■ 



Libelous Statements and Insinuations 



We sometimes wonder what certain of our 

 bee-keeping exchanges hope to gain by pub- 

 lishing libelous insinuations against other 

 bee-papers. If they know of any real wrong- 

 doing on the part of other bee-papers, why 

 don't they specify it? One would naturally 

 expect that a paper backed by a manufactur- 

 ing business would be a little careful how it 

 speaks of those that are not so supported. 

 But, of course, it does not require unusual 

 intelligence to see through the sham claims to 

 co-operative helpfulness of some " house-or- 

 gans " when they begin to throw mud and 

 make libelous insinuations against honorable 

 and genuinely independent papers. 



We know the American Bee Journal has 

 been considered unfair in not publishing cer- 

 tain convention resolutions that had mainly a 

 local bearing, and also contained advertising 

 matter that properly belonged in the adver- 

 tising columns. We believe in " a square 

 deal " all around, and especially with our re- 

 sponsible advertisers who pay their money for 

 advertising space. So we don't propose t 



