1871.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



243 



queens, are of course liberally paid for by enter- 

 prizing breeders ; and it is not uncommon for 

 Dzierzon to receive fifteen or twenty dollars for 

 such, though he does not usually charge more 

 than six dollars for queens not brighter in color 

 than those obtained from Italy and Italian 

 Switzerland. 



I would say, in conclusion, that though I am 

 engaged in bee-culture chietiy for my own grati- 

 fication, and mainly in its scientific aspects, it 

 ever affords me pleasure to be of service in any 

 manner to bee-keepers, with the consciousness 

 that I have contributed aught to the advance- 

 ment of bee-culture. 



C. F. H. GRAVENnOKST. 



Braunschweig, Germany, Feb. 2, 1871. 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Italian Bees. 



Mr. Editor :— In No. 1, page 17, of Vol. YI. 

 of the Journal, Mr. A. Barnard commences an 

 article headed "Italian Bees, Questions," &c., 

 as follows: "Is the allowed superiority of the 

 Italian bees a natural quality, or only the result 

 of circumstances? People have thought that 

 changing the locality of bees once in a few 

 years, was productive of good. One case I will 

 mention. One very poor year, a man who had 

 a dozen or more of swarms, gave one to his 

 daughter, who was married. Others had let 

 here and there a swarm, all of which were 

 moved ; and it was noticed that all those moved 

 swarmed, while those not moved did nothing. 

 The bees thus swarming showed no superiority 

 in the spring, over those not moved. If Italian 

 queens are imported, or raised here and sold, 

 the mother of the new queen has changed her 

 location ; and that, I judge, to be equal to 

 changing the swarm." 



I will not copy the whole of the article, al- 

 though it almost seems necessarj^ to do so, to 

 have the readei's of the Journal understand my 

 reply. I wish they would hunt i^p that arti- 

 cle and read it again. To the first question I 

 answer thus — the allowed superiority of the 

 Italian bees is a natural quality, and this is my 

 reason for answering so : For the last four years 

 I have bought up all the black colonies in the 

 neighborhood of my home apiary, for the sake 

 of getting them out of the way, and brought 

 them home. Treated exactly like the Italians, 

 they have nevertheless in every instance fallen 

 greatly behind in productiveness. A year ago 

 last fall, I bnught from a neighbor living 1^ 

 miles off, the only two black colonies out of six, 

 that had stores enough to winter, brought them 

 home, and wintered them with my Italians in 

 my cellar. One of those colonies died during 

 the winter ; the other came out in good condi- 

 tion. It seemed to get along as well as the 

 Italians in the first part of the season, swarmed 

 on the 7th of June, being the third swarm from 

 over two hundred old stocks. The swarm not 

 being large, was hived into a hive full of comb, 

 with three or four pounds of honey. I jjut 

 boxes on top of it when basswood came into 



blossom, and expected to get some box honey. 

 But not only did I get none, it did not even. 

 collect and store honey enough to winter on. 

 To keep it over for experiment, I supplied it 

 with twelve pounds of honey in comb. And 

 the old stock, when I examined it in the fall, 

 had not over five pounds of honey for winter 

 stores ; and to save it for the same purpose, I 

 gave it twenty pounds of honey in the comb. 



Another case, to illustrate. In the spring of 

 1869, I removed one stock of black bees to my 

 southern apiary, where I had wintered one hun- 

 dred and sixteen stocks of Italians and hybrids. 

 That season was a very jjoor one, so that black 

 bees around here gave no swarms or surplus 

 honey. My 116 Italians and hybrids gave about 

 seventy swarms, and gathered honey enough to 

 winter 178 colonies. The black colony gave no 

 swarm, although I furnished it with some honey 

 during the month of June ; and in the fall I had 

 to take it up, as it had no stores at all. 



Again, in August last summer, I took the 

 honey of seventy colonies, some of them young 

 swarms, and removed them eleven miles, near a 

 twenty-acre buckwheat field. All of those colo- 

 nies gathered winter stores enough, and'some of 

 them stored some honey in boxes. But the 

 black bees — seven colonies only — of a neighbor 

 living within half a mile of the same buckwheat 

 field, did not more than half fill their hives. 



The case Mr. Barnard refers to, in which the 

 stocks that were removed oft" swarmed, while 

 those remaining at home did not swarm, is no 

 proof that changing the location was having an 

 influence on the bees. It is only another strik- 

 ing proof how very difterent the pasturage for 

 bees may be, from difference of soil and weather. 

 In 1869, Kev. Mr. Manwell, of Whitewater, who 

 keeps his bees only six miles from my southern 

 apiary, had what seemed to me an extraordinary 

 yield of surplus honey, while my bees barely 

 sustained themselves. Last season, I am told, 

 Mr. Manwell's bees did almost nothing, while I 

 had a very lai-ge yield of honey from mine. 



As far as mixing and crossing the breed is 

 concerned, I will state that it is absolutely ne- 

 cessary, in order to prevent the running out of an 

 apiary. It is conceded on all sides that hybrid 

 bees are the most productive ones ; and I agree 

 in this statement, if the measure is taken in a 

 good or an extra-good season, and the bees are 

 left to themselves, without occasionally empty- 

 ing the combs of the pure Italians. A very dif- 

 ferent result, however, will be found in a poor 

 season. Then the pure Italians will have a 

 larger amount of winter stores in the fiiU than 

 the hybrids, simply for the reason that they do 

 not indulge so much iu breeding late in the 

 season as the hybrids do. But we shall not hear 

 so much of the superiority of the hybrids over the 

 pure Italians, when bee-keepers shall have dis- 

 covered the prevalent erroneous notion that the 

 nicer and brighter the Italian bees and queen bees 

 are, the purer and more i^roductive they must 

 be. In common with ]\Ir. 31. 3Iiller, I have no 

 fancy for in and in bred bees. I want bees for 

 business, three-striped, shade of color of no 

 account. I want none of those gentle bees, that 

 do not sting. I want such as will defend them 



