From L'Apiculteur, Paris. 



Hope for the Depressed. 



Is Nature consistent? Does she 

 cause her works to harmonize ? As 

 far as those things which concern bees 

 are considered we cannot answer in the 

 affirmative. Tins year, Nature has 

 caused great quantities of bees to be 

 hatched only to condemn them to die of 

 hunger ; so much so that, at the present 

 time, if man does not come to the suc- 

 cor of the bees, the species will entirely 

 disappear from certain regions. Man, 

 then, is the being who, when he is intel- 

 ligent and enlightened, can harmonize 

 the diverse creations of Nature. From 

 this we should learn that we ought to 

 feed our bees, making them advances 

 which will in all probability be largely 

 reimbursed next season ; for if Nature 

 is not consistent she is at least repara- 

 tive. 



Taking the statistics of the past we 

 find that always after a year or two of 

 misfortune and disaster comes a third 

 which greatly repairs the results of the 



Erevious evil's, and which gives us more 

 oney in one season than three average 

 years put together. We must remem- 

 ber how the disastrous years 1829 and 

 18(50 were followed by the extraordin- 

 arily good ones of 1830 and 1861 . In our 

 reckoning we shall always remember 

 that in 1861 a set of hives bought at 25 

 francs a-piece brought us in 60 francs 

 net profit per colony.— Editor. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



The Improvement of Bees. 



REV. M. MAHIN, D. D. 



Much has been written on the above 

 subject, but it has not yet been ex- 

 hausted. And its manifest importance 

 demands that it shall be kept before the 

 bee-keeping public. If bee-keeping is 

 to continue to be profitable we must not 

 only adopt the best methods of man- 

 agement, but we must have the best 

 bees that can be obtained. 



Our improved methods, and our 

 greater care of our bees, is likely to 

 work the deterioration of our stock , un- 

 less we are careful to avoid it by 

 judicious selection. Under the old 

 methods, which left the bees very much 

 to themselves, the weaker and less valu- 

 able colonies perished, and only those 

 survived that were able to take care of 

 themselves. Now in our human desire 

 to save the lives of our bees, the weak 

 colonies are supplied with honey from 

 the strongest and more industrious, and 

 are thus carried over the winter to in- 



fuse an element of weakness into the 

 apiary the next season ; for if queens 

 are not reared from these poor colonies, 

 the drones hatched in them are liable 

 to mate with our queens, and thus trans- 

 mit their undesirable qualities to their 

 progeny. 



Another source of danger is the fact 

 that in rearing queens artificially, we 

 are liable to rear inferior ones. It has 

 been observed that the first queens 

 hatched among a lot of queen-cells are 

 generally the best. If the bees were 

 left to themselves these better ones 

 would alone survive ; but we preserve 

 the weaker and inferior, introduce them 

 to our colonies, and find some of them 

 of very little value. Now if we would 

 have the best bees in the world we must 

 remove all these inferior queens, and 

 supply their places with good ones. 



But how shall we get good queens ? I 

 will not at this time discuss the ques- 

 tion of queen-rearing, further than to 

 say that we must rear queens only from 

 the best mothers. Among bees the 

 mother impresses her character upon 

 her offspring much more strongly than 

 the father does his. This being true 

 the mother should possess, in the 

 largest possible degree, the qualities we 

 desire. It is not, in my judgment, 

 desirable to rear queens from a queen 

 until she is a year old. Not that I think 

 that queens reared from a young mother 

 are not as good as those reared from an 

 older one; but we cannot judge of the 

 qualities of a queen until she is a year 

 old or more. 



While it is of more importance tc rear 

 queens from good mothers than it is to 

 have them mated with good drones, the 

 latter is by no means of small import- 

 ance, and the bee-keeping fraternity is 

 under lasting obligations to Prof. Has- 

 brouck for helping us to the successful 

 solution of the problem of fertilization 

 in confinement. I have been more than 

 a doubter on that subject, but I am now 

 fully convinced that, with perhaps some 

 slight modifications as to details, his 

 plan will be a perfect success ; and if I 

 live until next summer I propose to try 

 it on a large scale. In this way only can 

 we pursue that judicious system of 

 crossing between different strains and 

 families, not to say races, which can 

 alone give us the best results. If we 

 can control the fertilization of our 

 queens, we may produce strains of bees 

 superior to any now to be found in the 

 world. 



I am not sure but that the coming 

 bee will be an admixture of different 

 races, but so carefully bred that it will 

 assume a fixed and uniform type. The 

 best colony of bees I have ever had, 



