144 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



W. Z. Hutchinson — Mr. Heddon's ob- 

 jection to an entrance-guard is that it 

 interferes with the ventilation of the 

 hive. I might say that at this same 

 convention, Mr. R. L. Taylor said that 

 he could manage very well without self- 

 hivers. He used simply a queen-trap. 

 If the apiary is visited once in three or 

 four days, the colonies that have 

 swarmed can be picked out by finding a 

 queen and a bunch of bees in the trap of 

 a colony that has swarmed. He then 

 divides those that have swarmed. 



R. F. Holtermann — A queen might be 

 injured by a cold rain if left in the trap 

 three or four days. 



W. Z. Hutchinson — Mr. Taylor says 

 that there is quite a little bunch of bees 

 remaining with the queen, and that he 

 has had no losses from this source. 



Next came a long and exhaustive 

 essay by Mr. Frank Benton, of Wash- 

 ington, D. C, on 



Varieties of Bees and Their Oharacter- 

 istics. 



It is now nearly 20 years since I 

 called attention, through the apiarian 

 periodicals, to the important work of 

 Mr. Edward Cori, then a director of 

 chancellory in Bohemia, in the introduc- 

 tion and testing of various foreign races 

 of bees, some of them little known, and 

 others entirely new. And shortly after 

 the first mention of this work of his, I 

 translated several lengthy articles writ- 

 ten by him bearing on the subject. 

 These may be found in the Bee-Keepers' 

 'Magazine of New York city, for 1876. 

 Other notices from various foreign jour- 

 nals were given from time to time by 

 me, and in 1878 I srave a review of the 

 subject of foreign races of bees before 

 the Michigan State Bee-Keepers' Asso- 

 ciation. 



Again, In the autumn of 1879, I had 

 the honor of presenting to the North 

 American Bee-Keepers' Association as- 

 sembled in Chicago, an extended notice 

 of the remarkable race of bees native to 

 the Island of Cyprus. A few months 

 later my interest in the subject led me, 

 in connection with Mr. D. A. Jones, an 

 extensive and capable Canadian bee- 

 master, to undertake a journey to the 

 Old World for the purpose of investigat- 

 ing the various races of bees which had 

 come into prominence, as well as to dis- 

 cover others still unknown, if such ex- 

 isted, and in rase these now races seemed 

 valuable, to import them to our own 

 country. 



To many of the older members of this 

 society the facts are familiar, as re- 

 corded in numerous articles in the bee- 

 papers, that we sailed in January, 

 1880, on this long journey, made visits 

 among many of the prominent bee- 

 keepers in various countries of Europe, 

 initiated the work of queen-breeding in 

 Cyprus, Syria, and Palestine, and also 

 that Mr. Jones returned to America a 

 few months after, bringing with him 

 Cyprian, Syrian and Palestine bees, 

 while I still remained in the Orient. 



One of the conditions of the contract 

 with Mr. Jones was that the qualities of 

 these new races should be represented 

 to the American public exactly as they 

 seemed to be, and that unless, as far as 

 could be discovered, a given race was 

 more valuable than the bees we then 

 possessed it should not be offered for 

 sale. Mr. Jones had exclusive control 

 of the sales in the United States and 

 Canada. I answered such calls as came 

 from the continent of Europe, and 

 after Mr. Jones, left England on his re- 

 turn trip in June, 1880, those that came 

 from the British Islands also. 



Many of those present have also done 

 me the honor of following me, through 

 the published accounts, imperfect 

 though they were, of the long journey 

 to India and the perilous search in the 

 jungles for the famous Apis dorsata — 

 the Giant East India bees of which such 

 mythical tales had come to us. And 

 though it is true that the illness which 

 was the immediate cause of my failure 

 to get the bees here alive, resulted from 

 an over-estimate of my powers of endur- 

 ance, I am really more pleased at pre- 

 senting for your inspection dead speci- 

 mens of Apis dorsata than these re- 

 spectable bees would likely have been 

 over my demise had they compassed It. 



Mr. Jones, who It will be remembered 

 returned to America after spending 

 about three months in the East, did not 

 visit the Orient again, although he re- 

 mained connected with the work. But 

 when, at the close of 1882, I found 

 myself obliged to leave the East, on ac- 

 count of the effect of the climate on my 

 health, he severed his connection with 

 the undertaking. 



During the following years, with 

 headquarters in Munich, Germany, most 

 of the countries on the Mediterranean 

 sea were visited, some of them repeat- 

 edly, and stays of a few weeks or months 

 made. The races of bees native to each 

 country were studied and experimented 

 with in their own land, and In each in- 

 stance queens were taken with me to 

 other countries in order to test their 



