74 



THE AMERICAN BEE KEEPER. 



March 



bees, the difficulty in maintaining them 

 in their purity has been and is still a 

 great irapediraeut to profitable bee 

 keeping, so much so that many have 

 abandoned them, accepting as a nat- 

 ural result, the hybrids, or more prop- 

 erly speaking, a mongrel or cross with 

 the blacks. 



To maintain an Italian apiary, un- 

 less all other varieties are removed for 

 several miles, requires constant vigi- 

 lance as well as the exercise of scrut- 

 inizing judgment. Not infrequently 

 a few colonies of black bees in the 

 neighborhood of an Italian apiary, 

 will, after two or three years, become 

 dominant in Italian blood. The own- 

 ers of such, being unlettered in bee 

 culture, often express themselves as 

 possessing Italian stock. 



At this juncture the difficulty of 

 maintaining absolute purity is much 

 increased. As an illustration, we have 

 a queen which becomes mated with a 

 drone from this mongrel stock, which 

 is possibly three-quarters or seven- 

 eighths Italian, or one which shows 

 but a trace of dark blood. As a result 

 her progeny is well marked, and to the 

 casual observer would be accepted as 

 pure. But upon close observation 

 possiblv one bee in fifty or a hundred 

 will show but a slight proportion of 

 yellow upon the third abdominal ring. 

 Should the bee keeper fail to recog- 

 nize this taint of dark blood in the 

 young queen's progeny, a succeeding 

 generation would bring drones into 

 requisition which would contaminate 

 the Italian stock to a great extent, yet 

 almost imperceptibly, especially if the 

 law of atavism , (a recurrence of the 

 original type) is displayed on the Ital- 

 ian side. According to my judgment 

 there is much impurity of this kind 

 throughout the land. 



I had an illustration quite similar 

 the past season. A young queen prov- 

 ed to be mismated. After destroying 

 her I gave the nucleus colony a cell 

 which, after a time, I found was des- 

 troyed. In the meantime business 

 matters caused me to neglect the col- 

 ony, during which time they reared a 

 queen from the larvae of the mismated 

 queen, which in due time mated with 

 an Italian drone. When her progeny 

 began to appear, to my surprise it was 

 most perfect and beautiful in its 

 markings. Among my mismated 

 queens the past season several from 

 the yellow stock show but a few dark 

 bees — possibly one in thirty or forty. 



This recurrence to an original type 

 is greater in its tendency with golden 

 Italians crossed with Carniolans than 

 Italians and blacks. The logical con- 

 clusion would be that either the gold- 

 ed Italians or Carniolans, or both, were 

 not sufficiently thoroughbred to belong 

 to a fixed type. A thorough knowl- 

 edge as to the stock these varieties 

 were bred from would tend to explain 

 this tendency. However we have the 

 evil of intermixing to contend with, 

 and though we may be able among the 

 possibilities of the future to control 

 the mating of queens sufficient to se- 

 cure mostly pure stock. 



Its desirability is evinced by the 

 numerous efforts which have been 

 made to accomplish it. The principle 

 upon which most experimenters have 

 worked has been to limit the flight of 

 the queen and drones to small areas by 

 enclosures made of wire cloth. Such 

 varying in size from two or three feet 

 square to ten or fifteen feet. It is evi- 

 dent that any or all enclosures will in- 

 tercept the flight of both queen and 

 drones to an extent which would 



