SOUTHERN BEE CULTURE n 



Now, dear reader, right here is where the trouble lies in bee culture in 

 the South. The run-down race of bees has been tolerated too long. Condi- 

 tions would have been much better if even this race of bees had been looked 

 after ; and as soon as this is done you will see progressive apiaries appear all 

 over the Southland. 



Black Bees. 



The black or German bees are the most common ones found in the South, 

 and there are two varieties of them. One has a brownish waist, and short 

 dubby abdomen. Another variety is black, and has a longer and smaller 

 abdomen. We will first consider the brown variety, as it is most common. 

 They are gentle where they receive constant attention, and are very good 

 honey-gatherers when they receive culture and there is plenty of honey in 

 the fields ; but they will not exert themselves to get it when it is not plen- 

 tiful, or the honey-plants ate yielding sparingly. In most sections in the 

 South we have a long slow honey-flow during summer and fall, and they 

 will live in a hand-to-mouth manner during this time, and will store very 

 little if any surplus honey. Therefore they die heavily, during fall, winter, 

 and spring. They have two good qualities. One is that they are good comb- 

 builders, and cap their honey beautifully white; and their other good quality 

 is that they can be easily built up to a non-swarming point, and a large comb- 

 honey business established and easily operated. 



The queen of the brown bees, even when they are raised under the most 

 favorable conditions, are not very prolific, and for this reason they can easily 

 be brought up to the non-swarming point. 



We will next consider the black bees, which are not as common as they 

 were many years ago when the South was mostly a forest. They are very 

 spiteful and furious stingers— so much so that brimstone has almost exter- 

 minated them in many sections. They seem to be a wild race of bees and 

 love the forest, and are too spiteful to be cultivated to any great extent, and 

 so are considered the uncultivated race of bees. 



I have noticed that comb built by them sometimes has cells not uniform 

 in size, and that many of the workers are very small and uneven in size. 

 Perhaps they are no more prolific than the brown strain, and on account 

 of their spitefulness will never receive much cultivation. 



The queens of the German bees do not lay as many eggs as queens 

 of more prolific varieties do; and especially is this true after spring at the 

 close of the first honey-flow. They seem almost to stop egg-laying, and do 

 not get it to its height again before the following spring, and therefore there 

 is not much honey saved during the summer and fall honey-flows. 



Itauan Bees. 

 The Italian bees are the next most common race here, and there are 

 several varieties of them— five-banded, three-banded, golden, and leather- 

 colored Italians, etc. They are better known as yell6w bees, because they 



