44 



THE BEE-KKEPKRvS' REVIEW. 



In the fall of 1.S6S, to make sure that 

 we had pure stock, we bought an ini])ort- 

 ed queen of the late Moses Ouinby, pny- 

 ing twenty dollars for her. 



The season of 1869 proved, in this sec- 

 tion, an unusually good one. My brother 

 and I had taken our father in as a parmer; 

 and, altogether, we began the season with 

 about seventy hives of bees. I gave up 

 my time in caring for them; and, in ad- 

 dition to quite an increase, we secured 

 some three thousand pounds of ver^■ 

 handsome honey, mostly in glass boxes. 

 Such a crop of honey, from one apiar\-, 

 had never before been heard of in West- 

 ern \'ermont; and the newspapers com- 

 mented on it from one end of the vS a:e to 

 the other. I was not pulTed up with ^uv 

 success, as I supposed it largely due to 

 our having Halia)i bees and movai)lt'- 

 frame hives. 



I was now so well satisfied with the 

 Italian bees that I had no desire to trv 

 the black bees; as they were likely to 

 hybridize my yellow bees; and, besides, 

 there was no question as to their great in- 

 feriority; as I had already tested both 

 races when I first began bee-keeping. 



During the winter of 1881-82 I moved 

 to my pre.sent home; and, to fill out niv 

 yard here, I bought in some black bees 

 which, for some reason, I did not at once 

 Italianize. The following summer prov- 

 ed very favorable for honey; yet these 

 black bees that I had bought filled their 

 hives better, and gave more surplus than 

 my pure Italian colonies. I tried, as best 

 I could, to excuse my handsome \e'l]t>w 

 bees for not doing better. I thought it 

 might be owing to the m'ore croi,k(.d 

 combs in the hivis of black bees; or be- 

 cause their combs had not been hanslled 

 so much. 



The following winter I lost an unusual 

 number of colonies in two vards. '] lie 

 greater loss was in the yard where the 

 black bees were; and, by figuring uji 

 carefully, I found that a larger per cent of 

 black colonies had died than Italian; and. 

 without taking into con.sideratif)n the fact 



that they were in a more exposed position. 

 I tried to make myself believe that they 

 were less hardy; even if they did some- 

 times gather more honey. 



The ne.xt spring, to fill up my silent 

 hives, in part, I bought over fifty colo- 

 nies of black bees. The .spring was fol- 

 lowed by one of the best honey seasons I 

 h ive ever known; and, much to my sur- 

 prise, from some of these black colonies, 

 that I had bought and transferred, and 

 robbed of a large amount of brood to helj) 

 up my weak colonies of yellow bees, I 

 secured more finished sections, ( from 

 them and their increase, ) than I had ever 

 taken from a colony of pure Italian bees, 

 and its increase. To say that I was sur- 

 prised is putting it very mildly. But then, 

 we had read that black bees would do 

 very well in an extra good year, when 

 honey was as plentiful as water after a 

 shower. Still, if they would do better in 

 an extra good }-ear, and in a very poor 

 year, as the previous one had been, wli\- 

 would the}- not do well in other years ? 

 Much of my prejudice was gone; and I 

 was willing to keep both races side by 

 side, in my different yards, and watch 

 their behavior; which I have done, with 

 a good deal of interest, during the past 

 fifteen years. At present I have compar- 

 atively few of either race absolutely pure. 



G. M. Doolittle, one of the most care- 

 ful and conscientious writers in our ranks, 

 says of the Italian race that "When we 

 have a light yield of honey, * * * thev 

 work right on untiringly, storing a little 

 honey in the sections every day, at times 

 when hybrids and other bees are scarcel}- 

 getting a living." and I believe he stat- 

 ed the exact truth, so far as he saw it; 

 and I might say, I have had them behave 

 in exactly the same way. I have in some 

 years thought I could almost tell the pu- 

 rity of any colony of l)ees if I knew the 

 amount of surplus honey it had .stored. 

 In other years the difference was not 

 marked; and in some years, as in 1897. 

 almost exactly the reverse has been true; 

 and I have found, as a rule, that niv col- 



