THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 295 



ditions. You can easily see that the poultry keeper has the best of 

 the bee-keeper. He can control his males in his breeding, also their 

 food. 



We surely will never get non-swarming bees until we use queen 

 mothers that have a record of not swarming; also using drones of 

 the same strain. The incubator will not help in the least, nor 

 Avill artificial reared queens help about breeding non-swarming bees. 

 But you ivili have to breed and rear your queens from colonies not given 

 to swarming. I have had one experience which has greatly encour- 

 aged and strengthened my belief in breeding for non-swarming. 



I had a queen, No. 116, I reared about 50 daughters from her, 

 and not one of them ever swarmed. I had some of those queens 

 four seasons and I never found a larvae or o^gg in a queen cell. I 

 would have had more of those queens, but they were too cross. If 

 I had known what I know now, I would have given them a better 

 trial. I learned right there even if a queen or colony was quite cross 

 and not gentle to handle it paid to breed from her, as I find that 

 we sometimes get our most gentle colonies from them. That is, if 

 we have the right drones to mate with them. 



The bee breeder must keep a record of all colonies to a certain 

 extent. I have for the past few years been very particular after I 

 put a queen cell into a colony or nucleus to be sure that she hatched 

 and was accepted all right, and then followed up to know that she 

 was laying in 10 or 12 days, at which time she is clipped, and then 

 J knoii.'. There is no guess work about it. It will surprise some 

 10 learn that at certain times bees are very reluctant about accept- 

 ing even a queen hatched from a cell in their own hive, and will 

 insist on rearing a queen from their own brood. I do happen to 

 know that we have better honey gatherers than we did 15 or 20 

 years ago, with the poor seasons and foul brood. I think that with 

 the common strains of bees that we had then, there would soon be 

 fewer bee-keepers left. There are very few of the common stock 

 left. Foul brood has cleaned the most of them up. A\'e will and 

 must breed bees that will resist this scourge, foul brood. When 

 one of these bee-keepers says the black bee is good enough for him, 

 I notice as soon as foul brood strikes his apiary he soon finds out 

 to his sorrow that he is soon out of the bee business. 



Yours for better bees. 



Geo. B. Howe. 



[This installment completes, judging by correspondence received from my sub- 

 scribers, one of the most interesting and valuable articles on queen rearing that has 

 appeared in the bee journals for a long time. Mr. Howe is certainly making a 

 success of bee-keeping from a honey standpoint. In the series of articles just 

 finished he has given to the bee-keeping world his secrets, so that all may profit by 

 his past exprience. 



While there is bound to be differences of opinions and there will no doubt be 

 exceptions taken to some of the positions held by Mr. Howe, yet there is no question 



