« THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



but what there will be a demand for it at "skilled" prices. 



This is a period of the "survival of the fittest." The enemy of 

 the bee is rampant. Only the alert, wide-awake bee-keeper will sur- 

 vive. Which place will you accept, brother, success, or oblivion? 

 Let us all make a new year resolve to keep "more bees" better, and 

 produce more better honey than in any previous year. By so doing" 

 we will better ourselves, our brother producer and the consuming 

 public. — To\vx.SEXD. 



Characteristics of the Drone Most Apt to be 

 Transmitted. 



THE FIRST BREEDER OF ITALIANS IN HIS LOCALITY TELLS OF 



HIS EARLY EXPERIENCES. TAKES ISSUE WITH DR. BONNEY 



AND ALSO SUPPORTS HIM. SOME THEORIES UPSET. 



By H. L. JEFFREY, Woodbury, Conn. 



[Clear the ring, boys, for a good old fashioned school-boy scrap. Mr. Jeffrey 

 writes me that he is in his sixties. Dr. Bonney must be somewhere around there 

 also. He has been just itching for a scrap the whole year, and Mr. Jeffrey has 

 pulled off his coat to give it to him. The only trouble is that these two fellows 

 are so near alike in their views that I'll bet the first man who tries to part them 

 will have to lick the two of them. The only ring rules imposed is one that I am 

 sure is not necessary, and that is that all personalities are barred. 



Seriously, though, this question of better l)ees is getting interesting. If our 

 so-called improvement has been largely a myth we want to know it. And if some 

 breeders have been taking advantage of it, that also wants to be known. We 

 have been buying queens for years to improve our bees, and now comes the state- 

 ment that the drones are more important in transmitting qualities than the queen. 

 How about it, you who are breeding?] 



■ •Jl HAVE been reading the writings of Dr. A. F. Bonney and his 

 Jl extracts from the letters of others, but when I saw his dia- 

 gram on page 40T of the November number of the Review, I 

 just had to whoop. "I wonder if he is trying to induce some one to 

 raise the most cussed stingers on earth." Without explaining- why 

 so, I'll tell what the results are. 



The Italian queen (pure) mating with the black drone (pure) 

 so far as I have ever known, (and I knew them both, Italian and 

 blacks, way back as far as 1870, and I had them both in their purity 

 in 1874. That I do know.) The workers from that Italian queen 

 and black drone would be stingers for certain and very mean to 

 handle. The workers would be of a variation from as black as the 

 blackest to as yellow as the yellowest of the pure blood of the Ital- 

 ians, and his diagram of half bloods is a fake. Then the matings 

 of young queens of that Italian and black mating would be and are 

 varied in color, size and other wavs as are the workers. Force these 



