10 THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



traveled and kept detailed records for years past of a whole big- lot of 

 these things. Not scientific experiments — no not one — only a lot 

 of things that the "old dame nature" and her laws have just sledge 

 hammered into me. What do you think of that? 



Here's the accidental start on one little bee chase (not experi- 

 ment) : I was one of those big celebrities, bee-handlers and trans- 

 ferers from any sort of a box to the movable comb hive, way back 

 in the last of the sixties and early seventies. At some of the places 

 I would find one or more hives where the bees were quite notice- 

 ably better than the rest. This was in the days of the black bees, 

 in the last of the sixties and early seventies. About 1873 I ob- 

 tained the Italians, I then knew how to raise queens. In 1874 and 

 '75 the Italian mixtures began to show among the black bees. Oc- 

 casionally a hive showed a very bright Italian bee and in some in- 

 stances a hive showed up a predominating number of striped bees. 

 At that time I had been taking care of Mr. Amos Alitchel's bees for 

 three seasons. During the second season at Mitchel's I saved a lot 

 of queen cells, because his bees were really superior to the average 

 and I tried to and did save all that I could and used them where I 

 could. 



The second year with Italians was the third season with the 

 -^electing of queens in Mitchel's bees. I raised all the young queens 

 I could by saving cells from this best stock. I also raised thousands 

 of the Italian drones. 'Mitchel's bees were four miles from my 

 Italians. A few of the Mitchel young queens met Italian drones. 

 The Amos Mitchel black queens that mated with Italian drones 

 showed up to be superior workers and very gentle to handle. One 

 of the black queens showed exceedingly bright Italian workers. So 

 much were they on the bright side that it was a tantalizing remark 

 often heard: "Say, Hen., if you eould breed your yellow hornets 

 (Italian workers) as bright as the mongrels are, you would feel big 

 some, eh?" 



I reasoned this way: "The same egg that hatches a worker 

 hatches a queen." But how to sort out the eggs? Well, I sorted 

 this way: I got all the queen cells I could get built by that acci- 

 dental "come by chance" hive of bees. I made a hive and a tray 

 with cell cages in it to hold the queen cells while the queens chewed 

 out. The little glass top let me distinguish the black ones from the 

 striped or yellow ones. The black ones all got pinched, the yellow 

 ones were saved, and given a chance to mate with Italian drones. 

 The queens were raised by the hundred to save out but very few, 

 and of the few saved there were less that did mate with Italian 

 drones. This was the testing out of the drone mating. All of this 

 work was from that accidental start of queens that mismated, and I 

 followed it up in the test. 



