120 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Feb. 20, 1902. 



mere individual excellence. His rule would be to breed from 

 the most consistent representative of the best and most uni- 

 form blood. 



The general principles which Mr. Miller lays down are 

 as follows : "Domestication of animals causes variation, 

 since variation is always brought about by a change of con- 

 ditions. Food, shelter, freedom from fear and from the 

 struggle to exist, are the changed conditions which follow 

 domestication. The variation produced by them in sheep, 

 hogs, fowls, and cattle, is very great ; and by taking advantage 

 of those variations, and selecting parents having certain 

 characteristics, man has produced wonderful results. But the 

 conditions of existence which surround the bee can not be 

 materially changed; hence, we have a harder task to per- 

 form. Nevertheless, there is encouragement in the fact 

 that the bee has begun to vary. This is the first great 

 step. The next is to increase that tendency, and then guide 

 it in the desired directions. These results may be accom- 

 plished by breeding together those types that more nearly 

 approach our ideal." 



"The successful stock breeder is he with the truest and 

 highest ideal, and who is able to detect and select those 

 animals most nearly aproaching it. To select thus he must 

 know the internal as well as the external anatomy of the 

 animals he is breeding; must know their habits, tendencies, 

 and ancestry. The men who have achieved greatness in 

 this line have been wide readers, deep thinkers, and close 

 observers." 



We may sum up the important inferences to be drawn 

 from the whole discussion so far, as follows : 



1. There are no reasons for supposing that any essential 

 difference exists between the breeding of bees and the breed- 

 ing of other stock. 



2. Drones can be selected, to the extent that we can be 

 sure that a queen mates with some of the drones from a 

 particular queen. 



3. Queens should not be selected for breeding because 

 their colonies are above the average. Such queens should 

 only be experimented with, to find out whether any one or 

 more of their descendants will transmit their traits uniformly. 



4. Those queens should be selected for general breeding 

 purposes whose ancestors have been uniformly good for 

 several generations back, and whose own colonies are fairly 

 good. 



5. Every bee-keeper should study to acquire a theoretical 

 knowledge of breeding, in order that he may improve his 

 stock, and consequently his honey crop and his profits, by 

 being able to discriminate between the pretensions of those 

 upon whom he relies for breeding-stock. 



6. A professional honey-producer should not waste any 

 time in breeding a strain of his own, if there is any reasonable 

 chance of procuring a good strain from one who makes a 

 specialty of breeding. 



7. Bee-keepers should plan to co-operate in furnishing their 

 best queens to breeders for further tests. 



F. L. Thompson. 



Mr. Devinny— It seems that the whole aim of breeding 

 now is to increase the length of the tongue. Why should 

 not the wing be increased to correspond with the tongue, 

 so that the bee can carry the bigger loads? Some of the 

 finest race-horses have come from "chance seedlings," so to 

 speak. 



Mr. Gill — There is no danger of a bee loading up too 

 much, for it can hold just so much and no more. But there 

 is something in that matter of wing-power. Too much can 

 be done to establ-'sh one quality to the detriment of 

 the constitution. We want bees of strong wing-power, long- 

 lived, and of good constitution. 



W. Z. Hutchinson — We are not sure that all bees have the 

 same-sized honey-sacs. I spent half a day with Mr. Simp- 

 son in measuring the capacity and tongue-length of bees. 

 To measure the tongue-length, he uses very small glass 

 tubes, half an inch long, closed at one end, and filled with 

 honey. The tubes are filled with honey by first inserting a 

 wire, plunging in honey, and withdrawing the wire. Then 

 the open end of the tube is applied to the wire-cloth of 

 the cage in which the bee is. and the length to which the 

 honey is withdrawn shows the tongue-reach of that bee — 

 perhaps 20-100 of an inch. To measure the capacity of the 

 honey-sac. he uses a long tube, open at both ends. Some 

 bees would take out an inch and a quarter of honev, some 

 an inch, and some an inch and a half. All those bVes had 

 been kept without food, so that their honey-sacs were empty. 

 I agree with Mr. Gill that we should not breed for one 

 thing. We want hardiness as well. 



Mr. Harris — We should encourage every line of investi- 

 gation. Things have come down from one generation to 

 another. We must take time. Everything can not be done 

 at once. 



Mr.. Lytle — Two things stand in the way of the improve- 

 ment of queens. We need some means by which queens can 

 reach buyers in as good condition as they leave the breeders. 

 We also need a set of men who are willing to experiment 

 enough to make a good stock. You have to reach down into 

 your pockets to get good results. 



[To be continued.] 



Contributed Articles. 



Selling Honey by Weight or Case-Whlch is Better? 



BY F. GREINER. 



I find the people I have to deal with are very loth buying 

 honey by the case. In buying anything we all want to 

 know what we are getting. Even grain must hold out weight 

 or we are not willing to pay the specified price. If I guar- 

 antee the number of pounds each case of honey contains, 

 and the cases fall not short, then no objection could be raised 

 against my selling by the case. 



I am using but one size of sections, but when casing I 

 find there is always some difference in the weight of the filled 

 sections. When well filled they weigh a full pound ; but 

 others scantily filled scarcely weigh three-fourths of a pound. 

 The quality of this light-weight honey may be exactly as 

 good — how, then, ought I to ca.^e it in order to sell my 

 honey by the case, and do justice to the buyer and myself? 



My practice has been to select sections of uniform weight 

 (quality of honey to be the same) and case by themselves' 

 weigh each case carefully and note the net weight on the 

 cover, not necessarily in a conspicuous manner except when 

 desired by the purchaser. In thus casing there would some- 

 times be a difference of 6 pounds between the heaviest cases 

 and the lightest ones. By interchanging sections the two 

 cases could be evened up so that each would weigh 21 

 pounds (24 sections to the case) ; but the retailer would 

 then not sell them by the piece alike, but would have tq 

 sell them by weight, which would be a good deal of trouble 

 to him. 



It is a well established custom by the retailers of honey 

 to sell by the piece, and for that reason sections ought to 

 run uniformly throughout a case, throughout the whole 

 lot, if possible. However, many of us cannot produce honey 

 of the desirable uniformity, although we aim to do so. Per- 

 haps our stock of bees consists of poor workers, or our 

 management may be faulty; possibly our location is not the 

 best and we can only obtain very low yields, the honey 

 coming very slow and in spurts. Whatever the reason may 

 be, our honey here lacks uniformity, and I notice that this 

 location is not the only one producing such honey. If we 

 were always blessed with bountiful honey-yields, say 50 

 pounds per colony, spring count, I think we could^ produce 

 more uniform honey ; but as it is, we cannot or don't. 



Now, as stated before, the retailers want to sell by the 

 piece — we want to sell by the piece ourselves when retailing 

 —and it is a great help if all sections in a case are so 

 uniform that any one of the 24 is a fair representative of 

 the other 23. With the net weight marked on each cass 

 it is an easy matter to figure out what a section costs at 

 a certain figure per pound ; a section of another case may 

 have to be sold for a trifle more or less, according to the 

 weight of the whole 24. Dn the whole, it is less com- 

 plicated if the sections contained in a case are uniforrn, than 

 if the cases all averaged uniformly in weight, but sections in 

 these cases were not uniform. It is very true, it would be 

 better if not only the sections in each case were uniform 

 but also all cases among themselves. But if I had to case 

 my honey in this manner, a great deal of it would not be 

 suitable for casing at all. The over-weight sections would 

 have to be rejected, also the light-weight sections. In a 

 liberal mood I might let the heavy weighters go in with 

 those of the desired . weight, but then, someone would get 

 more than he paid for, and I would not get my just dues. 



