518 



American Hee Journal 



June 13, 1907 



Breeding the Best Queens. 



"Under what conditions or by what 

 manipulations are the best queens pro- 

 duced?" 



Mr. Taylor — The swarming impulse. 



Dr. Miller — I believe that the same 

 conditions that are likely to produce 

 the swarming impulse will perhaps be 

 as well without the swarming impulse. 

 That is, a good flow of honey, a strong 

 colony, and all things in an encourag- 

 ing condition. 



Mr. Whitney — I asked that question. 

 From what we read in the bee-papers 

 there are all sorts of manipulations in 

 breeding queens by queen-breeders. I 

 buy a good many queens, and I would 

 like to know where I can get the best 

 queens, or under what sort of manipula- 

 tion I can get them. But what few 

 queens I rear for myself, I find the best 

 ones are those that are reared, as Dr. 

 Miller says, in a full colony of bees and 

 under the swarming impulse. I believe 

 we get the best queens in that way. 



Dr. Bohrer — I find Dr. Miller's state- 

 ment is substantially correct. There is 

 no question about that. But the same 

 conditions will exist if a strong colony 

 is rendered queenless, and then giv- 

 en fresh-laid eggs. I have slipped a 

 frame full of eggs the night before m- 

 to a colony which built the queen- 

 cells, and then have taken them out and 

 distributed them among nuclei, when 

 they were finished and sealed over. I 

 think those conditions are similar to 

 the swarming impulse, because they will 

 respond to the same method, give the 

 same kind of care until the egg is ma- 

 tured, as they would under the ordi- 

 nary swarming impulse. Now as to 

 the best of queens, aside from that, 

 we might differ as to the different 

 varieties of bees, that is, different races. 

 I have always found the highest grade 

 of Italian bee was the most satisfac- 

 tory. 



Best Results in Comb Honey. 



"How should lo-frame hives be ma- 

 nipulated for best results in comb 

 honey?" 



Dr. Bohrer — There are two ways of 

 doing it. One is to cut it in sections, and 

 the other — some one will take exception 

 to the position if I should say to use 

 another body on top, and raise the combs 

 up and put the bees to work above. I 

 think you would get a litle more honey 

 that way than you would to use sections, 

 by using a two-story hive. 



Management of Golden Italians. 



"Should golden Italians be managed 

 differently from the darker varieties?" 



Mr. Taylor — Yes. Kill them. 



Pres. York — Who would rather man- 

 age them alive? 



Dr. Miller — I think Mr. Taylor's an- 

 swer is right for some of them, and 

 it is very wrong for some of them, 

 too. I think there is a great deal of 

 difference. I believe there are golden 

 Italians that are good bees, and I think 

 there are some not worth the powder 

 to blow them up. I do not know any 

 difference, so I am not answering the 

 question. I was rather wanting to limli 

 Mr. Taylor's very sweeping statement. 

 At the time of the World's Fair Mr. 



Doolittle had some of the golden bees 

 here, and two of the best queens were 

 left with me over winter to be taken 

 care of before being 'returned to New 

 York State, and from those I reared 

 some queens, and those were good bees. 

 I would not say that they were not up 

 to the other, and I am not so sure at 

 all that they were very much better. 

 The main thing, I think, about the gold- 

 en bees is the looks. They are beauti- 

 ful bees, and there is a great pleasure 

 in looking at them. As to the real 

 value, as I said before, there are gold- 

 en queens and golden queens. Some 

 are good and some are very poor. 



Dr. Bohrer — I want to corroborate 

 what Dr. Miller has said, having a 

 queen now that is one of the most pro- 

 lific queens I ever owned, and her bees 

 produced more honey last year than any 

 other in my apiary. I do not think they 

 are corrupted any by Cyprian blood, but 

 I have had some corrupted, and to say 

 they were cross is not expressing it. 



Pres. York — Another question, right 

 along in conection with that : "How 

 do the golden Italians compare with the 

 leather-colored varieties?" 



Mr. Kimmey — I would like to hear 

 from Mr. Taylor, the reasons for his 

 remark that he would kill the golden 

 Italians. 



Mr. Taylor — I never saw any of them, 

 that were good for anything. Of course, 

 I have no doubt but what sometimes 

 you will get a queen that will produce 

 bees that may be passably good, but, 

 take them together, I think they are very 

 gentle and very good to look at, but 

 they are not very good for gathering 

 honey. Now, to get right down to it, 

 I would not have an Italian bee. I 

 would rather have a hybrid. It is very 

 much more difficult to get the Italians 

 into the section-boxes than it is hybrids, 

 and when you want to get them out, it 

 is very much more difficult to get them 

 out ; and I don't know that they are 

 any better for gathering honey than 

 good hybrids in the matter of temper. 

 It is true that you can go to a colony 

 of bees and by being careful, handle 

 them without veil or smoke. But it is 

 not because their temper is better; it 

 is because they are less disposed to take 

 wing. You get out in a swarm of Ital- 

 ian bees when they are flying, and I 

 think they are a good deal more likely 

 to sting than the black bees are. I 

 think that accounts for the difference 

 in apparent irascibility of black bees. 

 Several of my hybrids— they are all hy- 

 brids — I do not call irascible at all. 

 There is very little stinging. I very 

 seldom get stung. Get a stranger in 

 there, sometimes, who is a little nervous, 

 and he gets stung sometimes; but I do 

 not call my bees any more liable to sting 

 than the Italians I have had, when 

 handling them. 



Dr. Miller — Before Mr. Taylor sits 

 down, may I ask him whether he thinks 

 his bees are about like the average hy- 

 brid bees? 



Mr. Taylor — Well, I do not know 

 that I can say as to that. They are 

 about like the average I have seen. 

 There are some colonies that show quite 

 a little yellow, and some colonies that 

 show a good many bees that yoii would 



take to be black bees; but every colony 

 shows more or less of the yellow color. 

 But I do not know that I have a colony 

 in the yard that any one would call 

 pure Italians from their coloring. 



Mr. Whitney — Mr. Taylor's experi- 

 ence has been very different from mine. 

 I have been working all the time that 

 I have kept bees to make them as pure 

 3-banders as I could possibly get. I 

 have had quite a mixture of black bees 

 at times, and they have always troubled 

 me — cross, run like cockroaches. I nev- 

 er had any trouble with 3-banded Ital- 

 ians to get them off the sections when 

 I wanted to get the honey out or have 

 the combs free. Take a frame of honey 

 and hold it right over the end of the 

 hive and take them off at once. Mine 

 are very gentle. I can go into the yard 

 almost any time. I think I showed Mr. 

 France once, at 5 o'clock in the after- 

 noon, without a veil, without smoke, a 

 number of my bees, and I think in a 

 recent copy of American Bee Journal 

 you will find a picture of a little girl 

 holding a frame. It was late in the day, 

 she was without a veil over her face, 

 and she held a frame of those bees. 

 They were 3-banded Italians. When 

 you come to workers, I never saw any- 

 thing equal to it before, and the only 

 surplus honey I got this year was from 

 my 3-banded Italians. I have 3 or 4 

 colonies of mongrels, one colony pretty 

 nearly black, and they did not give me 

 a pound of surplus honey — not a pound; 

 while the 3-banders did ; and the blacks 

 or mongrels swarmed, and out of 30 

 odd colonies of 3-banded Italians I had 

 but 2 swarms. It seems strange to me 

 that there is such a difference in the ex- 

 periences individuals have with the dif- 

 ferent kinds of bees. I do not believe 

 I would want what they call the gold- 

 en or all-yellow bee. You know the 

 queens of the 3-banders often are ab- 

 soluteh', yellow, but their bees have 

 only 3 yellow bands. I do not call such 

 a queen as that a golden queen. I call 

 it a 3-bander queen, although I do not 

 see any band on the queen at all, but 

 her bees are all 3-banders. So far as 

 protecting their is concerned, the 



3-banders beat anything I ever saw 

 against robbers, and they will clean out 

 the bee-moth in a very few minutes. I 

 have put frames that were filled with 

 the larvK of the moth right in the center 

 of a 3-bander colony of bees, and in a 

 few minutes they would be all cleaned 

 out. I like them in every respect so far 

 as I have been able to investigate them. 



Dr. Miller — I think that one way of 

 explaining the difficulty that Mr. Whit- 

 ney meets is by saying that bees vary, 

 and that they vary very much. If you 

 have a colony of Italian bees you are 

 not sure, from the mere fact of their 

 being Italians, that they will always 

 be of exactly a certain temperament. 

 With a hybrid bee, still less are you 

 certain of anything of that kind. Tht 

 Italian bees are more fixed in character 

 than the hybrids. You are more sure 

 of what you have. When you come II 

 hybrids, you don't know; for certairs 

 where you are. Now, Mr. Taylor has 

 very gentle hybrid bees, and I have 

 very cross hybrid bees. I look for those, 

 colonies that will produce the most 

 honey, without regard to their temper. 



