1884 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



619 



and removing the cells or young queens they 

 sometimes go to work and stay quite a while ; 

 but I had supposed they were always a little 

 on*the decline. If the old queen in your 

 case, after being introduced to the nucleus, 

 laid eggs fully up to her average, it would 

 seem to indicate that bees sometimes make 

 a mistake. —In regard to the A E C book, 

 the new matter is scattered all through, 

 sometimes a single line or part of a line in a 

 place, and it would be quite a ditlicult mat- 

 ter to collect it into a pamphlet of 20 pages, 

 even if it would make sense. I will tell you, 

 friend E., what I will do for you and others 

 in tlie same predicament. Sell the book you 

 liave to somebody who does not care very 

 much about the additions, and we will send 

 you a new one for half price, in considei-a- 

 tion. Won't this make it all right? Of 

 course, you will need to tell, when you remit 

 the half" price, the reason why you do so. 



BREEDING -TRAITS, AND REVERSI- 

 BLE FRAMES. 



FRIEND HEDDON DISCOURSES TO US ON BOTH SIDES. 



fSI HE idea of breeding in and out certain traits 

 ^ of .our bees is cue tliat oug-ht to enter the 

 s mind of every bec-lceeper who ever rears 

 (jucens at will. It is undoubtedly a fact, 

 that every trait of character of which the 

 honey-bee is subject, is susceptible of inheritance. 

 The laws of heredity and v.^.riation invite every 

 thoughtful apiarist to take advantage of them. 

 The great rapidity with which we can repeat gen- 

 erations, is one gi-eat point in our favor. Full sheets 

 of conil) foundation inour brood-frames have given 

 us almost pirii-et control over the class of drones 

 which shall stock the air of our area. 



Now I wish to call the attention of I he reader to a 

 possible chance for error. I wish to coin a phrase, 

 to describe an accidental state of aflairs which we 

 must not look upon as character, and which we can 

 not breed from. I will name it present condition. 

 Let me illustrate: Four men start on the road to 

 walk to the ne.vt town. One slips and falls, and 

 breaks his ankle. Now, we do not e.xpect his chil- 

 dren to inherit broken ankles, or a disposition to fall 

 and break theirs, any more than the children of the 

 other three men. I look at all efforts to breed up a 

 wintering strain of bees in much the same light as 

 shines on the illustration above given. I account 

 for the success or failure of a colony of bees in 

 wintering, more upon the basis of " present condi- 

 tion.". I believe that the consumption of pollen, 

 either in the form of bee-bread or floating in the 

 lioney, or often both together, is the cause of the 

 intestinal overloading called dysenter.y, which is 

 our arch enemy. Now, 1 think that the ]>osition 

 and quantity of bee-bread stored in the hive, and 

 also the purity of the nectar stored, ha\'e mostly 

 and mainly to do with the health of our bees, during 

 their period of confinement. Now, this is mostly a 

 condition of accident; and attempts at breeding 

 winter strains will pi-ove futile. I think that those 

 who think they have a strain of bees superior in 

 this respect ai-e mistaken. I also think that the 

 non-swarming tendency you speak of, Mr. Editor, 

 is one that slow, yes, very slow, progress can be 

 made in developing, as it so very much depends up- 

 on greatly varying circumstances, and ditlfrent sur- 



rounding conditions. Since I have been breeding 

 bees for good disposition and surplus-honey quali- 

 fications, I have discovered that I must carefully 

 distinguish between ) e:(7 characteristics and "present 

 conditions." I admit, that 1 wish both general and 

 present conditions on my side of the question. I 

 think this from theory, as seven years of practice 

 with hundreds of colonies is not enough to allow 

 me to 1av)W it by experience. I theorize, however, 

 that in breeding bees for good nature we should all 

 the time treat our colonies so as to keep their al- 

 ready comparativelj' good natures in a friendly 

 mood. No doubt all have seen stocks of general 

 good nature, temporarily in very bad humor. I 

 think the Italian bees have been improved by arti- 

 ficial selection— a selection coming into use because 

 we had two races of bees, and wished to supplant 

 one by the other. I think in this we did well; but I 

 think we do better when we endeavor to breed in 

 the superior and out the inferior qualities of both 

 races combined. 



REVERSUU.E FRAMES. 



I have now several thousand in use, of a pattern 

 not yet describtd to the public. I wish to thorough- 

 ly test them first, under all sorts of conditions. Much 

 harm has been done by rushing into print with half- 

 tested fixtures— in fact, most of them not tested at 

 all. "One swallow does not make a summer." The 

 organ-gi-inder with his monkey can hardly be called 

 a zoologist. " Marj' had a little lamb," but, for all 

 that, was not posted in stock-raising- could hardly 

 be called a drover. A few hives show us something 

 of the theory; the handling of many educates our 

 very muscles, and through them our brain, and we 

 then have some practical knowledge. We are 

 then informed sufliciently to assume the right to 

 give instructions to others, are we not? 



When you lay aside the hanging " latemUy mova- 

 ble frame " for any such device as the one you show, 

 and call Hetherington's, I feel sure you make a 

 mistake. When we are feeling for something bet- 

 ter than the L. L. movable frame, suspended almost 

 in air as it is, we owe it to ourselves that we feel our 

 way ver.v cautiously, for we well remember the 

 manj' who have been bitten, and returned wiser and 

 poorer. We are prone to take all our old familiar 

 blessings as a matter of course. The older thej' get, 

 the less we value them We are paying all our ad- 

 dresses to the new comfort. Finally to get it, we 

 exchange several old ones, and soon their absence 

 awakens us from our dream, and then we return, 

 wiser and better contented. We should not be tim 

 conservative, but never too radical. 



I thought when you published even your dream of 

 exchanging our old time-honored laterally movable 

 frame for one of fixedness that you were gaining 

 the great advantage of reversing the whole hive 

 with all its frames at once, and even then I fear it is 

 a loss. 



So far, our experience with reversibles has been 

 that wc are paid, and doubly paid, for making them. 

 We have made them in such a way that the.v are 

 worth all their extra cost, if never reversed. Again, 

 the splendid solid framcsful of comb we get for 

 once reversing, repay us twice over for their extra 

 cost, and the trouble of reversing. Now, we (five of 

 us) are carefully testing the other results, expected 

 by many to accrue from such reversing. How the 

 bees will carry the honey from the brood-frames up 

 into the surplus receptaicles; how the emptying of 

 such cells will give such room for the queen that we 



