886 



GIvEANINGS IN BEE CUI.TURE. 



Dec. 15. 



about as easily reversed as this entrance-strip. 

 For these and other reasons we decided on 

 the Danzy for 1898.— Ed.] 



THE MARKINGS OF OUEENS AND DI^ONES. 



Unusual Resuks 



Breeding and Introducing. 



BY A. NORTON. 



Dr. C. C. JMillcr : — You may answer this in 

 GlE.^nings : 



Is it not generally stated that you can better 

 tell of the purity of a queen's mating by her 

 queen progeny than b}' her workers — that is, 

 that her young quetns will more surely be 

 striped if they are not pure Italian, while her 

 workers may be very yellow ? I have seen 

 such statements, though I believe the Roots 

 la}? much stress on uniformity of workers and 

 less on queens. But what do you think of 

 this? I have a Carniolan queen from a pure 

 one that I got from the East — a fine tested 

 one. My own drones were golden Italians. 

 Many colonies of black bees are near by in 

 hives and trees ; and one neighbor, Xy^ miles 

 off, has Italians, blacks, and all grades of 

 hybrids. This young Carniolan queen's 

 workers are, about two-thirds of them, black, 

 without a sign of yellow, and about one-third 

 of them yellow, showing generally three bands. 

 When her bees first began hatching out last 

 summer I thought she had mated with one of 

 my five-banded drones. But when I see now 

 the preponderance of bees that are all black, 



1 wonder if she did not meet a drone having 

 black and yellow blood mixed. Having an- 

 other colony to which I wanted to give a 

 queen at once, I recently gave them this same 

 Carniolan, and sent east for an Italian to 

 replace her in the mixed Carniolan colon}'. 

 As said queen was long in coming, I let the 

 first young queen hatch out that the virgin or 

 bees might make surer work than I would of 

 destroying the other cells. When the queen 

 came from the East I destro\-ed this virgin, 

 and found her to be as yellow, clear to the 

 tip, as any golden Italian virgin I ever saw — 

 no, but almost as yellow. She would have 

 passed for an Al golden-yellow queen. 



2. Would 3-ou think from the workers that 

 the mother-queen met a pure or part Italian 

 drone ? 



8. Do you consider the yellowness of the 

 young queen as somewhat remarkable ? 



4. Is the following a strange instance for a 

 dry time when no honey had come in for 

 weeks? Colony No. 1 was queenless, and 

 had been refusing a five-banded Italian queen 

 from the East for several days. Colony No. 



2 was but three or fovir feet away obliquely — 

 or to the left, and behind No. 1. The hybrid 



?ueen of No. 2 had been killed a few days 

 onh' four or five days), and when I killed 

 her I could not see a sign of eggs or brood in 

 any stage in the colony. It was dry, and but 

 few colonies were breeding any. One after- 

 noon, just at sunset, I gave No. 1 a thoroiigh 

 fumigation with tobacco smoke, and released 

 the queen the}' had been so persistently refus- 

 ing. Just before dark I searched the combs, 



but could not find her. Every day thereafter 

 for about si.x days I searched carefully, but 

 couldn't find her, dead or alive, in the hive or 

 on the ground. Finally, having need for 

 some reason to open No. 2, I found therein a 

 fine bright yellow queen (looking much like 

 the one I thought I had lost), and brood 

 nearly ready to seal, as well as eggs, etc. 

 Since then her progeny prove to be pure five- 

 banders. When I released her in the hive, 

 after the fumigating (I had taken her out 

 during the process), she must have left at the 

 entrance during the turmoil, taken wing, and 

 alighted at the other qiieenless colony, which 

 must have readily accepted her. Is not this 

 a little rcTuarkable for the dry time of year? 



5. Concerning your remarks in both .:/?;/^r- 

 ican Bcc Journal and Gleanings about bot- 

 tom starters. I tried them by way of experi- 

 ment, and also starters on all four sides, to 

 experiment, consisting of a top starter reach- 

 ing to within an inch of the bottom starter, 

 and short enough to allow of narrow (about Y2 

 inch ) starters on each side. The bees finished 

 the sections about like this, leaving the same 



gaps between the finished combs of honey as 

 were at the outsets between the pieces of foun- 

 dation in the starters. Did you ever have any 

 experience like it ? A. Norton. 



Monterey, Cal. 



[To these questions Dr. Miller replies :] 

 1. Your first question is one which I .lardly 

 know enough to answer ; but I the more 

 cheerfully make the attempt because the large 

 experience of the editors will enable ihem to 

 correct an}- misleading statements I may 

 make. I have always had the impression that 

 not nearl}' so much reliance was placed upon 

 the appearance of the queen progeny as on the 

 worker progeny of a queen. If my memory 

 is correct it was not an unconnnon thing in 

 the earlier years, after the introduction of 

 Italians, to have it said that it rarely occurred, 

 if ever, that a queen of Italian blood would 

 duplicate herself with any degree of uniformi- 

 ty. Her royal progenv would vary in appear- 

 ance, some of them lighter than herself, some 

 darker, while her worker progeny would be so 

 uniform that no one individual could be dis- 

 tinguished from the rest. It is also a fact, if 

 I am not mistaken, that, among the qiieens 

 imported directly from Italy, there is great 

 variation, some of them being light in color 

 comparativeh' ( perhaps never so light as may 

 commonly be found after a few years' breed- 

 ing in this country ) , and others almost if not 

 quite as dark as a common black queen. It 

 seems to me, however, from the limited op- 



