482 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



June 15. 





THE RETURN OF SPRING ; BREEDING FROM 

 SELECTED STOCK. 



The cold winds that had blown from the 

 north for several days had died away. The 

 sun rose clear, and the sky was cloudless. A 

 cock robin from a tree top pre phesied a warm 

 day, in boastful song. By nine o'clock the 

 snow that remained was fast becoming liquid, 

 and hurrying away to the great ocean by road- 

 side and rill, as if the welfare of the world de- 

 pended on its getting there in the least possi- 

 ble time. It was the 5th of April. The bees, 

 too, were rousing themselves from their long 

 winter slumbers, and one hive after another 

 sent forth its scouts to see if spring had in- 

 deed come ; and soon there was a general 

 rush, and the air filled with that delightful 

 hum that makes a bee-keeper's heart beat 

 quicker and the blood in his veins tingle to 

 his finger-tips. The bees were having a " fly." 

 Of course, I was on hand to see if every thing 

 went right, observe how strong they were, and 

 notice if any had failed to be aroused by the 

 warm spring air. 



" Ah ha ! How have they wintered ? " came 

 from the roadside — a voice that I recognized 

 as Deacon Strong's. 



" Pretty well, considering," I replied ; "not 

 nearly as well, however, as a year ago. I have 

 noticed that bees usually winter well after a 

 good season. As 1898 was one of our best 

 years, during the spring of 1899 bees were the 

 strongest I ever knew them ; but as the sum- 

 mer of 1899 was the poorest for the third of a 

 century our bees went into winter quite re- 

 duced in numbers. We can not expect them 

 to come out very strong. There will doubt- 

 less be more loss this spring than usual." 



"Bees making honey now like smoke, I 

 reckon," said Dan Savage, as he went by driv- 

 ing a dirty pig, and heard the humming of 

 the bees. 



" Yes, making it from the last snowdrifts of 

 the season," I replied. 



" Have yiiu selected your queen to rear 

 queens from ? " inquired Timothy Fasset, who 

 had joined us. 



" Well, no — not fully," said I. "There are 

 a good many things to be taken into consider- 

 ation. There is hive 19 that gave me last year 

 more honey than any other hive in the yard ; 

 but I shall not use her for queen-rearing. It 

 is a dark hybrid or low grade, and does best 

 when we have dark honey, as last year. Had 

 white honey been as abundant as usual there 

 are others I am sure that would have surpass- 

 ed this one ; and as our crop is usually white 

 honey it will be necessary for me to secure a 

 strain of bees that work best on the c'overs 

 and basswood. There is hive 66. That is one 

 of my old stock, and nearly or quite pure Ital- 

 ian. I have been thinking seriously of using 

 her for queen-rearing in this yard. You see 

 most of my queens in this yard were reared 



from a queen I bought two years ago, and, of 

 course, nearly all the drones will be like her. 

 The queens I reared from her were all mated 

 with drones from my old stock. Now, if I 

 rear queens this year from one of the best of 

 my old stock I shall get another cross with 

 the drones of the queens reared last year from 

 the purchased queen. For my out-yards I 

 shall either use a queen reared from my pur- 

 chased queen or perhaps buy a queen if I can 

 find one that is desirable. I believe there is a 

 good deal in crossing stock. Mr. McClure, in 

 Illinois, has been making some very interest- 

 ing experiments in crossing different varieties 

 or breeds of corn. In crossing some fifteen 

 different varieties he found the crossed seed to 

 be much more productive than either kind 

 without crossing — at least that was the rule ; 

 and crossed seed, when planted, averaged six- 

 teen per cent more corn than the uncrossed 

 seed. This probably comes largely from in- 

 creased vigor of the plants." 



"That's cur 'us," said Fasset, "that every 

 thing in this world must be kind o' jumbled 

 up like — that is, every thing after its kind, 

 the birds and beasts, and all the plants, in or- 

 der to be strong and vigorous." 



" It shows," said I, " the abhorrence of na- 

 ture and nature's God to the marriage of near 

 relations. Still, in our efforts for improve- 

 ment we must not forget the great value of 

 selection. Very little is said on this subject 

 in our text-books on bees, yet I believe there 

 is no more important subject in the whole 

 round of bee-keeping, or one that requires bet- 

 ter judgment or nicer discrimination, than the 

 selection of a suitable queen to rear queens 

 from, if we would attain the best results. 



"Messrs. Rabbethge & Giesecke, the fa- 

 mous producers of sugar-beet seed, state that 

 in 1889-'90 they tested 2,782,300 roots, from 

 which they selected only 3043 for seed-grow- 

 ing purposes, or about one in 900. How many 

 bee-keepers, do you suppose, would be willing 

 to examine even one hundred colonies of bees 

 that the best one might be used to rear their 

 young queens from ? Those who have not 

 given the subject a little attention have but 

 little idea how much care and thought have 

 been required to bring the various plants and 

 animals uiider domestication to their present 

 state of perfection. The English wild goose- 

 berry, for instance, weighs one-fourth ounce ; 

 yet in 1784 it had been so much improved that 

 berries were exhibited, and carried off the 

 prizes, that weighed half an ounce. They 

 have now been so improved by careful selec- 

 tion of seedlings and cultivation that speci- 

 mens have long since weighed nearly or quite 

 two ounces, or eight times the wild berries. 



"Take the sea-island cotton, known the 

 world over as the finest cotton grown The 

 planters had first to change it from a biennial 

 to an annual by selecting the earliest-maturing 

 plants for seed. Then they have increased 

 the quantity of fiber to twice what it was in 

 proportion to its seed, and at the same time 

 have greatly improved its quality, so that now 

 the best grades sell at from fifty to sixty cents 

 per pound. But to secure these results the 

 greatest care is required in raising the best 



