1900 



GIvKANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



615 



stir up a hornet's nest when I spoke of very 

 yellow queens. I notice most of the queen- 

 breeders advertise 'golden Italians,' as though 

 the yellower the better, and somehow I had 

 got it into my head that those queens that pro- 

 duce the very yellow workers were best. But 

 there is another thing I wanted to talk with 

 you about ; and that is, if there is any show 

 of our ever having bees that will gather honey 

 from red clover — I mean as freely as bumble- 

 bees do. There is a good deal of red clover 

 over in our valley." 



Perhaps I spoke a little warmly on this sub- 

 ject. I replied, " But I have felt a good deal 

 of regret that so much pains have been taken 

 to breed for color with so few far more valua- 

 ble points or traits of character. I have some- 

 times thought that the National Bee-keepers' 

 Association could not do any thing more help- 

 ful to American bee-keepers than to pass, at 

 their next meeting in Chicago, a resolution 

 something like this : 



careful attention to breeding is there any rea- 

 son to doubt that bees can be produced with 

 tongues sufficiently long to reach the honey 

 of red clover ? All that is needed is to breed 

 with this object in view. The Michigan Ex- 

 periment Station has reported some very in- 

 teresting facts in this connection, showing 

 that they have now a strain of Italian bees 

 whose tongues are more than one and a third 

 times the length of those of black bees, and 

 one and a fifth times the length of the average 

 Italian bees. I have asked my son to make a 

 draft of them so we can see how they look on 

 paper. It certainly looks hopeful. But we 

 must not be content with simply increasing 

 the length of the tongues of our bees. We 

 must also decrease the length of the corolla 

 of the red-clover blossom. And here is a nice 

 job for some bright boy, and there will be 

 money in it too. Go to the fields and watch 

 till you find plants of red clover that the bees 

 work on freely, then mark and secure the seed, 



BEES' TONGUES ; PROGRESS OF DEVEI.OPMENT. 



" ' Resolved, That we look with regret upon 

 the efforts to breed high-colored bees, and deem 

 three full bands of yellow on Italian worker 

 bees as much color as necessary or desirable.' 



" Such a resolution would at least let the 

 younger bee-keepers know what they thought 

 of color, and establish a standard the same as 

 the rules for grading honey, and at the same 

 time give queen-breeders an opportunity to 

 turn their attention to something of more value 

 than color. The Ethiopian may not be able 

 to change his skin, nor the leopard his spots ; 

 but we can all see how the American queen- 

 breeder can change the color of a breed of 

 bees. A few careful, thoughtful men have 

 largely increased the production of honey by 

 selecting and breeding from the strongest and 

 most industrious colonies, and we have at 

 least one well-authenticated instance where 

 swarming has been reduced a half. Now, if 

 swarming can be reduced a half by careful 

 breeding in a few years, it can be reduce.l 

 three-fourths and nine-tenths with the same 

 care, and probably even more than that. 



" If the color of bees can be changed, their 

 industry increased, and their swarming in- 

 stincts reduced a half, with a few years of 



and sow and cross-fertilize by hand, and in a 

 few years a variety of clover will be produced 

 with blossoms not half the average length of 

 those varieties now in general use. As soon 

 as such a variety is produced, seed can be 

 grown for market when the bee-keepers will 

 fairly tumble over each other to get hold of it. 

 But as it will be many years before such a va- 

 riety will come into general use, let the good 

 work go on in lengthening the tongue of our 

 bees. All bee-keepers may do more or less by 

 keeping a close watch for colonies that work 

 on red clover, and breed from the queens of 

 such for a series of years. There is little 

 doubt in my mind that much might be done 

 in this line. I shall be surprised if we do not 

 find that those coloni s that work best on 

 white clover and basswood are not the same 

 that take most kindly to red clover. Already 

 several colonies have been reported in our bee- 

 journals as working freely on red clover. I 

 ran across some interesting cuts of the skele- 

 ton heads of pigeons the other day in an old 

 book I was reading, that interested me very 

 much, as they showed how- changes may be 

 brought about by selection. The upper head 

 is that of the wild pigeon of western Europe. 



