248 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Conversations v^ith Doolittle 



At Borodino, New York. 



A BIT OF HISTORY. 



" Do you practice line breeding, or do 

 you breed by getting in new stock from 

 other yards'? " 



A quarter of a century ago, instead of 

 " line breeding " the term would be, " Do 

 you breed all your queens from pure Italian 

 stock?" a question which, in those years, 

 was asked me scores of times. My answer 

 invariably was, "No;" and then I had to 

 explain that, according to my views, there is 

 no such thing as a pure Italian bee or 

 queen when viewed in the sense of a pure 

 race, as the German or black bee is pure. 

 At the best, I think the Italian bee is only 

 a thoroughbred. Proof of my views is found 

 in the fact that Italian bees vary from those 

 coming from Italy which are so dark (a 

 part of them) that they are hardly distin- 

 guishable from the German bees, to those 

 from some breeders whose abdomens look 

 almost like a " lumji of gold " when sport- 

 ing for the firet time in the noonday sun- 

 slune. If the dark or leather-colored bees 

 are pure, -with their three bands scarcely 

 distinguishable, and then only when the 

 bees are filled with honey, what shall we 

 say of those^ Italians whose five segments 

 are a solid golden color with only a dark 

 tip on the sixth? 



We have, as a starting-point, a bee which, 

 through hundreds of generations, penned in 

 by the mountains of Italj', became establish 

 ed as a variety which proved to be superior 

 to any thing the world contained elsewhere, 

 which bee was imported to the United States 

 about the middle of the last century, father 

 L. L. Langstroth being one of the first im- 

 porters. Trom the progeny of this Lang- 

 stroth importation, Mrs. Ellen S. Tupper 

 advertised queens. We sent $20.00 for one 

 of her best queens. This queen was of a 

 light chestnut color, the whole length of her 

 abdomen, and gave workers and a queen 

 progeny above any thing previously coming 

 into central New York. About 187.3 or '4 

 we sent $10.00 to H. A. King, Nevada, 

 Ohio, for one of his best Italian queens. 

 In this queen we had something bordering 

 toward the orange, which gave bees with 

 three bands that showed a chestnut-golden 

 color, distinct enough so that all were to be 

 .seen without their i)eing given honey to 

 extend the abdomen, as was claimed neces- 

 sary with imported stock to test their pur- 

 ity; and in this King queen we had bees 

 that gave an average yield of comb honey 

 10 per cent nhove any thing before known 

 in this section. 



About that time, Mr. N. N. Betsinger said 

 that he would rather have a certain colony 

 of mine for honey production than any 

 colony he ever looked at before. Later on 

 I went to breeding from this queen. Her 

 bees, and those from her daughters, readily 

 outdistanced all tlie others in the yard for 

 comb honey. 



About that time I exchanged queens witli 

 Jos. M. Brooks, a noted beekeeper of Colum- 

 bus, Ind., and through this exchange I not 

 only added to the golden color of the bee;-' 

 I had already, but gained a point as to 

 honey production and white cappings. 



During the latter eighties I exchanged 

 queens with Mr. L. L. Hearn, of Oakdale, 

 W. Va., who was a noted breeder of " the 

 best Italian bees " of those days, both of us 

 claiming that, by this exchange, a gain 

 would be made along all the lines necessarj 

 for the best bees. Since then I have made 

 several exchanges; but as none of these 

 seemed to make any advance over Avhat was 

 already in the home yard and at the out- 

 apiary, they were discarded without mixing 

 them with what I already had. 



In the mean time nearly all the bees in 

 this section have been changed from the 

 blacks and hybrids of the past to good 

 Italian stock, very largely by furnishing, 

 with ripe queen-cells, free of charge, those 

 who would come to the yard. 



To further these Italian bees still more, 

 drones from one of the choicest breeders 

 have been kept till other drones were killed 

 off, when queens from another best breeder 

 were of the right age to mate with them, 

 and in this way an improvement has been 

 made. In a year or two, queens would be 

 reared from the drone side, and young 

 drones saved from the queen side. 



To get at the longevity part of the matter, 

 as well as to prove some other points, also 

 to prolong the life of the queen in question, 

 an extra choice breeder would be taken from 

 her colony in early June, and a queen giving 

 different-colored workers put in her place. 

 In this way it was easy to tell when the last 

 of the breeders' bees passed away. Making 

 a change in this way the first of August, 

 bees from the breeder I was then using were 

 found to quite a number on July 4 of the 

 next year, but none the tenth, six days later. 



Now, I do not know whether this would 

 be called " line breeding " or something 

 else ; but I have given the bit of history 

 telling the soui'ce, and way used, to bring 

 our bees up from where they were in the 

 early seventies. 



