fiSI 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



CONVERSATIONS with DOOLITTLE 



At Borodino, New York. 



IMPROVING THE BEES. 



" What is being- done along the 

 line of impi'oving bees by selection 

 in breeding"? There is a whole lot 

 of talk about it; but who is doing 

 anything? All know that there is 

 a great ditSerence in colonies as 

 regards results in honey storing; but what 

 are we doing about it? Those who keep 

 bees, with possibly a few exceptions, keep 

 them for the profit they may yield ; and it is 

 quite safe to say that, when they cease to 

 yield a profit for several years in succession, 

 they would cease to have owners; and if 

 they existed at all it would be in the wild." 

 I will give a bit of my history, and ad- 

 vance a few ideas which may be worth 

 thinking about. I commenced beekeeping 

 with black bees, and possibly might have 

 given up the pui'suit in disgust had not new 

 hojae dawned by the introduction of the 

 Italian bee. When the seasons were propi- 

 tious results were satisfactory. Two or three 

 years of unfavorable conditions showed that 

 these bees could not " stand grief." The 

 wax-moth was very troublesome, and weak 

 colonies would be greatly injured or put out 

 of existence, the combs either being entirely 

 consumed, or so much sj^oiled that when 

 the bees came to fix them up they built 

 drone comb. Thousands of drones resulted, 

 which consumed much of the honey. 



The black bees were much disposed to 

 rob. Like some people they must do a big 

 business or nothing. Then in a poor spring 

 they were prone to desert their hive and 

 swarm out, leaving brood, honey, and all 

 the conditions one would think favorable to 

 contentment, such as clean comb and clean 

 hive. After flying like a natural swarm 

 they would either alight or try to force an 

 entrance into some other hive already occu- 

 pied, and if they succeeded in gaining an 

 entrance they were sure to be killed. 



In 1873 I procured my first Italian queen, 

 raised queens from her, and gave these 

 young queens to about half of my colonies. 

 The next spring I kept a careful watch of 

 proceedings, and find this jotted down in an 

 old diary of a year later: " I find the Ital- 

 ians proof against the wax-moth. They do 

 not desert their hives in early spring; and 

 whenever a small amount of honey is ob- 

 tainable they will secure that and gain in 

 stores, while the black bees require feeding." 

 This settled the superiority of the Italian 

 bees, and I soon had only Italians. 



But when the black blood was all elim- 

 inated I found that the Italian bees were 



not all alike profitable. Previously my 

 thought had been that the queen that would 

 lay the most eggs must certainly be the best. 

 That idea proved to be a mistake. Some 

 queens producing not nearly the number of 

 eggs that others did would give much better 

 results in surplus honey. A few years of 

 experience will convince any that it is not 

 the most prolific queens that will have the 

 strongest colonies at the beginning of the 

 clover flow, or give the most substantial 

 results for the season. These facts being 

 known, it remains for the beekeeper to state 

 the reason why. If we cannot account for 

 the fact of oh6 colony collecting one-half 

 more to twice as much as another in the 

 same apiary, we can take the short cut. and 

 supersede the queens of the less productive 

 ones with stock that gave twice as much. 

 I have practiced this plan to quite a large 

 extent during the past 35 years, and results 

 show that it has not been in vain. 



We have been told by the successful 

 honey-producers that the introduction of 

 new blood helps much by way of avoiding 

 the evil effect of inbreeding. This can be 

 brought about by bringing home colonies or 

 queens from out-apiaries, by exchanging 

 queens with other successful apiarists, or 

 by an occasional purchase of a good queen. 



But some one may ask, " How do you 

 account for the difference in jDroductive- 

 ness?" This is not always easy to tell. I 

 incline toward the longevity and vitality of 

 the workers of certain queens as being very 

 desirable. When workers hatching from 

 August 30 to September 10 were found do- 

 ing a " land-office " business at gathering 

 nectar from the clover bloom on June 25 to 

 July 4 of the next year, I lost no time in 

 rearing young queens from their mother, so 

 that these young queens could replace all 

 inferior .stock in the apiary; and as the 

 mother of this longevity stock showed a 

 disposition to place the maximum number 

 of bees on the stage of action at the bloom- 

 ing of clover, and when they entered the 

 sections with their first nectar without a 

 desire to swarm, I considered said queen of 

 still more value. Such queens should be 

 kept till thej' are two or more years old, 

 rather than to have their lives " snuffed 

 out " annually, as so strenuously advocated 

 by many, that all colonies may be headed 

 each spring with queens less than a year 

 old. In this pruning-out of inferior stock, 

 it is well to keep an eye out for vicious 

 colonies. A vicious colony should not be 

 tolerated any more than a vicious horse. 



