August, 1917 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUKE 



'jBhS 



f,-r;= 



FROM THETIELD OE EXPERIENGE"-'^ 



Conversations with Doolittle 



" I am anxious to procure the best bees 

 possible for the production of honey. I 

 care nothing- for color, very little for stings, 

 but I do want a large quantity of honey 

 which I can sell for cash. Of course the 

 bees should be good winterers, otherwise 

 they Avould not get strong enough for the 

 harvest. My main dei^endence for surplus 

 comes from the clovers and basswood, with 

 a small surplus from fall flowers, occasional 

 years. Now, from your forty odd years' ex- 

 perience, tell us just the bees which will be 

 best for me to keep in my locality." 



Our questioner tells us little as to his 

 wants except quantity along the honey line. 

 For this reason we shall have to guess some- 

 what. From my standpoint, a true solution 

 depends uj^on which kind of honey we are 

 producing — section or extracted. If I were 

 producing extracted honey altogether I 

 think I would select the darker Italians, or 

 those from queens reared two or three gen- 

 erations away from mothers imported direct 

 from Italy, allowing the young queens rear- 

 ed to mate with whatever drones there were 

 about the apiary, whether from Italian, hy- 

 brid, or black stock. 



If I were working for comb honey in 

 sections exclusively, then I would procure 

 a good queen fi-om some best stock of the 

 orange, or what is termed golden variety of 

 the Italian bee, rearing all queens from her, 

 and, as before, allowing them to mate with 

 any drones they may chance to meet, since 

 our questioner cares " very little for stings." 

 Some of these young queens, either from the 

 dark or orange vai'iety of Italians, would 

 doubtless give quiet and peaceable workers; 

 but the majority of such promiscuously mat- 

 ed queens would give bees, which a beginner 

 would rather avoid. Nevertheless, if quan- 

 tity and cash are what we are after, such 

 direct crossing generally gives the greatest 

 vigor. All my experience goes to prove that 

 thorobred orange - golden Italian queens, 

 mated to drones of either black or hybi'id 

 stock, give bees equal to the very best for 

 section-honey purposes. I should prefer 

 not to have these queens meet drones from 

 young queens reared from imported moth- 

 ers, for the reason that, as a rule, workers 

 having much imported blood in them do not 

 cap their honey nearly so nice, white, and 

 captivating to the eye as do those having 

 more of the golden, hybrid, or black blood. 



The beekeeper who regards color as an 

 index to quantity and cash in honey pro- 

 duction is quite liable to disappointment, 

 no matter what that color line may depend 

 upon. Careful selection and breeding 

 along any line of bands or stripes will 

 doubtless bring some improvement; but 

 nature has so ordained that, when queens are 

 reared under the most favorable circum- 

 stances which go toward bringing forth the 

 very best queens physically, the controlling 

 of the drones with which these best queens 

 shall mate is almost beyond our reach. 

 Drone control, so far, is almost beyond the 

 best of us ; and when we can come the near- 

 est to our ideal, much feeding and rearing 

 out of season tends toward, not the best, but 

 toward only a physically weakened queen. 

 Therefore, the object of beekeeping being 

 the quantity and cash from either section or 

 extracted honey, the honey-gathering quali- 

 ties of the bees employed is the paramount 

 requisite. 



To sum up I would say, first have the 

 queens mate with drones as distantly related 

 to the queens as possible ; second, use queens 

 quite closely related to impoiied Italian 

 stock, where working for extracted honey, 

 for there are no bees in the world, in my 

 opinion, tliat excel those one or two genera- 

 tions from imported stock for honey-gather- 

 ing. Third, where white capping of the 

 combs in sections becomes one of the gi-eat 

 objects to work for, then choose the orange- 

 golden Italians. 



But I hear some one saying, " If no bees 

 in the world excel those a generation or two 

 removed from imported stock as to honey- 

 gathering, and the golden Italians possess 

 the desirable trait of superior work in cap- 

 ping their honey, while they are in no way 

 second as to honey-gathering qualities to 

 those you recommend for the production of 

 extracted honey, why use the darker bees 

 at all, as there can be no objection to the 

 whiteness of cappings in the case of ex- 

 tracted honey?" As this is along the line 

 of what one of our best apiarists said to me 

 only a short time ago it may be well to 

 look into the matter a little. I am well 

 convinced that the dark and golden Italians, 

 other things being equal, will gather equal 

 amounts of nectar from the same field, but 

 the dark variety will give the greater 

 amount of extracted honey. I think I can 

 give the reason for it. Have we not been 



