1S81 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



165 



flown to probably I of a pound or less. There 

 is a loss every time they are handled, and 

 more especially is it the case with old bees. 

 A. new swarm will often lose nearly a half 

 in weight in the tlrst ten days. 



Send to the nearest person who advertises 

 bees by the pound. Get some good prolilic 

 queens, either black or hybrid, if you can 

 not get Italian, and just 'bend all your en- 

 ergies toward making them increase and 

 multiply. If you are short of funds, use hy- 

 brids; feed whenever there is a dearth of 

 pasturage, and next winter get ready to try 

 wintering again, on a few strong colonies 

 well hxed up, for just such another winter 

 as we have just had. 



-^•••i 



THE CYPKIAN BEE. 



SOMETHING FROM MR. LANGSTBOTH IN REGARD TO 

 THE MATTER. 



JJi T last we hare ample means for judging of the 

 5% temper of this bee, as shown in their native 

 — ■^'^ island, where no questions can be raised as to 

 their absolute freedom from mixture with other va- 

 rieties. In a private letter to me, Prof. Cook, of 

 Lansing, says of Mr. Frank Benton, who has done 

 this good work for us, " He is scientific in his meth- 

 ods and habits, very earnest and enthusiastic, and 

 honest to the core." Writing out of his large expe- 

 rience with them, in a season so unfavorable for 

 honey-gathering that, if they possessed any unman- 

 ageable irritability it could not fail to show itself, 

 Mr. Benton gives them the palm, even over Italian 

 bees, for easy control in all necessary manipulations. 

 Two years ago Mr. Muth, of Cincinnati, after 

 weighing all that our German friends had to say 

 about them, agreed with me in doubting whether 

 their decided merits in most respects were not more 

 than counterbalanced by excessive irritability. Mr. 

 Benton's explanation of the simple methods by 

 which they may be kept peaceable has dissipated 

 these apprehensions,* and I am strongly inclined to 

 think that we have been fortunate enough to secure 

 a strain of bees which tmites the best qualities of 

 both the blacks and Italians. After a large expe- 

 rience for many years witli the last-named races, I 

 came to the following conclusions: — 



(1) Whcr elate forage is scarce, the Italians stophrcecl- 

 inrj much earlier than the hlacl(S. / 



In Oxford, where, after the second crop of red 

 clover fails, bees usually gather less honey than they 

 consume, the Italians, unless artificially stimulated, 

 raise so little late brood that they go into winter- 

 quarters with too few young bees. Under the same 

 conditions, the blacks breed quite late in the fall, 

 rarely ceasing until after severe frosts, and often 

 persisting in it when they have not honey enough to 

 last them for more than a few weeks. Now, the ev- 

 idence is quite conclusive that the Cyprians, like the 

 blacks, are strongly given to late breeding. 



(2) The Italians, %inJess stimnlatcd hy judicious feed- 

 ing, do 7iot resume breeding as early as the blacJ^s. 



In Greenfield, Mass. (see p. 339, 3d ed. of my work 

 on the hive and honey-bee), where I had only blacks, 

 the December of 1816 was extremely cold. Jan., 

 ISi", was the coldest January on record, in that lati- 



*It maybe well to eaiit ion those who keep bees very ncnr to 

 public hiifhways, to be eavelul to observe Mr. B.'s direi-tions; 

 and it they have had but little experience witli bees it may be as 

 well to let them alone, rather thau run the risk of rousing: tliem 

 to fury. 



tude, for more than fifty years. Once the tempera- 

 ture was 30° below zero, F., and there were two days 

 when the wind blew a strong gale, the mercury get- 

 ting but once as high as G° below zero. From the 7th 

 to the 14th the mercury was, one-half of the time, 

 below zero, and only once as high as 10° above — the 

 wind blowing an almost continuous gale. Early in 

 the forenoon of the llth, the mercury was 10!4° be- 

 low zero. Later in the day it moderated eaough for 

 me to examine three strong stocks, in the central 

 combs of all of which I found eggs and uncapped 

 brood, and in one of the stocks a little capped brood. 

 On the 30th of that month the central comb of one of 

 these colonies was found to be almost full of sealed 

 brood, nearly mature. My experience with black 

 bees led me to expect breeding to begin in good 

 stocks about the 1st of Jan., aud sometimes a little 

 earlier. 



In my Italian apiary at Oxford, where the mean of 

 the winter is very little lower than the mean of 

 March in Greenfield, I seldom failed to get an oppor , 

 tunity of overlooking my stocks some time in Feb- 

 ruary, and rarely foimd much brood in that month, 

 even in the strongest; while in most of them, laying 

 had not even begun.* The present winter here, 

 though unusually cold, does not compare for severi- 

 ty with that of 1847 in Greenfield, and there have 

 been three thaws causing the resumption of naviga- 

 tion on the Ohio Kivcr. Tn^o of my neighbors, the 

 Messrs. McCord, examined, on the 11th of this 

 month, a largo number of stocks, some of which 

 were very strong, and in only two was brood in any 

 stage noticed. While it is very true that a small col- 

 ony of Italians, when breeding fairly begins in the 

 spring, will, as a rule, rapidly outstrip a black one of 

 equal strength, is it not equally true that what is 

 called "spring dwindling" among Italians may in 

 many oases be attributed to the above-mentioned 

 causes? In localities where the main honey harvest 

 is over on or befora the middle of July, early breed- 

 ing is essential to success, and with Italian bees, ar- 

 tificial stimulus must ordinarily be used to induce it. 

 Some of the readers of Gleanings may remember 

 my experiments in this line two years ago, inter- 

 rupted by the return of my old malady. 



Thus far, all the experiments with Cyprians, which 

 have come to my knowledge, show that in their pro- 

 pensity for both late and early breeding, they re- 

 semble, even if they do not surpass, the blacks. In 

 the A. B. J., Feb. 3, 1881, Melville Hayes, of Wilming- 

 ton, Ohio, writes, under date of Jan. 3d, of his Pales- 

 tine bees: "To-day I opened the hives and found 

 brood in all stages from the egg up, in six frames." 

 I presume that the Holy-Land bees will be found to 

 resemble very closely the Cyprians. In this connec- 

 tion, I will mention the curiotis fact, that, some 

 years before the Egyptian bees were introduced into 

 Europe, many of the workers of one of my Italian 

 queens had the peculiar crescent-like markings of 

 the Cyprian, Palestine, and Egyptian bees. After 

 importing the Egyptian bees, I could easily agree 

 with Vogel, that the Italian is a cross between this 

 bee and the black. Mr. Woodbury's hard experience 

 with the Egyptian bee in England may easily be ac- 

 counted for by supposing him to have attempted to 

 handle them just as he did the Italians. 



*I have repeatedly noticed that, a day or two after examininpf 

 colonicF. cither in'thefall or spi-ing-, whieli had no brood in any 

 stafTC, tlieir queens would l)eKin to lay, the disturbance wliicn 

 caused the bees to s'oi'pe themselves with honey having the same 

 elfect as the stimulus of food. Where colonies are well provis- 

 ioned, occasional examinations might do almost as well as feed- 

 ing. 



