232 



GLE AXING S IX BEE CULTUKE. 



May 



reasons enough for los? ; loss of bees by the thou- 

 sand at the sorghum-mills, bad stores from cider- 

 mills, bees taken in during freezing weather without 

 a fly for perhaps 2 or 3 weeks previous, and left in a 

 cellar without sufficient ventilation, and part of the 

 time in a freezing condition. But all of these causes 

 put together I do not believe were as effective as 

 one other, and the cause of nearly all my loss can be 

 expressed in one ^vord,— starvation. True, if they 

 had been kept warmer, less stores would have done, 

 and some of them that, starved away from their 

 stores would have been able to reach them; but we 

 may as well call things by their right names, how- 

 ever humillatiTig the confession may be, and let the 

 errors of the past be so much experience to help in 

 the future. 



April 7.— I have examined with some care 25 of the 

 stocks that died in the cellar, and find 10 contain 

 honey and pollen, and the hives arc daubed with 

 dysentery; 3 have no honey, some pollen and the 

 hives daubed; 1 with a httle honey and pollen and 

 clean combs; 10 with neither honey nor pollen, and 

 clean combs. In some of the hives classed as hav- 

 ing no honey, there was a little honey out of reach 

 of the cluster. This docs not give so many as I sup- 

 posed of clear cases of starvation, but leaves my 

 former ideas, in the main, correct. 



niVES OF PEAU UEES 



should bo taken at once from the cellar. Don't 

 leave them a day, but take them out now, for every 

 «3ay they are left in the cellar the combs are spoil- 

 ing, and will soon be worthless. Clean out the hives, 

 clean off the combs, and keep them in the dry till 

 needed for new swarms. If any combs contain 

 honey, of course they should be where bees can not 

 reach them, but not in the cellar. 

 Marengo, 111., April 7, 1881. C. C. Miller. 



called dark Italians. §aid hybrids all showed the 

 three bauds when we "looked for them right "—that 

 is, beudiug the body, or placing them on a window, 

 etc. I have never seen any dark Italians (that 

 showed all signs of purity) that were any crosser 

 than the light ones; in fact, not cross at all. No 

 necessity for a bee-nat or veil while handling them, 

 and I know they are better honey-gatherers, and win- 

 ter better than the light beauties so much admired 

 by some. Mr. Adam Grimm came to that conclu- 

 sion years ago, for he told me a few years previous 

 to his death, that, for profit he advised" keeping the 

 dark Italians in preference to any others." 



The above is not theory, but facts, for I have not 

 .lumped at these conclusions, as I have made bee- 

 keeping my business for the last fifteen years, hav- 

 ing handled plenty of blacks, hybrids, and both light 

 and dark coloi-ed Italians; and for my use I greatly 

 prefer the dark pure Italians to any of the others; 

 and I am sure, when bee-keepers use a proper 

 amount of care in testing their bees, the dark Ital- 

 ians will no longer have the name of being cross. 



O. H. TOWNSEND. 



Hubbardston, Ionia Co., Mich., March 10, 1881. 



In regard to the test of purity, t would say 

 that I kuow of no other standard than the 

 ItaUau bees in their native home. As those 

 from our imported queens, many of them, 

 do not show all the Ijands distinctly, unless 

 placed on a window, I consider it safe to say 

 pure Italian bees do not all show all the 

 bands unless so placed. 



DARK ITA1.I.1NS; AKE THEY CKOSSEU 

 THAN THE lilGHT-COL- 



OKED ones; 



tDO not think it fair, in testing Italians, to bend 

 the bees or place them on a window to facili- 

 ■ — ■ tate the finding of the three bands, as I am 

 fjuite sure that the worker progeny of a simon-pure 

 Italian queen will all show the three bands peculiar 

 to the race, as they stand in a natural position on 

 the combs. In connection with this, they all have 

 light rings of hair, or down, on all that part of their 

 bodies back of the yellow bands above referred to. 

 These rings of down are sometimes worn off from 

 some of the bees when they have had honey cr syrup 

 on them, as in case of robbing. If the absence of 

 these rings is caused in this way, the back part of 

 the abdomen will present a shiny appearance. If a 

 colony has the least trace of black blood about it, 

 some of the worker bees will lack part of these 

 rings of down. Such will not be shiny black unless 

 they have had honey or sjTup on their bodies. 



I have two or three colonies of hybrids which show 

 the three bands, and that without beudiug or placing 

 on a window; but some of the bees in these hives 

 lack part of the rings of down. Some of the yellow 

 bands are somewhat cloudy, but they are there "all 

 the same." We do not allow any drones in the 

 above hives, as the (iueens are daughters of a hybrid 

 queen whose workers were nearly all marked with 

 the three bands— somo two, an<* once in a while one 

 was black. I have known some who kept Italians, 

 and some well-marked hybrids, whieh latter they 



>mi9 n 



THE UEASON H HY AVE AUOPTED THE 



rLAN OF SH>E AND TOP MTOKING 



COMBINED FOR SECTION HONEY, 



I^•STEAD or TIERING UP, ETC. 



KEN we first commenced bee-keeping we 

 used the Langstroth frame, and used Avhatis 

 termed the tiering-up plan to secure box- 

 honey; that is, as soon as the first lot of boxes were 

 two-thirds full, raise them up and place an empty 

 set between them aud the brood-chamber. To do 

 away with the trouble of raising those partly filled, 

 many put on two tiers at once; but the results, as a 

 rule, are in favor of the former. The year 1870 was 

 the first really good honey season we enjoyed after 

 we engaged in the business of bee-keeping. Whoa 

 the season was over, upon footing up we found our 

 best stock had given us, in box honey, 110 ll>s. We 

 considered this a large yield till we found that our 

 friend Betsinger had done much better with hives 

 adapted to both side and top storing. The years 

 1871 and 1872 proved to be rather poor seasons, and 

 so our experiments were, most of them, a failure all 

 around. In 1873 we made a few side and top storing 

 hives, to test the matter thoroughly. At the end of 

 the season wc found we had used too many boxes, as 

 the bees had more commenced than they could fin- 

 ish; still, those finished were fully equal to those 

 taken from any of those worked on the tiering-up 

 plan, and we had nearly as many more which were 

 unfinished, as a clear gain. This experience con- 

 vinced us of one thing, and that was, that bees built 

 comb much faster at the sides than on top, while 

 they stored honey much the fastest over the lirood. 

 We were obliged to arrive at this conclusion: that, if 

 we wished to secure a <^03d yield of box honey from 



