482 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Oct, 



it is folly to deny. If any one hive possessed all the 

 merits, all would have adopted it long ago; if either 

 the black or yellow race of bees had been in rrrry 

 icfl)/ superior to the other, there never won ld_ have 

 been long- and earnest contro^•ersies regarding 

 which is the bettor one to adopt. When two things 

 each possess a complicated mi.vture of the good and 

 bad, then it is that extended experience is needed to 

 wisely say which, all things considered, is the better 

 of the two. 



But there is scarcel,\- a vegetable or animal now 

 under the control of man, that he has been satisfied 

 to use in the form or possession of qualities as he 

 adopted it. " Better and better " has been the cry, 

 and better and better have we made it. 



Let the history of nil the improvements of the past 

 be repeated in the future by the progressive bee- 

 keepers of America till ".4/)i".s.lnH'ri(anrt" shall be 

 eagerly sought for by all the bee-keeping world as 

 the hcst. James Heddon. 



Dowagiac, Mich., Sej^t. 15, issi. 



A FEW ITEMLS. 



QUEENS WHOSi: DAUGHTERS ALL PllODUCE THRIiE- 

 B \NDED BEES. 



^v^N page 424 of September Cleanings, W. z. 

 ™Jv) Hutchinson asks Doolittle a question about 

 those queens whose brood will produce queens 

 that will produce all three-banded workers, whether 

 said queens mate with black or Italian drones. As 

 a reply, I would refer friend H. to page 133 of vol. 3 

 of (iLE.\NiNfis, where I write of a queen 1 had of A. 

 I. Root: "1 have raised CO queens the past season, 

 and each one is a duplicate of its mother, and not 

 one of them produces a black bee, with thousands 

 of black and hybrid drones around." Again, on page 

 50, vol. 3, Gleanings, I wrote: "The first Italian 

 queen I ever saw was introduced some time in July, 

 and did not raise a drone that season; neither was 

 there an Italian drone within 13 miles of her; yet 

 none of her daughters ever produced a black bee. 

 There were hundreds of queens raised from her 

 during 3 years, yet none of them ever produced a 

 black bee." Also, if I am correct, Mr. Langstroth 

 and E. Gallup both had (jueens known to have mated 

 lilaek drones, which never produced any thing but 

 three-banded bees. Now, friend H., these are facts; 

 but how it is, I do not know. I claim the Italian bee 

 is only a "thoroughbred," and not a fixed race of 

 bees. It is said that a cross of the black bee with 

 the Egyptian, will, in three generations, produce a 

 bee which no man can tell from the best Italian. If 

 this is so, it is probably the starting point of our 

 Italians; but why such breeding can so thoroughly 

 tix the bands, that a queen mating with a common 

 drone will not show such mating in her woi-king 

 progeny, is more than I can tell, but know such to 

 be a fact. 



A friend receiving a queen from mo which chanced 

 to have a few 4-banded workers sent with her, 

 claimed, after reading friend H."s article, that if all 

 the bees produced by said (lueen were not 4-banded, 

 she must have mated a hybrid or a black drone, and 

 really talked damagcx if she did not do it. Now, 

 this argument will not hold good; for some of those 

 queens reared from the first Italian (jueen I ever 

 saw, produced 4-banded bees, and certainly these 

 (jueens must have mated black drones. The matter 



of /jr(/)(7.s is not so great as the honcji-producinti 

 qualities of bees; and if our breeders would pay 

 more attention to this, the worltl would be better for 

 it. 



liUOGD HV CHRISTMAS. 



On puge 428, September Gleanings, J see our 

 lengthy friend tells us that, on the tirst of .January, 

 he took 8 colonies from different parts of the cellar, 

 and that every one of the 8 had "two and three frames 

 of sealed brood, and young bees hatching." I turn 

 back to page 14 of vol. 5, of Gleanings, and there I 

 tind that A. I. Hoot did not believe that bees com- 

 menced to rear broo<l as early as Christmas, al- 

 though Mr.Quinby told us they did,and Doolittle.af ter 

 several experiments, proved Quinby correct, and so 

 wrote. Now, here comes a man who writes his first 

 article for publication, and in it tells us of brood- 

 rearing commencing at least two weeks earlier 

 than Christinas, and A. I. Root passes it without 

 comment. This man also says, that the greater part 

 of that written by our old writers "does not amount 

 to the paper it is written on," as regards wintering 

 bees, and still NoAice makes no comments on that, 

 unless it is to saj-, " May the Lord bless you." I 

 think, when a man casts a shadow on such men as L. 

 L. Langstroth, L. C. Root, Prof. Cook, and hosts of 

 others, and says that what they write is "bosh and 

 trash," it would be well to chide him a little, even if 

 he tliirr^ come from the ABC class. 



taking sections KltOM ItEES. 



On page 438, September Gleanings, I lind these 

 words: "How do you get your sections of h(jney 

 without ha\ ing the cappings gnawed by bees tilling 

 themselvesV" and the editor says he don't know, 

 " unless you oiien the hive very quickly and scram- 

 ble for the HUed section 3 before the bees get the cells 

 open." This gnawing of the capping in the fall of 

 theyear, orat any tim'j when there is a scarcity of 

 honey, when taking off comb honey, used to be a 

 great annoyance to me, and " scramble " as lively as 

 I could, if there was much on the hive, the bees 

 would always make the combs look bad by punctur- 

 ing the cappings to fill themsohes with honey. Of 

 late, however, I have taken off the board that closes 

 up the outside sections, and blown smoke in the 

 holes which the bees always leave in the corners of 

 the sections for a passage way for themselves. Blow 

 in considerable smoke, and as sooq as the bees have 

 mostly run off the tirst sections, remove them, and 

 you will find that scarcely a bee remained on the 

 second tier; blow in more smoke at the top holes of 

 these also, and then take them. Then serve the 

 next the same, and so on till all are olf, and you will 

 find that the bees will run down before filling them- 

 selves at all. As the smoke comes from above and 

 through their passage ways, their first instinct is to 

 scamper below, and down they go, leaving the hone.\- 

 clear. But you must be sprj', for if you linger till 

 they come back, they will then fill themselves in 

 spite of your smoke. With hybrid or black bees, 1 

 have taken off 30 to 40 lbs. with scarcely a bee on 

 the sections, in this way; but the Italians don't drive 

 as well, neither will they gnaw the combs as bad. 

 However, the Italians can be mostly driven in the 

 same way. G. M. Doolittli;. 



Borodino, N. V., Sept. 19, 1881. 



I am well aware that we often have queens 

 whose daughters produce no black bees, but 

 1 do not know that I ever owned one whose 

 daughters produced no two-banded or hy- 



