1905 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



863 



an intense lover of bees, and anxious to do 

 every thing possible for the advancement of 

 the bee-keeping profession. 



Mr. Benton is of medium height; I should 

 say about 5 feet 7 inches; weighs about 130 

 pounds; and, though his hair and moustache 

 are iron gray, his eye is bright and his step 

 has the vigor of youth, and it will be many 

 years before he will be called upon to see 

 Professor Osier. 



From what I saw and heard I am con- 

 vinced that no other man in the United 

 States is as well qualified for the position of 

 government apiarist; for, in addition to many 

 years of experience in keeping and studying 

 bees in this his native land, Mr. Benton has 

 spent years in Cyprus, Austria, Turkey, 

 India, and the Holy Land, in forming an 

 acquaintance with and in studying the habits 

 of many races of bees in their native habi- 

 tat. In addition to all this, Mr. Benton is a 

 born investigator along entomological lines, 

 and wears with honor to himself and his 

 alma mater his degree of Master of Science. 



So much for the man— now for our visit 

 to the apiary. It has been only within the 

 last two years that the government has had 

 an apiary, and that quite limited— only 50 

 colonies, of several pure and some hybrid 

 crosses— simply for purposes of experimen- 

 tation. The apiary is located right in the 

 heart of Washington City, on a beautiful 

 common in the rear of the Agricultural 

 Building. In the yard are colonies of pure 

 Italians, Cyprians, Carniolans, and Cauca- 

 sians, and a number of colonies of crosses of 

 above-named breeds. The mating-ground is 

 over on the Virginia side at Arlington, so 

 that there is no trouble on the score of con- 

 troling such matings as are desired. 



I was much impressed by the freedom 

 with which Mr. Benton handled a colony of 

 pure Cyprians, and I looked upon these ope- 

 rations from a safe distance, knowing full 

 well the vindictive disposition of this race of 

 bees. The morning was very cool, making 

 it unfavorable for handling any race of bees, 

 to say nothing of Cyprians; but in spite of 

 this Mr. Benton, without veil, gloves, or 

 smoke, opened a hive of pure Cyprians and 

 lifted frame after frame from the hive and 

 shook in the air the bees from off their 

 combs, and, although they flew about him 

 quite excitedly, yet they made no effort to 

 sting him, which was to me a revelation. 

 Mr. Benton assured me, however, that the 

 Cyprians were a race not to be trusted, 

 and when once fully aroused could not be 

 subdued by the densest smoke, and for this 

 reason they would never be generally kept, 

 although they excel all other races as honey- 

 gatherers. He did believe, however, and 

 some crosses that he has made confirm his 

 belief, that by mating a Cyprian queen to a 

 drone of a gentle race like the Carniolan or 

 Caucasian we could in the progeny get a 

 bee that combines the honey-gathering zeal 

 of the Cyprians with the gentleness of the 

 race with which the queen was crossed; and 

 in this connection Mr. Benton assured me 

 that in a cross the offspring partook more 



of the quality of the drone than of the 

 queen, so for that reason he had used drones 

 of gentle races with which to fertilize the 

 Cyprian queens rather than the drones of 

 Cyprians with which to produce a cross with 

 queens of the gentler races. We next open- 

 ed a colony of pure Carniolans, a race with 

 which the writer had had previous pleasant 

 experience, and found them to be remark- 

 ably gentle, a trait characteristic of this 

 race. Mr. Benton stated that he could not 

 account for the prejudice that so many bee- 

 keepers have for this race, for they are, 

 with the Caucasians, of which we will speak 

 in a little while, the gentlest of all races, 

 not even excepting the Italians. 



Several years ago the writer secured a 

 Carniolan queen bred from an imported 

 mother, and purely mated, and the gentle- 

 ness of her offspring was almost beyond 

 belief. Their hives could be opened and jar- 

 red without smoke, and the writer often 

 handled them upon coming from the stable 

 with the odor of the horse upon him, and 

 they did not resent it— a fact that can hardly 

 be said of other races. Coming from the 

 cold Alpine regions of Austria, they be- 

 gan to work earlier in the season than the 

 blacks or Italians, and would begin work 

 earlier in the morning and continue even 

 into the cool of the early evening because of 

 their hardy constitutions, due to centuries 

 of residence in the cool mountains of 

 Austria. Their comb honey was whiter 

 than that made by Italians, due to the fact 

 that they do not cram the cell so full of 

 honey as do other races— this often giving 

 it a watery appearance— but they leave the 

 cell just a trifle short of being full and thus 

 preserve the snowy whiteness of the cap- 

 pings, so much desired by the purchaser of 

 a high-class grade of honey. Mr. Benton 

 declared that years of experience had taught 

 him that, with proper care, Carniolans were 

 no more prone to swarming than other races 

 —a fact that the writer also had found by 

 experience. These bees are black, with bod- 

 ies more or less covered with gray down, 

 and ringed on the abdomen with gray. 



We next examined some crosses of Cyp- 

 rians and Carniolans, also of Cyprian and 

 Caucasians, and found in each cross a fine 

 blending of the characteristics of each race. 

 The main object of my visit was to see and 

 learn the facts concerning the Caucasian 

 bees, as the daily press has had much to say 

 of them of late, some journals going so far 

 as to say that they were a non-stinging race 

 of bees. There is but one pure colony of 

 Caucasians in the country, and that is in one 

 corner of the apiary, and from that colony a 

 number of queens are being reared, and in 

 this connection friend Benton requested me 

 to say that the Government has no idea of 

 going into a free distribution of queens sim- 

 ilar to its annual seed distribution, as the 

 demands would be beyond all possibility of 

 filling. In 1902 Mr. Benton secured three 

 Caucasian queens direct from Russia, and in 

 1903 had full colonies with which to begin 

 the season. The most striking quality pos- 



