102 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



seedless fruits, it does not seem too 

 much to hope that we may also have a 

 race of stingless bees. It is said that 

 there are at least two distinct races of 

 stingless bees in South America, but 

 these races have not much value as 

 honey gatherers, and moreover they 

 build combs with very thick- walled cells, 

 and probably they would not be worth 

 cultivating as compared with the Eu- 

 ropean, Asiatic and African races but 

 there is apparently as good reason to 

 hope that these races may be used to 

 give their one good quality of stingless- 

 ness to our common races as there was 

 that the flounder and Japanese jelly- 

 fish could be used for the improvement 

 of the shad. If we can cross our pres- 

 ent races of bees with the giant bees of 

 India and obtain a race with long pro- 

 boscis and perhaps increased size (if 

 that should prove to be of any advan- 

 tage) and cross this improved race with 

 the South American stingless bees and 

 by these crosses secure a race with all 

 the good points of the Italian bee with 

 the additional feature of a lengthened 

 proboscis and with the sting taken away, 

 we shall then have a race of bees which 

 it will be difficult to improve. It 

 might be desirable to improve still farther 

 by breeding out the swarming instinct, 

 and there appears to be no reason why 

 the swarming instinct cannot be bred 

 out of bees as thoroughly as the sitting 

 insdnct has been bred out of certain 

 races of domestic fowls ; but now that 

 swarming can be so thoroughly con- 

 trolled by the use of queen traps and 

 automatic hivers, this point is not as 

 important as it would otherwise be. 



Of course no one knows as yet wheth- 

 er it will be possible to secure a cross 

 between our common races and those 

 of India or South America, and no one 

 knew whether a cross could be secured 

 between the shad and the flounder until 

 the experiment was tried ; but now that 

 the experiment has succeeded, the proc- 

 ess seems so simple that we wonder 

 why it was not done before. 



It seems to me that this matter is of 

 sufficient importance, and the prospect 



of success sufficiendy great, to justify 

 the agricultural department of the Unit- 

 ed States in undertaking the cost of 

 the experiments. The cost to the gov- 

 ernment would be trifling in compari- 

 son with the benefits which would be 

 gained if the experiment^ should be suc- 

 cessful ; but very few individuals who are 

 competent to do the work would have 

 the means to carry out the experiments 

 at their own expense, because a resi- 

 dence of a few years in South America 

 would perhaps be necessary in order to 

 study the habits of the stingless races in 

 their native country and to do this it 

 might be necessary to domesticate the 

 bees if this has not already been done. 

 I have not seen the statistics of the 

 last census ; but according to the cen- 

 sus of 1880 the honey crop for 1879 

 amounted to twenty- five million pounds 

 or about half a pound for the year to 

 each inhabitant of the United States. 

 At an average price of ten cents per 

 pound, the value of the honey crop for 

 that year would be about two and one- 

 half million dollars. If we had a race 

 of stingless bees the value of ihe crop 

 would soon be doubled, for many would 

 be induced to go into the business of 

 beekeeping who are now deterred by 

 fear of the stings or who live in thickly 

 settled villages and hesitate to keep 

 bees for fear that their neighbors will 

 consider their pets a nuisance. Even 

 in the oldest and most thickly settled 

 states the number of bees could easily 

 be doubled without exhausting the hon- 

 ey supply, and in suitable places by 

 planting special crops there is no limit 

 to the amount of honey which could 

 be produced. Some may argue that 

 an increased supply of honey would 

 mean lower prices, and that since it 

 is not easy to find a market for the pres- 

 ent supply, it would not be possible to 

 dispose of a larger quantity, but experi- 

 ence shows that as the supply of any 

 article of food increases, the demand 

 always keeps pace with the supply. 

 In the memory of men, who are not 

 yet very old, it was formerly very diffi- 

 cult to find a market for tomatoes, but 



