THE AMERICAN A PIC UL TUB I ST. 



119 



no means follows that -all yellow queens 

 in Carniola produce yellow banded 

 bees. The bees of golden colored queens 

 are often quite uniformly gray in color. 



Of course, it would be quite possible 

 to take bees imported from Carniola 

 and produce by constant selection of 

 those on which the yellow was most 

 plainly visible a full banded yellow strain ; 

 but I would not call them "yellow Car- 

 niolans," for they would owe their ori- 

 gin to an accidental im[)urity found in 

 Carniola, and would not be bred from 

 typical Carniolans. Carnic Italians, or 

 better still, Canio-Italians, would tell 

 more accurately what such bees actu- 

 ally "were. If, as has been done thousands 

 of times, hyljrid Italians are taken to a 

 locality where only pure blacks (the 

 common. German, or brown bees i exist, 

 the surrounding apiaries, as is well 

 known, will soon show some workers 

 with yellow bands. And any person, un- 

 derstanding the principles of breeding, 

 will readily admit that constant selec- 

 tion of those black or common queens 

 as breeders, whose workers show some 

 yellow, and the -exclusion of drones 

 from .all black or common queens whose 

 workers show no yellow, will eventually 

 pj-oduce workers as well marked with 

 yellow as any Italians, and this with no 

 further introtluction of Italian blood. 

 But no one would claim- that these bees 

 should be called yellow blacks, yellow 

 common bees, yellow German bees, or 

 yellow brown bees. Yet there would be 

 as much justification for some name of 

 this sort as for the use of the term "yel- 

 low Carniolans" in connection with the 

 yellow bees *hat might be bred by con- 

 stant selection pracdsed upon bees 

 brought from Carniola, for the manner 

 of producing both these strains would 

 be exactly the same. 



After locating in Carniola I pursued 

 a course of breeding quite o])posite to 

 that described above, that is, I con- 

 stantly selected as breeders the mothers 

 of gray bees, and when I left there four 

 years later my whole apiary was stocked 

 with breeding queens whose progeny 

 were quite uniformly steel or whitish gray, 



large bodied, fine workers, and remark- ' 

 ably gende. After these years devoted * 

 to queen rearing in Carniola itself, pre- 

 ceded by a longer period of experience ; 

 in importing and testing Carniolans by 

 the hundred, I am still of the opinion 

 that the course I pursued in adhering 

 to the gray Carniolans as the original, , 

 the typical and preferable race, was the 1 

 best. And I am pleased to say that 

 this type ofCarniolan is in no danger of ^ 

 being supplanted by yellow bees. This j 

 is especially true as regards the Upper , 

 Carniolan regions — the valley of the 

 Save river and its tributaries, from which 

 part of Carniola it is best to import \ 

 queens if one wishes the race in its great- ] 

 est purity. 



Permit me a few words about the 

 quotation from Mr. Cowan : "No one — [ 

 in Europe at any rate — has ever seen or : 

 »heard of pure Carniolans being yellow." 

 As I do not agree with certain Carnio- ; 

 Ian breeders, whose opinion I have i 

 quoted, that "an occasional tendency ; 

 towards orange or rusty-red bands was ■i 

 always the case with all Carniolans, but 

 that it was no mark of impurity in the 

 race," it is evident that my views ac- -i 

 cord with the statement credited to Mr. j 

 Cowan, and I fail to see in what way the ] 

 writer on page 80 of the American Api- | 

 CULTURIST has (in that article, at least) : 

 shown anything contradictory, unrelia- 

 ble, or incongruous in Mr. Cowan's ut- 

 terances on this subject. The editor of i 

 the Britisli Bee Journal does not of 1 

 course by the mere act of publishing a i 

 communication subscribe to the views ] 

 expressed by the writer thereof. He ' 

 published my article containing my own | 

 statement that yellow banded bees are ] 

 met with in various parts of Carniola,, i 

 and also my quotation of certain Carni- ■' 

 olan bee raisers who claimed that such' ■ 

 bees were not impure. But it seems '^ 

 that neither Mr. Cowan nor myself think 

 them pure. How he explains their im- ; 

 purity (if he has ever attempted to do 

 so) I do not know, nor would I attach \ 

 any weight to his views in this direction, ■ 

 for I do not consider him any authority ! 

 in this matter. My own explanation, 



