THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



145 



bees of Carniola are yellow-banded. 

 Well, Mr. B. is entitled to his opinion 

 and so are the two "intelligent" bee- 

 keepers of upper Carniola, and they are, 

 in my opinion, more likely to be correct 

 and the better judges as to what is native 

 or foreign to their soil. 



Mr. B. says :— "Of course, it would be 

 quite possible to take bees imported from 

 Carniola and produce by constant selection 

 of tliose on wliich the yellow was most 

 plainly visible a full banded yelloAV strain ; 

 but 1 would not cdlthem "yellow Carnio- 

 lans." for they would owe their origin to 

 an accidental impurity found in Carniola, 

 and would not.be bred from typical Carni- 

 olans." 



What would you call them, if not yel- 

 low Carniolans? Are these bees I pro- 

 duced direct from dark Carniolans any- 

 thing but Carniolans? 



'I'he above quotation is the one point 

 that pleases me immensely. Mr. Quig- 

 ley, editor of Progressive Beekeeper, 

 Mr. Gieen of Dayton, III., a man who 

 can sling ink better and with more ef- 

 fect than most men who try to do a 

 fellow up, Mr. Lowmaster and Mr. 

 Robinson, are especially invited to com- 

 ment in the Api on what Mr. Benton 

 says in the above. 



The gentlemen named have called me 

 a swindler, and a humbug because I 

 claimed I had produced yellow bees 

 from the dark strain Carniolan race 

 and sold them for golden Carniolans. 

 What a controversy would have been 

 saved had Mr. Benton written this same 

 article about two years ago. 



"Carnic Italians, or better still, Carno- 

 Itaiians, would tell more accurately what 

 such bees actually were. If. as has been 

 done thousands of times, hybrid Italians 

 are taken to a locality where only pure 

 blacks (the common, German, or broAvu 

 beesj exist, the surrounding apiaries, as is 

 well known, will soon show some workers 

 with yellow bands. And any person, under- 

 standing the principles of breeding, will 

 readily admit that constant selection 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 produce workers 

 as well luarked with yellow as any Italian, 



and this with no further introduction of 

 Italian blood." 



Does not this last quotation from Mr. 

 Benton rub the gentlemen above named 

 rather hard? Yes, 'tis true, those men 

 who so unmercifully criticised me for ad- 

 vertising and selling "yellow" Carniolans 

 were ignorant of the correct principles 

 of breeding bees by selection. 



But no one would claim that these bees 

 should be called yellow blacks, yellow com- 

 mon bees, yellow German bees, or yelloAV 

 brown bees. 



We can both agree as to calling bees 

 "yellow blacks." etc. If I succeed in 

 breeding yellow bees from native Amer- 

 ican or the German strains, I would not 

 call them yellow blacks or yellow brown. 

 Would call them '"yellow American" or 

 yellow German bees. Would it not be a 

 correct name? Now if yellow bees can 

 be bred from German or the black 

 American races, the only proper name 

 would be ''yellow German or yellow 

 American" bees. Would it not sound 

 as well to call them yellow German as 

 brown German bees? 



If I can breed a yellow strain of bees 

 from the Funics without making one 

 cross from any other race, should not 

 such a strain be called yellow Funics? 



The proper name should be derived 

 from the original stock from which the 

 strain was produced or developed. One 

 moie quotation from Mr. B. and I am 

 done. 



"Permit me a few words about the quo- 

 tation from Mr. Cowan: "No one— in 

 Europe at any rate — has ever seen or heard 

 of pure Carnioliiis being yellow." As I 

 do not agree with certain Carniolan breed- 

 ers, whose opinion I have quoted, that "an 

 occasional tendency towards orange or 

 rusty-red bands was always the ca^e Avith 

 all Carniolans, but that it was no mark of 

 impurity in the race," it is evident that my 

 views accord with the statement credited 

 to Mr. Cowan, and I fail to see in what 

 way the writer on page 80 of the Ajieui- 

 CAN Apiculturist has (in that article, at 

 least) .'^liown anything contradictory, un- 

 r<*iiable, or incongruous in Mr. Cowan's 

 utterances on this subject. " 



I fail to see how the above in any way 

 helps Mr. Cowan. Mr. Benton had al- 



