THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



191 



him ; for it would indeed be very desir- 

 able,, and a great boon to beekeepers at 

 large, if we could take drones and 

 choice queens and have them crossed. 

 In speaking of this we do not forget D. 

 A. Jones' experiments in the same di- 

 rection, on some islands in Georgian 

 Bay. The islands being barren of nec- 

 tar bearing blossoms, the enter])rise was 

 abandoned on account of the expense. 

 The great trouble all along in queen- 

 rearing has been the inability on the part 

 of beekeepers to perfectly isolate and 

 so perpetuate certain desirable charac- 

 teristics in certain bees ; and it is only 

 those who have easy access to an island, 

 who can do so with reasonable certainty 

 or success. 



[In my opinion there is not an expe- 

 rienced queen breeder in the world who 

 will express such views as Mr. Ernest 

 Root has in the above. I have clearly 

 shown in the last tiiirty years, that bees 

 need nut be kept more than one mile 

 apart to secure absolutely pure mating. 

 There are fifty queen breeders in this 

 country who can, and do ship far better 

 queens reared in the usual way (as 

 they have always reared them, I mean) 

 than any breeder can rear or have fer- 

 tilized on any isolated island. Any 

 queen breeder who understands his 

 business always selects choice queens 

 to rear his young queens from, as well 

 as to select the drones to be ust>d to 

 mate the cjueens. Now can E. R. Root, 

 or any other beekeeper show wherein 

 that queens mated the same distance on 

 land from other bees as they would be 

 on some island, are not just as good ? 



Well, Brother Root, have you forgot- 

 ten your reply given in Gleanings to the 

 person who asked you a question touch- 

 ing this same point? Just look over the 

 back numbers of Gleanings and read 

 what you said. "Never mind the color, 

 etc., of the drones." 



The i)roper way to select drones is 

 by the full colony of bees, and not by 

 hand picking. 'Tis the fellow who 

 wants to experiment in rearmg queens 

 and make people believe he is produc- 



inj. a better class of bees, that is hand- 

 picking drones ; in fact, it is an adver- 

 tising dodge anyway,andit seems tome 

 it will be so understood by all who 

 purchase queens. I do not see how 

 anyone can select any (luality but color 

 in hand picking drones. If the selec- 

 tion is made for other ciualities, it would 

 no doubt be interesting to a majority of 

 beekeepers to know by what one judges 

 the good points of drones when the 

 hand-picking process is resorted to. 



I'he desirable drones and the way to 

 select them is to take the colony that 

 has produced the largest amount of 

 honey during the season, and use such 

 drones only. It need not be done by 

 hand picking, and the queens need not 

 be carted off to some isolated island 

 u])on which some one has expended 

 $ioo,oco in beautifying. 



Just keep the bees in their own apiary 

 and place drone-traps on all hives from 

 which the drones are not desired. By 

 using drone excluding metal in the traps, 

 all the queens in the apiaries nearest 

 the selected drones can be mated to 

 those particular drones. 



Some years ago D. A. Jones tested 

 the experiment of having queens fer- 

 tilized on an island some five miles from 

 the main land. It was not a success. 

 The queens, so fertilized, were no better 

 in any respect than those produced in 

 the apiaries on the main land and in 

 the yards of any careful queen breeder. 



If any one desires to experiment with 

 bees and queens on an isolated island, 

 there can be no objection thereto ; but 

 if these same parties desire people to 

 believe that such a method is the only 

 one by which pure queens of any race, 

 or queens of the l)est quality can be pro- 

 duced, the Api will be found opposed to 

 the scheme] 



Where are those promised new bee- 



papers 



? I do not believe we shall have 



a new crop of them for a long time to 

 come. 



Don't fail to see January Api. 



