AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



337 



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Introducing New Blood to Our 

 Apiaries. 



Written for the American Bee Journal 

 BY DR. G. L. TINKER. 



The best time of the year to supersede 

 undesirable queens is in August and 

 September. They may be old queens or 

 hybrid queens, or queens that may be 

 objectionable from some other cause. 

 Each apiarist will have his own notions 

 of improvement of his stock of bees. 

 While some will want only 3-banded 

 yellow bees, others seem satisfied with 

 a mixed strain ; and it will have to be 

 admitted that for honey-producing, a 

 mixed race, and particularly the Syrio- 

 German hybrid and the Italio-German 

 hybrid, are unexcelled as workers. 

 Many bee-keepers deny this statement, 

 but if they have good reason to do so, 

 they have been every year introducing 

 several queens of unrelated pure Italian 

 stock, and so have kept up the vigor of 

 the queens and activity of the workers — 

 a steady improvement being the result. 

 Hence, it may be admitted that pure, 

 well-bred Italians are fully the equal 

 of the best hybrids for honey, but not 

 that they are better. The fact remains 

 that the constant infusing of new blood 

 into an apiary tends to the development 

 of the highest producing qualities of the 

 bees ; and this may be said of hybrid 

 bees as well as of pure Italians. 



My brother, C. O. Tinker, residing in 

 Ashtabula county, Ohio, has as good a 

 strain of bees for practical honey-pro- 

 ducing as there is in the world to-day. 

 They are only Syrio-German hybrids, 

 the mother-stock being of Syrian origin, 

 and hence every queen is a Syrian by 

 direct descent. His start was made 

 from my Syrio-Albino bees. However, 

 they are now quite dark, from having 

 every year mated to the common black 

 drones of the locality. These bees are 

 now great swarmers, because so highly 

 prolific, and still they produce a large 

 amount of honey of the finest quality 



every year. They are not only the finest 

 comb-builders, but are energetic to a 

 high degree. Though a colony may 

 swarm until a few bees are left, they 

 build right up again in a little time, and 

 are ready for the toughest winter on 

 record, without protection, and in the 

 thinnest of hives. Although they win- 

 ter better with protection, I have been 

 surprised that bees could stand such 

 cold winters in a single-story of my 

 small hive without care or protection of 

 any kind. 



The fact is, my brother has the bees 

 and can't sell them, or even give them 

 away, and not having the time to attend 

 to them as they should be, they simply 

 take care of themselves, store honey, 

 swarm and go to the woods. He has 

 lost 15 swarms so far this season, from 

 11 colonies has obtained several hun- 

 dred pounds of the choicest honey, and 

 his V6 colonies left are all strong and 

 in good condition. For hap-hazard bee- 

 keeping, this beats the old box-hive 

 men badly, as the bees are in the Non- 

 pareil bee-hive, that I had supposed re- 

 quired much care to winter and breed 

 up into serviceable colonies. He uses 

 but one story of the hive, and seems to 

 get as large colonies as any one could 

 desire. 



There is no doubt about the extreme 

 hardiness of the bees, and their great 

 prolificness — two of the most valuable 

 features in a strain of bees that I be- 

 lieve are largely the result of much 

 crossing the Syrian with the German 

 race of bees. The most singular thing 

 about them is the fact that although 

 located close to the business center of a 

 city, they never have stung any one out- 

 side of the fence that incloses them, and 

 several families live very close, and one 

 not over 40 feet from the bees. 



Now, lest someone will want some of 

 these bees, I will not forget to add that 

 they are the ugliest bees to handle I ever 

 saw. They must be well smoked, and 

 then rubber gloves and bee-veil are 

 necessary, besides tying up the coat- 

 sleeves and pant's-legs, as they will 

 crawl all over for a place to sting. It 

 is even dangerous to go near them with- 

 out protection. And this is the reason 

 no one wants to buy them, or even take 

 them as a gift. So long as they give no 

 trouble, they are unmolested except by 

 the fortified venture of my brother 

 among them for honey. 



It is probably not generally known 

 that the crossing of unrelated bees of 

 any pure race results in producing bees 

 more difficult to handle than the origi- 



