AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



631 



These individuals are almost always 

 arrested by the guards, and have to go 

 through a process of pulling and haul- 

 ing about, and are frequently treated so 

 roughly that they take wing when they 

 manage to get loose. The guards in a 

 diseased colony are sometimes seen 

 gnawing at one of these bees after they 

 are dead, though not often. 



Going into the apiary in the morning 

 I can hear the dismal sound made by 

 the bees carrying out the dead. From 

 the hives that are worst, as many as 25 

 dead bees may be seen on the bottom- 

 board at once. As compared with the 

 number that die abroad while on the 

 wing, or in the fields, this is only a small 

 percentage of the daily loss. I would be 

 glad to know if these are the symptoms 

 of the "bee-paralysis" or "nameless 

 bee-disease ;" and if any of the Bee 

 Journal readers know of any course of 

 treatment that will cure the disease, I 

 should be very grateful to have it given 

 in the Bee Joubnal. There are prob- 

 ably others in the same situation as my- 

 self, who would be glad to know of a 

 remedy. 



At the suggestion of Mr. A. I. Root, I 

 experimented with one colony by feeding 

 them honey diluted with salty water, 

 but it did no good as far as I could see. 

 Last spring a little salt was thrown on 

 the bottom-board of each hive, but no 

 immediate benefits followed. The im- 

 provement came with the hot weather, 

 and with cool weather there seems to 

 come a return of the disease. 



Columbia, Miss. 



[Will those who have had experience 

 with the above described trouble, please 

 help out Mr. " Novice," if possible. — Ed.] 



Extra-Light Colored Bees and 

 Their Friends. 



Written for the American Bee Journal 

 BY CHABLE8 WHITE. 



It was hardly fair for Dr. Gallup 

 (page 499) to ask the editor to hold us 

 while the Doctor does the pounding. I 

 would prefer it the other way, and the 

 Doctor do the holding and the editor the 

 pounding. 



I am ready to agree with Dr. Gallup 

 on some of his points, while I will have 

 to ask some questions before I can agree 

 with him on all. 



The first question that I would like to 

 ask is. Did he ever try getting five- 

 banded bees the fifth generation after 



starting with a black virgin queen, hav- 

 ing her mated to a pure Italian drone, 

 then using one of her daughters, having 

 her purely mated, and so on, to the fifth 

 generation ? If he did, and succeeded 

 in getting five-banded bees, how does he 

 know for sure that the matings were all 

 with a pure Italian drone ? In that 

 way of breeding there could not be any 

 in-breeding. 



Now the query is in my mind whether 

 that small amount of black blood would 

 make the drones larger and more yellow 

 than the pure Italian drones; if so, 

 would not that go to prove that the 

 black bees are of a superior race of bees, 

 and very yellow at that ? 



If five-banded bees can be produced 

 with one-fifth black blood in them, what 

 would be the result ? If we had started 

 with a daughter of an imported Italian 

 queen, the result would be five and six 

 banded bees. I have tried this, but not 

 the Doctor's plan. 



I have had the best chance to experi- 

 ment on that line this summer that I 

 ever had, as the summer was very dry, 

 so much so that a great many bees 

 starved in June and the forepart of 

 July, and the consequence was, there 

 were no swarms nor any drones except 

 where bees were fed. I fed until the 

 middle of August, and had plenty of 

 those fine, large yellow drones — they 

 were beauties — of the five-banded race. 

 I use imported queens for my breeding 

 queens. Now the chance for pure mat- 

 ing for my young queens could not be 

 better and they proved it by their prog- 

 eny. A great many of them rear a fine 

 four-banded bee, every worker-bee just 

 alike, and the poorest of them shows a 

 fine three-banded bee. 



Other seasons I would get a queen 

 mismated, and once in a while their 

 progeny would be all kinds of markings, 

 from no band to three, all from the same 

 queen. These were daughters of Im- 

 ported queens. 



Now for the daughters of five-banded 

 or golden queens : I find when they ap- 

 pear to be mismated their progeny is 

 generally three-banded and all evenly 

 marked. Don't that look as if the five- 

 banded bee was the strongest blood? 



I have had queens reared early in the 

 season, when the weather was quite 

 cold, and the queens were nearly always 

 dark, and sometimes black. The weath- 

 er appears to have the same effect on 

 the drones as it does on the queens. I 

 have had some of those young queens 

 show very dark bees — so dark that they 

 did not show the Italian at all, only by 

 their traits. They were kind to handle, 



