38 



Thus the king bird must be accounted an active friend of the bee 

 keeper. , 



Toads sometimes take a few bees about the entrances of the hives. 

 The remedy for this is to raise the hive a few inches from the ground 

 and provide a generous alighting board. 



Improved Stock. 



In bee keeping, as in other lines of husbandry, in addition to intelli- 

 gent care, " improved stock " is the watchword of success. We have 

 already seen that the dangers connected with the bee moth, with robbing 

 and even with wintering may be reduced to a minimum by attention to 

 this point. Most of the difficulty of handling "cross" bees may be met 

 in the same way, and this is no small matter with beginners, amateurs 

 and those who keep bees in towns or cities. 



For nearly fifty years the United States Department of Agriculture 

 has been searching the world over to discover superior races of bees 

 and has imported and tested a number of them. As a result we now 

 have the following races (except Apis dorsata), the comparative advan- 

 tages of which may be seen at a glance from the table given below. 

 Ten indicates highest excellence and so on down. 



Comparative Value of Different Races of Bees. 



From the rating in the table we see that probably no one would keep 

 black bees, if he knew better. Further than this, anyone who keeps 

 black bees in a locality endangers the purity of his neighbor's stock. In 

 most sections of the State this constitutes the greatest difficulty connected 

 with the maintenance of pure high grade bees, since the black bees are 

 likely to produce great numbers of drones which mate with the virgin 

 queens of other races. The hybrids resulting from this cross are some- 

 times vigorous bees and good workers, but are likely to be the meanest 

 bees to handle that we have. The practical impossibility of controlling 



* See " Nature Study and Life," Ginn & Co., 1902, p. 241. This table gives Professor 

 Frank's latest rating, including also the Caucasian race, under date, July 17, 1904. 



t This is Apis dorsata, Fab., the giant honey bee of East India. All attempts to im- 

 port it having failed, little is known concerning its relative value. It builds huge combs 

 live or si-Y feet in length and three or four feet wide attached to overhanging ledges or 

 to branches of lofty trees. 



