14 



AMERICAN BEE JOURMAJU 



On Important Subjects. 



My Impressions of tlie Punic Bee. 



KEY. L. L. LANC4STROTH. 



Having had, for the first time, an op- 

 portunity of seeing the so-called Punic 

 bee, in the apiary of Mr. A. I. Root, I 

 will give my impressions of it, formed 

 from what information I could procure 

 from the apiarist, Mr. Spafford, who has 

 the care of Mr. Root's bees. 



The single colony in the apiary was 

 far from being strong when put into 

 winter quarters. At the present time 

 (June 4) they are much stronger in bees 

 and brood than any other colony that 

 last season was of about equal strength. 

 I expected to find them quite dark — 

 much darker, indeed, than the common 

 so-called German brown bee. Nothing, 

 however, in their color would have sug- 

 gested to me the idea that they were not 

 ordinary black bees (I should have been 

 much better pleased if Mr. Root had had 

 a single colony of pure black bees) ; nor 

 did they seem much if any different in 

 size from that bee. Of course, there were 

 some bees in the colony with Italian 

 markings ; but these were evidently 

 strangers which had intruded themselves 

 upon the Punics, as all the young bees 

 appeared to have the same markings. 



When opened the first time, and care- 

 fully looked over, the queen was not 

 found. The bees were much agitated, 

 and acted almost precisely like ordinary 

 black bees — racing backward and for- 

 ward on the bottom-board, and over the 

 sides of the hive. A second . search for 

 the queen was equally unsuccessful. 



This morning (June 6) the weather 

 being as favorable as it could be, bright, 

 warm, and calm, with the help of Mr. 

 Spafford, and without any assistance 

 from Mr. Ernest Root, who wished me 

 to give my own impressions, without any 

 suggestions from him, I carefully ex- 

 amined them again. I gave them suffi- 

 cient time to fill themselves with honey 

 before the combs were lifted out. The 

 same agitation which I noticed on Sat- 

 urday, June 4, I noticed again — the bees 

 running from one side of the bottom- 

 board to the other, and evidently acting, 

 as nearly as I could judge, much like 

 black bees. 



We took out the frames and examined 

 them at least three times before we could 



find the queen. Four years ago, in the 

 apiary of Mr. James Heddon, of Dow- 

 agiac, Mich., I saw more than a dozen 

 hives opened, and the queens were 

 found, I should say, in half the time 

 that we spent in finding this one queen, 

 which was noticed near the bottom of a 

 frame, evidently frightened, running 

 around the corners, and seeking in 

 every way to hide herself. In this re- 

 spect she seemed to me to act like an 

 ordinary black queen. 



As to the bees, they were not as 

 " scary " as I have frequently noticed 

 the blacks to be. When a comb was 

 lifted out they did not string out from 

 the bottom of it and drop upon the 

 grass, ready to crawl up my pants, as is 

 so common with the black race. 



Now as to the color of the queen : She 

 was not nearly as dark as I expected her 

 to be. I know that I have seen many 

 imported Italian queens darker than she 

 was. On a mere superficial observation 

 one might have declared that we had 

 here nothing but common black bees ; 

 but a more thorough examination sug- 

 gested that they might be a cross of, 

 say, the black with some other race. 

 The color of the queen might again sug- 

 gest that the Punics were a cross be- 

 tween the black and the Italian races, 

 as the so-called hybrid Swedish clover 

 resembles in many respects the red and 

 white clover, seeding in the first crop 

 like the white, and sending up many 

 stalks of blossoms, like the red, the size 

 and color of the bloom being a beautiful 

 compromise between the two kinds. 



Now, it is quite supposable that the 

 Punic, so-called, may be a cross between 

 the black and some of the yellow races, 

 and may have been, like the Morgan 

 horse, the starting of a race of bees pos- 

 sessed of uncommon and valuable peculi- 

 arities. We know that the Morgan sire 

 so impressed himself upon his progeny, 

 that even now, after many generations, 

 there can easily be seen in Morgan horses 

 the type of their great ancestor. 



The question then arises, How can we 

 decide that this bee is worthy of propa- 

 gation ? It evidently has some of the 

 bad qualities of the black bees, such 

 as its " scary " nature, and the difficulty 

 of finding the queen. I could not, on so 

 short an observation, decide whether it 

 had the cowardly nature of the black 

 bee ; whether in nuclei made of this 

 race we should find them so easily dis- 

 couraged as to "skedaddle " on the first 

 appearance of adverse circumstances. 



And, again, it is impossible, from so 

 slight an observation, to know whether, 

 like the black bee, it is a natural-born 



