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THE AMERICAl^ BEE JOURNAL. 



this convention successful, offer the 

 following resolutions : 



Resolved, That our thanks are due, 

 and are hereby extended to our re- 

 tiring oflBcers, for their untiring ef- 

 forts to promote the interests of this 

 society, and especially to the General 

 Manager of the National Bee-Keep- 

 ers' Union, Mr. Thos. G. Newman, 

 for his success in securing reduced 

 rates on the railroads. 



Resolved, That we will carry with 

 us to our homes an abiding remem- 

 brance of the generous hospitality 

 ■with which we have been received 

 and entertained in this city of In- 

 dianapolis. 



Resolved, That we hereby tender 

 our hearty sympathy to our honored 

 father in apiculture, the Rev. L. L. 

 Langstroth, in his present illness, and 

 pray that he may be speedily restored 

 to health. 



Resolved, That we also heartily 

 sympathize with our brother, Mr. 

 Vandervort, on account of the seri- 

 ous illness in his family, which has 

 detained him from his usual place 

 among us. 



N. W. McLain, of Aurora, Illinois, 

 then read an essay on "Bee-Keeping 

 and Apiculture." 



Mr. R. L. Taylor, of Lapeer, Mich., 

 gave the following on 



THE COMING BEE. 



What encouragement have we to 

 work for the advent of " the coming 

 bee V" Shall we breed bees for color, 

 or for honey-producing qualities V For 

 fancy points, or for pecuniary profit y 

 These are questions that must be 

 fully settled in our minds before we 

 can intelligently discuss the subject 

 of the improvement of the honey-bee. 

 We hear much of our breeders of 

 white-haired bees, and gentle bees, 

 and golden-banded bees, and patent 

 Albino bees, but we hear little of 

 breeders of bees for profit only, i. e., 

 for profit in the production of honey, 

 for, no doubt, breeders of these fancy 

 bees find them very profitable. They 

 sell all the queens they can produce 

 at from three to ten times as much as 

 can be obtained for queens without 

 these fancy qualities— queens which 

 are every whit as good, yes, generally 

 much better as honey-producers. 



We are fast degenerating into the 

 condition of the poultry fraternity. 

 With them, feathers fix the price of 

 the chicken ; but we err with far less 

 temptation, for bees can never be 

 made popular pets with which to 

 please the eye and tickle the fancy of 

 our uninitiated visitors. I would that 

 all breeders of fancy bees would 

 heartly seek with us for the bee that 

 can produce the most; we cannot go 

 with them, for, to use the slang of the 

 period, we must have a bee for " busi- 

 ness." But we who can so far liber- 

 ate ourselves from the flavor of classic 

 things as to think "American" as 

 pretty a name as " Ligurian," and 

 can see the most beauty in what does 

 the most, what hope have we for the 

 improvement of the bee y 



All honey-producers, I suppose, 

 harbor more or less hope that the 

 honey-bee will be found capable of 



marked improvement ; but our hopes 

 undoubtedly are of all degrees of 

 vigor and stability, according to each 

 individual's clearness of knowledge 

 and comprehension of the facts 

 touching the subject, as well as to his 

 manner of looking at these facts. 

 Whatever improvement is possible 

 can, without question, be most quickly 

 reached or approximated by unity of 

 eflort.f or everywhere there is strength 

 in union. It is desirable, then, that 

 this subject be discussed until we 

 may, if possible, come to stand on 

 some common ground. 



As my time will permit me to set 

 forth only an outline of my thoughts 

 on this subject, let us take at the out- 

 set a brief view of what nature had 

 done for the bee before it came to the 

 hand of man. We must not forget 

 that in a state of nature the rule of 

 the survival of the fittest is a very 

 different thing from what it is when 

 guided by the hand of man. In a 

 wild state the chief quality required 

 by the bees to fit it to survive— to 

 persist in living— is the ability to 

 provide under the severest stress of 

 circumstances sufficient food to sup- 

 ply its wants during the ensuing 

 period of repose ; in the ox it is not 

 good beef, nor rich milk, but horns, 

 strength, courage and agility to en- 

 able him to overcome or to escape 

 his enemies and to master his mates 

 that are not so highly gifted with 

 these qualities. 



During the roll of unnumbered cen- 

 turies nature has been training the 

 bee in the gathering of honey, and 

 the greater the stress of circumstances 

 under which the bee has existed, the 

 more thorough has been its educa- 

 tion. With the ox most of the quali- 

 ties that fit him to survive in a wild 

 state, specially fit him in domestica- 

 tion to die early. To fit him for 

 man's use, all these qualities must be 

 changed, and to effect the change the 

 rule of the survival of the fittest 

 must in its application be entirely 

 changed. Now the qualities that 

 make fitness to survive are, the most 

 and the best beef and milk. But note 

 that nature's education of the bee has 

 all been precisely in the line calcu- 

 lated to produce the character and 

 qualities which man so much desires 

 it to posess, so much does the consti- 

 tution of things favor the bee-keeper. 

 Of the ox, man gets from nature little 

 but a germ ; of the bee, the well-nigh 

 ripened fruit. 



But on the other hand, in the 

 domesticated state the bee runs great 

 risk of positive deterioration. The 

 ox naturally improves under the 

 hand of man, because selections for 

 breeding will be made almost with- 

 out thought, and his better food and 

 protection will favorably affect the 

 growth and development ; but with 

 the bee better pasturage and better 

 protection too often prolong the ex- 

 istence of the poorest, and so their 

 blood is perpetuated in subsequent 

 stock. This would be true under 

 what is known as the old method of 

 bee-keeping, but with how much 

 greater force does it apply to bee- 

 keeping under our new methods, with 

 our feeders, and packing, and cellars, 



and the ready means which the mov- 

 able comb furnishes us of preserving 

 the lives of queens which are ready t* 

 perish on account of a lack of at- 

 tendants. 



Queens have a market value, and 

 everything having a market value 

 must be saved without regard to its 

 intrinsic worth I Many complaints 

 have been made on account of the low 

 price at which queens must be sold, 

 but I sometimes think that it would 

 be immeasurably better, since we 

 cannot well fix their quality, if their 

 value were so much lower than it is 

 that there would be no temptation to 

 preserve the lives of inferior ones. 



So we have in our favor the mighty 

 hand of Nature, which with one 

 finger supplied the sparse pasturage 

 of the wilderness and the mountain, 

 and with another inexorably destroy- 

 ed such colonies as did not from such 

 pasturage lay up a sufficient supply 

 tor their wants. And on what a high 

 vantage ground this places us I Then 

 we have the wonderful rapidity with 

 which we may get increase from su- 

 perior stock, and we must not forget 

 to thank our stern winters that de- 

 stroy the bees of those who are care- 

 less of the comfort, and so of the 

 qualities of their honey-producing 

 stock. 



But on the other hand, we have 

 much to contend with. The rich 

 pasturage of our cultivated lands gen- 

 erally enables bees of the poorest 

 quality to get enough for their wants; 

 and what an army we have of those 

 who are careful of their bees, but 

 careless of their quality ! They pre- 

 serve all their queens because it is a 

 calamity to let a colony become 

 queenless, and their colonies that are 

 too poor to collect enough to supply 

 their own wants they feed, for it is 

 also bad to lose a colony. The preva- 

 lent curse too of breeding for fancy 

 qualities is abroad, and, like foul 

 brood, is frightfully contagious. But 

 worse, perhaps, than all, we have not 

 learned to control the drones— worse 

 because with the drones under con- 

 trol all these other obstacles would 

 almost vanish. 



One hundred years ago the Col- 

 lingses of Great Britain undertook 

 the improvement of the ox. For their 

 purpose they selected stock where- 

 ever found, of whatever name or 

 color having qualities which they 

 desired to perpetuate. Their stock 

 was originally improved by importing 

 Ilolstein and Holland cattle which 

 they used in crossing. Subsequently 

 they crossed witli a polled Galloway, 

 from which was obtained a breed or 

 great repute, and as the final result 

 they obtained the magnificent short- 

 horn. We might accomplish in ten 

 years with bees what they did in one 

 hundred with cattle I 



What ten, fifty or one hundred of 

 our most successful honey-producers 

 will form a syndicate, and, under 

 competent management, on an island 

 or a prairie, secure from any inter- 

 ference, put any colony or colonies 

 they may from time to time find in 

 their own apiaries showing more than 

 ordinary honey-producing qualities, 

 without respect to race, or name, or 



