







% 



->»»: 



QEOROE W. YORK. Editor. 



; A G n i *^ u i- J u 







39th YEAR, 



CHICAGO, ILL., APRIL 20, 1899, 



No, 16, 



Report of the Michig-an State Convention. 



BY W. Z. HUTCHINSON. 



The Michigan State Bee-Keepers' Association met in 

 annual convention Dec. 30 and 31, 1898, in Woodman's Hall, 

 at Reed City. For several years this convention has not 

 been a g^reat success in point of numbers. When a man 

 gets little or no honey, he has no money with which to at- 

 tend conventions. This time the convention went into the 

 heart of the willow-herb district, where the bee-keepers get 

 honey, if any one does, and there was really quite a re- 

 spectable crowd. Altho there was no set program, the pro- 

 ceedings were of interest and profitable. This plan was not 

 adopted because any one thought that it possest any special 

 merit, but because the secretary was too busy to get up the 

 program. If there is the right kind of a president in the 

 chair, as there happened to be this time, this plan is all 

 right. Another thing, it is now three months since the 

 convention met, and the secretarj- is now writing up the 

 proceeding's. I think that the Michigan convention better 

 choose some other man for secretary — one who can give 

 more time to the work. 



But to return : Slips of paper were past around, and 

 the members a.skt to write questions and pass them up to 

 the president, who read them and selected one for discus- 

 sion. When one topic was thoroly discust, another was 

 taken up. 



THE MATING OF QUEENS. 



T. F. Bingham — Other things being equal, is an Ital- 

 ian queen more likely to mate with an Italian drone than 

 with a black drone ? 



J. M. Rankin — We have been trying at the Agricultural 

 College to breed for length of tongue in the bees, and, of 

 course, we wisht the queens to mate with Italian drones, 

 and we succeeded. I think that there is no difference as to 

 the likelihood of a queen mating with a black drone or an 

 Italian drone, that is, other things being equal. 



Mr. Bingham — I have noticed that it is difficult to keep 

 Italians pure. Three years ago my bees were all pure Ital- 

 ians, now they are mixt. 



W. Z. Hutchinson — When I began bee-keeping I had 

 black bees, and all of the bees in my neighborhood were 

 black bees, with the'exception of a few colonies of Italians 

 that were a mile and a half from my place. It was a sort 

 of a puzzle to me that one-half of my queens should mate 

 with these distant drones, when there were so many black 

 drones right in the yard. Later, I read the views of some 

 of the leading bee-keepers that queens or drones, or both, 

 had a disposition to fiy far from home when mating. It 



seemed a provision of Nature to prevent in-and-in breeding. 

 When I began rearing queens for sale I found that I must 

 get rid of all black drones in my neighborhood, but it was 

 not until I had Italianized all of the bees within about three 

 miles of my apiary that I finally succeeded in getting all of 

 the young queens purely mated. With all of the bees Ital- 

 ians within three miles there were none of the queens mis- 

 mated, and there was no trouble in keeping my bees pure 

 Italians. People say that Italians will " run out," and go 

 back to the black blood, so to speak, but this isn't true. If 

 an Italian apiary is surrounded by black bees nothing is 

 more certain than that these Italians will eventually be 

 superseded by hj'brids. The same thing would occur if a 

 man should start an apiary of blacks in a neighborhood 

 filled with Italian bees. Mr. Aspinwall restrained the 



A. C. Siiiijon/ — (.St I /HI i; I J -,11. 1 



queens in their disposition to roam bj' cutting from 1/16 to 

 J's of an inch from each wing, and the result was that 

 almost all of them were mated by Italian drones, while 

 black bees were in the vicinity. 



Mr. Rankin — I think that a caution ought to be given 

 in regard to this clipping. At the college we dipt 62 queens, 

 and onlv three or four of them were mated. One of those 



