244 



AMERICAN BEE JOUPNAL, 



April 20, 1899. 



the youagr queens be reared from mothers of pure blood mated to drones 

 of equal purity." 



Now, I wish you would answer this thru the Bee Journal, or have a 

 specialist in queen-rearing answer it, namely; Does experience teach 

 that queens from a mother of undoubted purit.v of blood produce only 

 drones of the same purity as the old queen, no matter to what race the 

 drone belontjed which the young queen met on her wedding flight? That 

 is, does a pure Italian queen, mated to a Carniolan drone, produce hybrid 

 workers, but purely Italian drones? 



I have often heard that the color of the drones of any colony would 

 show the purity or impurity of blood more certain than the color of the 

 ■workers, which is contradictory to the above. 



ArGCST F. Koch, Ph.G. 



In the first place I object to the term " ptirity " as often 

 applied to the Italian bee, and as spoken of by the writer of 

 the above. Nearly 30 j-ears of experience with the Italian 

 bee has thorolj' convinced me that it is not a. pure yace of 

 bees, but only what would be called " thorobred." If such 

 is the case, which I shall soon try to prove, then all talk 

 about keeping an apiary of such bees pure is only a case of 

 reasoning' upon a false base or beg'innitig', to start from. 

 When it comes to breeding the Italian bee " to the feather," 

 as it is termed by poultry-men, such bees are " not in it," 

 and never have been, for the queens vary all the way from 

 being as dark as a pure-blood German queen to one whose 

 abdomen is of a rich orange color the whole length, even to 

 its extreme tip, on the best specimens ; while the drones 

 and workers vary nearly as much, altho no worker-bee has 

 ever been reared whose extreme tip was of an orange color. 



Now if the queens coming from Italy, or "imported 

 stock " as they are usually termed, produce workers with 

 only three dark or leather-colored bands upon their abdo- 

 men, and drones which the ordinary observer would pro- 

 nounce only as black drones, while their young queens vary 

 all the way from black to those being ring-streakt, speck- 

 led and spotted, the same as being called pure Italians, 

 how comes it about that any careful breeder can take these 

 bees and by selection soon come into possession of bees so 

 yellow that there is no sign of black on the queen, very lit- 

 tle on the drones, and only a very little of dark or black on 

 the extreme tip of the workers? Is it not self-evident to 

 any unprejudiced mind, that there can be no establisht 

 purity in the imported mother from which we started? 



Take a black or German qtieen in her purity and try the 

 same line of breeding for a whole century, with none but 

 drones from a German queen, and you will have only com- 

 mon black or German queens, workers and drones at the 

 end of the 100 years. So if we are to start from the purity 

 side for any experiment as to whether the drones are affected 

 by the young queen meeting the drone of a different 

 " blood," we must start with the German queen, or some- 

 thing we know came from a pure race of bees. 



Then there is another point I wish to call attention to, 

 which is, where the statement is made that success can be 

 attained along this line of pure mating of queens, " if other 

 bees are not numerous within a mile or two." Herein lies 

 one of the weak points in " breeding for purity," which is 

 very fallacious, and, strange to saj', this fallacious part is 

 more often put before the public than the real truth. 



All careful observers know that a distance of at least 

 five miles must intervene between the race of bees we would 

 desire to keep pure and that of any siri^/e colony of anotlier 

 race, else all our breeding for purit}' is of no avail. Yea, 

 and were I to say just what I thought I should say that the 

 distance should be at least seven miles, from the experience 

 I have had since I catne into possession of my out-apiary. 

 When I bought this out-apiary it was composed of nearly 

 all black bees, tho some of the queens had evidently mated 

 with drones from dark Italian stock, that being the kind of 

 Italians chiefly kept where other but black bees were used, 

 up to this time. At about the time I came into possession of 

 this out-apiary, I became interested in what is termed the 

 " five-banded " or golden Italians, those bred in this coun- 

 try from the dark imported stock, as before mentioned, till 

 they were as yellow as gold. 



Having beome interested iti these yellow bees I kept 

 down drones from the dark Italians and allowed much 

 drone-comb, consequentlj' many drones of the yellow variety 

 to come forth, and the result is, that, altho this out-apiary 

 is fully five miles distant from my home yard, fully one 

 queen out of six at the out-apiary shows by her progeny 

 that she mated one of the yellow drones. 



No, no, friends, there is no such thing as pure mating 

 of queens where apiaries of different races are located 

 " within a mile or two " of each other, and he who thus 

 breeds, expecting to reap any certain results, is destined to 

 an uncertainty of affairs which is not pleasant to contem- 

 plate. 



All familiar with the flight of drones know that they 

 have places where they congregate by the thousands, if not 



millions, coming to these places from all over a region 

 from five to seven miles around, and when the queen comes 

 to these congregating places she is as apt to meet a drone 

 from a "scurf" breed as she is one of those choice, nice, 

 yellow "gentlemen" you would have her secure as her 

 partner. 



Late in the fall, or in early spring, drones nor queens 

 fly so far, consequentlj' we are more sure of pure [?] mating 

 with Italian bees than at other times of the working sea- 

 son. For this reason I select combs of drone-brood from 

 my choicest colonies, near the close of the honey season, 

 and mass this drone-brood in a colony kept queenless and 

 fed bountifully, so that these drones are kept after other 

 drones are killed off in the fall, when they are "hand- 

 pickt," so that only the best remain when young queens are 

 reared, and a satisfactory result obtained. 



And now to tiie real question which it is desired should 

 be answered. There can be no question but what the drone 

 is the SON of /lis mother, for all queens can lay eggs which 

 will perfect drones, even tho they never meet a drone, or 

 become capable of laying worker-eggs. From this stand- 

 point it is easy to say, that " as is the mother so will the 

 son be," and this is what the scientists have claimed thru 

 all the past. But there are those who claim that the son of 

 the mother of a pure black queen, mated to a yellow drone, 

 is not the same son. to all intents and purposes, that he 

 would have been had this queen never met a drone at all, 

 or had she met a drone of her own race ; and I believe this 

 last to be correct, when we come down to the very fine 

 points of " breeding to a spot or feather." 



I am fully persuaded that a succession of breeding along 

 this line will result in a mongrel race, thru the contamina- 

 tion of the queen in mating ; but the process will be so 

 slow that, when practically applied, the writer from the 

 agricultural department of the United States is very nearly 

 or quite right. I presume the writer of the reference given 

 was none other tlian Frank Benton, a man whose opinion, 

 along these lines, is fully equal in value to that of any other 

 in the world. Onondaga Co.. N. Y, 



Rheumatism Cured by Bee-Stings. 



BY ELD. DANIEL WHITMEK. 



IN the forepart of June, 1898, I called on Editor York, and 

 in our conversation I remarktthat I had not reported my 

 work with the bees for a number of years, tho having 

 manipulated them for about 20 years, and having been a 

 constant reader of the American Bee Journal for that time. 

 He replied that I ought to let my light shine. Therefore, 

 remembering the best of all books giving the intelligence 

 that if the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is 

 that darkness, here goes. 



First, then, I call the attention of the bee-keeping fra- 

 ternity to the dreaded and unenjoyable rheumatism which 

 afflicts and affects so many persons who so much desire a 

 remedy giving relief and effecting a radical cure to the suf- 

 ferer. I believe that bee-poison, with some people, is a good 

 remedy ; it has proved itself a bonanza and antidote to the 

 writer for many years. 



Prior to my entering the bee-industiT', I had been a vic- 

 tim of the disease in its different forms, attacking- the 

 limbs and other portions of the body. Finally, by over- 

 work in manual labor, I was attackt with sciatic rheuma- 

 tism, resulting in paralysis of the back, thighs, kidnej's, 

 bladder, etc.. and was under the doctor's care and confined 

 to my bed atid room for three months. 



Under the doctor's treatment I became convalescent, 

 btit unable to perform manual labor on the farm. As yet 

 the great numbness in my limbs was so present that in my 

 invalid condition I chose apiculture as a pursuit to give me 

 a livelihood. 



One day in handling a colony of bees I became some- 

 what careless in the manipulation, and irritated the bees to 

 the extent that they rusht out of the hive and stung me 

 desperately on the most numb parts. If I had no feeling 

 before, it was evident I had then, for I just danced as I never 

 did before, for I don't believe in it. 



In 24 hours I was a well man, so far as rheumatism was 

 concerned, numbness all gone. I am liable to get it in the 

 fall and winter. It has returned three times in 20 years, 

 and subsided every time when I got out with my bees in 

 the spring. 



I reported my cure to mj' physician, giving the remedy 

 that did it. He stood before me staring and with amaze- 

 ment, and said that the poison of the bee-sting would have 

 that eft'ect. So at the next medical institute, at Chicago, he 



