440 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



no change has been made. They 

 work without rules, plumbs, or guides. 

 Since our first written history of the 

 bee, its progress has been remarkable. 

 Indeed Aristotle, Cato, Virgil, Pliny, 

 Columella, and many more, wrote in- 

 teresting accounts of the honey bee, 

 of its cleanliness and activity, econ- 

 omy, etc. 



lioney was spoken of as the food of 

 the ancients ; the tables of Romans, 

 Grecians, and Persians were richly 

 supplied with honey. History informs 

 us that the Romans and Grecians 

 brought honey as an offering to their 

 gods, and the animals that were 

 sacriticed were sprinkled with lioney. 

 The Israelites showed the wealth of 

 the land of Canaan by declaring that 

 it flowed vvitli milk and honey. 



AVe gather many interesting facts 

 from the ancient apiarists" artificial 

 queen liaving extended iierself 

 throughout upper Lasaita, Bohemia, 

 Bavaria, Sile.sia, and other portions of 

 Germany. Even Poland engaged in 

 the business. 'Wheeler's " journey 

 into Greece " is quite interesting, de- 

 scribing their method of keeping their 

 hives, which were made principally of 

 willows. Wildman's account of bees, 

 ]7(18, which was copied from a journey 

 into Greece, affords many interesting 

 facts connected with both bees and 

 honey. When we trace this wonder- 

 ful insect down to the present time, 

 counting her millions of revenue to 

 this country, we are forced to the con- 

 clusion that apiculture possesses a 

 " national life." It is truly a great 

 enterprise ; world-wide in its 

 branches ; one of the grandest fields 

 of industry that philosophers have 

 ever entered. No one nation can ever 

 enjoy it alone. 



Rome, Ga. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



The Barberry Slirub Agaiu. 



PROF. T. J. BURRILL. 



I have read with interest Mr. Max- 

 well's remarks in the Rke Journal 

 of June USlh, couceriiing the barberry 

 and a disease of liis peach trees. 

 Now, it so happens that tliis ijeach 

 tree disease is well known to me (see 

 Transactions Illinois State Horticul- 

 tural Society, 1878, page 1.57), as is the 

 literature upon the subject of the rust 

 of wheat and the barOerry. While 

 tiiere is good reason to suppose that 

 the fungus known as wheat rust 

 {Fuccinia graniiim) does .pass a kind 

 of alternation of growth at times on 

 the barberry, tliere is nothing but Mr. 

 Maxwell's observation to connect this 

 or any other fungus inhabiting the 

 bush in question with that causing 

 the disease mentioned of the peach 

 tree. Further, the fungus which 

 covers the peach leaves "with a sort 

 of mildew," and causes them to be- 

 come "turned wliite, and crimped 

 and twisted," with "a leprous appear- 

 ance," lives only on the peach tree, 

 undergoing there its full develop- 

 ment. It is a perennial parasite, but 

 developes mure or less on a tree once 

 affected according to internal and ex- 

 ternal conditions. 



I am so certain about this that I do 

 not hesitate to say Mr. Maxwell's 

 facts must be explained in some other 

 way, and my certainty comes from a 

 rather intimate acquaintance with 

 the objects themselves, not from 

 botanical reading. 



As to wheat rust from the spores of 

 a parasitic fungus on the barberry, a 

 careful German investigator believed 

 he had full proofs in the attirmative, 

 but it is not'hard to state that the 

 wheat rust fungus in our country is 

 capable of undergoing complete de- 

 velopment without the barberry. 



Some recent experiments also 

 throw doubt as to wliether there is, 

 after all, any real connection between 

 the two. Such things need a good 

 microscope and a pains- taking ma- 

 nipulatior of it. 



Illinois Industrial University. 



Translated from Bienenzeitung by A. Neigbbour. 



International Congress at Milau, Italy. 



DR. FRIEDRICH KUHL. 



The congress took place in the 

 splendidly decorated hall of the Tech- 

 nical Institute, No. 4, Piazza Cavour, 

 on the 15th, 16th and 17tli September 

 last, and was attended by about 300 

 bee-keepers. The transactions at 

 Milan did not commence until 8 

 o'clock in the evening, continuing till 

 after midnight, while the day time 

 was occupied in visiting the Grand 

 National Exhibition and the objects 

 of interest in the city, and in making 

 excursions into tlie surrounding lovely 

 country, and visiting a few of the 

 largest apiaries. 



Mr. Edward Bertrand, editor of 

 L''Ainculteur, Nyon, Switzerland, 

 commenced his very interesting dis- 

 course on " breeding queens " by say- 

 ing that this wasa particularly fit sub- 

 ject of discussion for the Congress, 

 Italy being the country from which 

 beautiful queens are dispatched to 

 all parts of the world. The rearing of 

 queens for export, he continued, had 

 become quite a branch of industry in 

 Italy, and the Italian bee-masters 

 ought to endeavor to maintain the 

 good name of their queens ; it would 

 further be necessary, he remarked, 

 that tliose who procure queens for 

 a foreign country should be fully con- 

 vinced that the queens they receive 

 from Italy really possess all the good 

 qualities which will secure pure off- 

 spring. He liad unfortunately expe- 

 rienced in the last few years that 

 some queens which he had obtained 

 from Italy died in the first year, while 

 other queens turned out" not to be 

 very prolific, so that their colonies 

 yielded but poor returns. He added 

 that similar complaints had been 

 made in Germany and America, and 

 many bee-keepers, therefore, justly 

 preferred those queens of the Italian 

 race which had not been reared in 

 Italy. 



Mr. Bertrand considers it very im- 

 portant, in order to rear serviceable 

 queens, that — 1. The parents, both 

 queens and drones, should be selec- 

 ted. 2. There should be a large num- 

 ber of young bees in the hives used 



for breeding, because young bees are 

 very apt to supply the larvje with 

 plenty of food. 3. There should be a 

 large population in a colony in which 

 queens are to be reared. He objects 

 to queen-breeding in small colonies, 

 because it would produce queens of a 

 weak constitution, which on this ac- 

 count would not be very fertile. 

 While on this subject the speaker 

 mentioned that in Germany the great 

 masters of bee-keeping. Dr. Dzierzou, 

 Gravenhorst, and Dathe, first allow 

 the royal cells to be sealed in colonies 

 with large populations, and after- 

 wards proceed to make small colonies 

 ill which to allow the queens to hatch. 

 4. The queen should only be al- 

 lowed to breed during the time when 

 the bees are able to obtain a good sup- 

 ply of honey. He and other bee- 

 masters of his acquaintance had fre- 

 quently observed that queens reared 

 early in spring or in autumn deposi- 

 ted but few eggs and often died after 

 the first year. He did not believe 

 that feeding was a remedy in the ab- 

 sence of tlie other conditions, viz : 

 warm weather and a plentiful supply 

 of pollen. 5. Those larvse which are 

 chosen by the workers for rearing 

 queens should not be more than a day 

 old, in order that they may receive a 

 plentiful supply of royal jelly as long 

 as possible. 



The discourse, which lasted over an 

 hour, was followed by a debate of 

 considerable lengtli. I will only men- 

 tion that Count J5:;rbo expressed the 

 opinion that Italian queens sent to 

 foreign countries often do not give 

 the desired results because of the 

 frequently great difference in the cli- 

 mate and vegetation as compared 

 with Italy. Prof. Sartori observed 

 tliat Italian queens formerly brought 

 a very good price in foreign coun- 

 tries, but their present market value 

 was so low that breeders in Italy 

 could no longer give the same careful 

 attention to the rearing of queens 

 they had formerly done. 



Dr. Dubini was of opinion that in 

 order to obtain good queens in future 

 it is only necessary to let the number 

 of young bees be in the right propor- 

 tion to the brood that has to be at- 

 tended to, and that queens may, with- 

 out disadvantage, be reared by small 

 colonies if the latter are allowed to 

 have but a small number of brood 

 cells. Prof. Sartori expressed him- 

 self in the same sense. Count Barbo 

 proposed that a few queens partly 

 reared in large colonies and partly by 

 small communities, should be sent to 

 Mr. Bertrand by the Italian Central 

 Association of Bee-Keepers, and that 

 lie should be requested to note any 

 differences as to vigor and fertility of 

 the qiieens to be forwarded to him. 

 Mr. Bertrand accepted this ofter on 

 condition that the queens to be sent 

 to him should merely be numbered in 

 order that he himself might not know 

 which of them had been reared in 

 large hives and which in small ones. 



Mr. Bertrand read a letter from Mr. 

 Newman, the editorof the American 

 Bee Journal of Chicago, in which 

 the latter requests the Italian bee- 

 keepers to devote the greatest care to 

 the rearing of queens. 



