38 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



extractor almost as soon as it was 

 gatliered. In color it is as light and 

 clear as white clover honey or any 

 other I have ever seen. Its flavor is 

 mild and pleasant. But it has one dis- 

 agreeable qualitj' — it will begin to 

 granulate almost as soon as it is 

 stored. I have found little round pel- 

 lets of sugar to abound in it, wlien 

 extracting it in the month of August. 

 But notwithstanding its propensity to 

 granidate, I will take all the button 

 bush honey I can get. 

 New Castle, Ind., Jan. 2, 1884. 



ror the Ajnerican Bee JuumaL 



The New Eaces of Bees. 



FRANX BENTON. 



Coming from a man whom I have 

 been accustomed to regard as pretty 

 generally correct in his conclusions in 

 regard to bee matters, and honest in 

 the statement of the same, the views 

 of Mr. G. M. Doolittle, as expressed 

 on page 500 of the Bee Journal for 

 Oct. 10, .surprised me exceedingly. 

 All my experience in bee-keeping has 

 tended to make me value proliticness 

 in a queen above all other qualities — 

 to regard it, in fact, as the basis of 

 all success in honey-production. If 

 we have the workers in a hive when 

 the harvest opens, we are sure of 

 honey. This Mr. Doolittle will not 

 deny, nor can he say that the individ- 

 ual workers of the Eastern races are 

 not the best of honey-gatherers. But 

 lie admits, yes, even claims it as a 

 fault, that the queens of the " Holy 

 Land " bees, as he calls them, are ex- 

 tra prolilic. Where, then, lies the 

 fault V What is the reason Mr. Doo- 

 little finds these bees ■• practically 

 good for nothing for his locality; V" 

 He says : " These bees seem to think 

 that a large flow of honey should 

 mean lots of brood, so at brood-rear- 

 ing they go.'' (That is just what I 

 want them to do whenever the weather 

 will permit.) Then follows the state- 

 ment that, " when fall arrives, we 

 have a hive overflowing with bees."' 

 (That is what I want and can have, 

 not in the fall, alone, but from spring 

 until fall with these bees.) 



Further on he says : ■• All are aware 

 of my views regarding the secret of 

 honey-producing being to get the 

 bees just in the right time for the 

 honey harvest (neitlier too early nor 

 too late), that being of more moment 

 than any one other thing pertaining 

 to honey-producing. Admitted. But 

 he gets his bees " when fall arrives !" 

 Oh, well, the next sentence sets that 

 all right (V) '"That the Syrian bees 

 cannot be thus managed in this local- 

 ity is the reason of my saying they 

 are practically good for nothing.'' 

 Passing by, for the moment, the fact 

 that Mr. Doolittle starts out with 

 " Holy Land " bees and concludes 

 with a very different race, the ISyrian 

 bee, I would point out here that Mr. 

 Doolittle, after having admitted that 

 these Eastern bees are especially in- 

 clined to rear brood whenever food is 

 coming in, then says he fails to get 

 his hive Blled with bees until fall, 

 and follows by saying that he cannot 



manage these bees so as to get the 

 workers ready for the harvest. And 

 this is a simple confession on the part 

 of Mr. Doolittle that he cannot ac- 

 complish what, to use his own words, 

 "is of more moment than any one 

 other thing pertaining to honey-pro- 

 ducing." "llow does tfiis agree with 

 his reported success in raising comb 

 honey ! Why, if I should take an 

 apprentice in bee-culture, this would 

 be one of the first things I would 

 teach him ! and with no bees could it 

 be more easily accomplished than with 

 Eastern bees ? 



Mr. Doolittle further says : " They 

 have another exceedingly bad feature, 

 which is, that before the young 

 queens are fertilized in the parent 

 hive which has cast a swarm, fertile 

 workers spring up, and the result is a 

 queenless colony." Not at all. If left 

 to themselves the young queens of 

 Eastern races are just as sure as 

 those of any other race to become 

 fertile and commence laying, and if 

 fertile workers have commenced lay- 

 ing in the hives, they will almost in- 

 variably disappear without occasion- 

 ing the least trouble. Eastern bees 

 are more liable than other races to 

 have fertile workers. Palestine (Holy 

 Land) bees more so than Syrians. 

 But this " bad feature " is by no 

 means such a difficult thing to cure 

 with them as with other bees. I 

 usually give little heed to it; intro- 

 duce queens, even virgin queens, put 

 in queen-cells, or give them brood 

 and let them rear a queen. This they 

 rarely fail to do, but carries with it 

 the objectionable feature of allowing 

 the fertile workers time to get nice 

 worker-combs tilled with drone brood, 

 and to waste honey in rearing these 

 useless fellows. These are, in my 

 opinion, by far the worst features of 

 the fertile worker tendencies of the 

 " new races." 



Iij his closing paragraph, Mr. Doo- 

 little gets back to the race of bees 

 with which he originally stated, the 

 '• Holy Lands.'" He says : " How- 

 ever, as in all respects, unless it is in 

 wintering, tliey are inferior to the 

 Italians. I felt warranted in doing 

 away with them entirely, and, today, 

 finds my yard without a Holy Land 

 bee in it." Now, if Mr. Doolittle 

 really means '' Holy Land " bees, that 

 is, bees from Palestine proper, and 

 not from Syria, and will throw in the 

 •• wintering " and leave out most of 

 the ""fespects," I will agree that the 

 statement is correct. In other words, 

 the bees that come from south of the 

 I mountain-range that extends from the 

 Sea of (xalilee to the Mediterranean, 

 I terminating in Mt. Carmel, the true 

 ■■ Holy Land " or Palestine bees stand 

 in my list of good bees, fifth, or after 

 Cyprian, Syrian, Carniolan and Ital- 

 ian bees. They are inferiar to Ital- 

 ians in temper, in not clinging to the 

 combs, in wintering qualities, and in 

 that they are more e<asily pestered 

 with fertile workers, and, though 

 superior to Italians in beauty, in pro- 

 lificness, in defending tlieir hives, in 

 strength and rapidity of flight, and in 

 diligence in collecting stores, still on 

 account of the grave faults just men- 

 tioned, I put them, aU in all, after 



Italians. They are the smallest bees 

 of the species Apis-melifica that I 

 have ever seen. Their pointed ab- 

 domens usually show three lemon- 

 yellow bands, but all are not equally 

 well marked, the variation in the 

 same hive often being quite striking. 

 Their bodies show a remarkable 

 elongation when filled, and such 

 workers, if well marked, are very 

 handsome. The thorax, the edge of 

 each abdominal ring, and the tip of 

 the abdomen are covered with very 

 dense gray fuzz giving them the ap- 

 pearance of having been dusted with 

 flour. The drones, especially, have a 

 very thick coat of iron-gray fuzz on 

 both thorax and abdomen. The 

 queens have rather elongated bodies, 

 often a beautiful yellow in color, 

 though many of them are leather- 

 colored. Palestine bees are very 

 liable to fly into a passion upon slight 

 provocation, and when once aroused, 

 are not easily subdued In any way. I 

 have noticed a remarkable variation 

 in the disposition of different colonies 

 of these bees. Tiiis, with their irreg- 

 ular markings, is a proof that the 

 race is not well established, that is, it 

 leans first toward one type, then to- 

 ward anolher. 



In general, these bees are difficult 

 to manage. They crawl from the 

 frames upon one"s hands, and quite 

 impudently creep under sleeves and 

 cuffs, biting the flesh, and then often 

 curving their bodies and stinging. 

 They crawl on the combs and drop off 

 much like black bees. In a cold 

 climate they die off in winter and 

 spring, somewhat as did the Egyptian 

 bees when brought to Europe and 

 America; in fact, after four years' 

 experience with the bees of Palestine, 

 I regard them as constituting an in- 

 constant race, forming a connecting 

 link between the Syrian and the 

 Egyptian bees, resembling more 

 nearly the Egyptians than any other 

 race, yet to be preferred rather than 

 the latter, although not equal to the 

 Syrians. Such is the true "Holy 

 Land " bee. 



Going northward on the mainland 

 lying acijacent to the Mediterranean 

 we find, after passing the mountain 

 range above mentioned, a very differ- 

 ent bee — the race of Syria proper. 

 These bees are larger and more golden 

 yellow than those of Palestine, very 

 uniform in general color and markings. 

 The queens are generally larger, a 

 greater number are yellow rather 

 than leather-colored, and they are 

 even more prolittc than the queens of 

 Palestine. The drones, instead of 

 being such a complete gray in color, 

 are more or less mottled with yellow. 

 The workers do not run on the combs, 

 nor do they drop off at all. They can 

 be handled much more easily tiian the 

 bees of Palestine, and. even if aroused 

 are less vindictive. They are beauti- 

 ful bees. The fuzz on tl'ieir bodies is 

 brown, with just a tinge of gray, and 

 the three golden-yellow bands are dis- 

 tinct and never lacking. The type is 

 well fixed, and m all parts of the 

 Lebanon only a distinctly golden 

 yellow, active, strong-winged race is 

 to be found, wtiich distinguishes itself 

 for its prolificness and its good honey- 



