190c 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



759 



deal of g^ood if the}' will only read it and 

 heed it." 



West Groton, N. Y. 



GOLDEN ITALIANS. 



Some Experience with Them ; Genlle, but Slow to 

 Enter Sections; Bent on Superseding. 



BY J. W. GUYTON, M. D. 



I introduced the golden bee into mj' apia- 

 ry in 1900. In 1901 I boug-ht another queen, 

 and from these I soon had all of my bees 

 golden except some blacks that I bought. I 

 purchased seven golden queens, and intro- 

 duced to the blacks. These queens were 

 procured from three different breeders. I 

 also g'ot a third breeding-queen last year. 

 I reared and sold a great many queens 

 from this breed. I find them gentle enough 

 and fair workers, but not as good in some 

 respects as the leather-colored three-band- 

 ed strain. They are slow to enter sections; 

 the\' persist iu chucking honey in the brood- 

 nest; and if the queen is not prolific enough 

 to keep ahead they crowd her down to a 

 verj' small space. This is objectionable to 

 the producer of section honey. To me thej' 

 seem a shade smaller than the three-band- 

 ed Italians. This I think objectionable, 

 from the fact that thej' can not carry as 

 much as a larger bee. It is true that they 

 can fl}' fast, and perhaps because of their 

 diminutive size they may be somewhat 

 swifter on the wing than their larg-er sis- 

 ters. 



I do not think the queens are, as a rule, 

 as prolific in egg-production as the other 

 strain. However, they have two redeeming- 

 features that I can recommend. The first 

 and best is the introduction of an apiary of 

 goldens in a neighborhood of black bees. 

 They seem to fuse more stripes into the 

 black strain because of this predominance 

 in stripes over the regular Italians. When 

 we practical bee-keepers get a cross in our 

 apiaries we detect it at once, and annihi- 

 late her queenship soon. 



The other feature is their golden color, 

 which makes them so beautiful. They are 

 inviting to the owner of blacks, and he 

 wants to introduce them into his stock; and 

 to do this he will then have to introduce 

 movable-comb hives, which is worth a great 

 deal to apicultural progress. 



Last year some of my goldens acted very 

 strangel}', and some of them are repeating 

 the same objectionable act this year. They 

 are bent on superseding. It seems to make 

 no difl'erence whether the queen be young 

 or not. I have had several young prolific 

 queens replaced by them, some not over 

 from one to three months old. I kept as 

 many as 100 and over of the three-banded 

 bees over twenty years ago, and don't re- 

 member their being- nearly so bad as the 

 goldens I now have. Is this out of the usu- 

 al way, or is it a characteristic of some 

 strains of a.ny strain of bees? 



I have noticed that our best or largest 



honey-producers do not keep the golden 

 strain, although some of our best queen- 

 breeders are boosting them up as hustlers. 

 I will not keep blacks or hybrids any long- 

 er than is required to replace them with 

 pure blood. 



I should be pleased to have some reports 

 on this strain, as I have not noticed any 

 thing lately about them in the journals I 

 take. Have hone3'-producers, men who want 

 honey, who tried the goldens, quit them? 

 What are' the most potent objections to this 

 strain? 



I think that, as a rule, the best of every 

 thing is the cheapest in the long run. If 

 the goldens are not the best all-round bee, 

 I do not want them, and yet I think they 

 are the bees to keep among blacks, as above 

 stated. 



Horsemint has been in full bloom over 

 five weeks, and will last ten days or two 

 weeks longer, and my bees have hardly be- 

 gun to operate in the sections. I know the 

 rainy weather has a great deal to do with 

 this failure. Sumac will be in bloom about 

 the 15th inst., and will last six weeks. 



Levita, Texas, July 2. 



WIRING, BEE=SIFTER, ETC. 



BY F. GREINER. 



I was astonished, when reading Glean- 

 ings for Aug. 1, p. 677, that you credit me 

 with an invention of a frame- wiring device 

 which totally differs from the machines I 

 use and have used for some time. There 

 must be a mistake somewhere. My ma- 

 chines are much more valuable. They work 

 so absolutely automatically that I have not 

 even to pull the lever. All I do to make 

 these machines work after the frames are 

 furnished, and the pieces of wire properly 

 cut, is to operate the communication be- 

 tween my own brain and that of the ma- 

 chine by way of speech, and let my wish 

 be known. My two girls, 10 and 12 years 

 old, then do the work to my entire satis- 

 faction. I would here add, that I use a 

 brood-frame two inches deeper than the reg- 

 ular Langstroth frame; and when I com- 

 menced to wire them I used four wires. I 

 have kept reducing the number of wires, 

 and find that two wires are just as good as 

 more. It is much easier to secure the two 

 wires in place, and of proper tension, than 

 the four, and it requires less wire and time 

 to do the wiring, besides saving time in 

 imbedding. It may prove of value to the 

 friends to know this. 



After using quite a little brood founda- 

 tion with young swarms and otherwise, it 

 will seem to me that the most valuable 

 feature of wiring is the securing of comb 

 foundation exactly in the center of the frame 

 where it should be. I am a little doubtful 

 whether this result can be secured with 

 less than two wires; but I shall try just one 

 in a few frames when buckwheat begins to 

 3'ield honey. 



Dr. Miller tells somewhere of late how he 



