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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Jan. 10, 



" Italians, of course," say the "wise men of the East," and of 

 the West, too, for that matter. I am not siiro Ihpy are cor- 

 rect, now I have come to think of It. But, Mr. Editor, Is it 

 safe to speak right out and say what I think, for must not tlie 

 queen-breeder and supply dealer — and I am among them — 

 live ? " Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth;"' 

 but " craft " or no " craft," facts cannot bo ignored, and tlin 

 fact is 



ITALIAN BEKS ARK. NOT THE BEST BEES FOB COMB HONEY. 



I hope that the day will come when extracted honey will 

 be an article of general consumption, but I fear that the day 

 is a long way off when comb honey will be considered in the 

 light of anything but a luxury. As long as this is the ease, 

 appearance will be everything, especially in the market, and 

 on the tables of the rich. The man who runs his apiary for 

 comb honey cannot afford to ignore appearances. 



The comb honey of otiier bees is not any better to the 

 taste than that of Italians, and I have been led to doubt some- 

 times if it was as good, but it is whiter, and this is what the 

 people demand in comb honey. Whiteness will almost hold its 

 own against all other qualities combined. This being true, 

 the Italian bees will have to take second place in comb honey 

 production. Of course, I am not alone in holding this view, 

 as Mr. Heddon pushed it prominently to the front years ago, 

 and Mr. Hutchinson gave the idea his hearty endorsement in 

 his book. It was not from either of these gentlemen, how- 

 ever, that I got this idea, but from being an exhibitor of honey 

 at agricultural fairs, where I learned what it was that at- 

 tracted the attention of the crowd the most. 



The disposition of Italians to cling to the combs might 

 have been a serious objection to them at one time, but in this 

 age of bee-escapes, surely no one will think of trying to get 

 the bees out of the supers in any other way. But more of this 

 in the future. There are also some other objections to the 

 Italians as comb honey producers, but none are as serious as 

 the one I have emphasized. 



We must have a bee which does not fill the cells so full of 

 honey and cap so close down on it, if we want to secure the 

 kind of honey the market demands. As we are learning every 

 year to handle the bees less in securing a crop of honey, I do 

 not know as many of the objections which have been made 

 against the German bees would now hold. I, at least, should 

 not despair of securing a crop of fine comb honey with them, 

 if I lived in the alfalfa regions of Colorado or Kansas. Perhaps 



A CROSS BETWEEN THE GREY BEES AND THE ITALIANS 



would give vim and energy to the Stock, and not detract any from 

 the whiteness of the honey. Many of the so-called hybrids — 

 mongrels — are about as quiet as the pnre Italians. I have had 

 great hopes of a cross between the Carniolans and the Ital- 

 ians, and have not yet given up the idea that the Carniolan 

 bee will in some way prove a boon to the comb honey producer 

 of the future. I am not so certain but a mixture of Carniolan 

 blood with our common gray bee would be a good thing. I am 

 sure that the comb honey producer will find it to his advan- 

 tage to instill as much Carniolan blood as possible into his 

 apiary. But, says one, that will make the bees swarm more. 

 I am not so sure of this, if they are handled properly; but 

 what if it does make them swarm ? 



IT IS THE SWARMING BEES THAT GATHER HONEY ; 



and all this talk of a non-swarming race is a fallacy, in my 

 opinion. You might just as well talk of a non-laying hen be- 

 ing the best to hatch eggs 1 We may control the swarming 

 impulse in a degree, but to destroy it is to make the bee 

 another animal, and it cannot be done. I, for one, do not 

 care to do it, even if it can be done. 



The last bees I would select for comb honey are the so- 

 called 5-banded bees, or yellow bees. The Cyprians are worse, 

 if anything, about giving their honey a watery appearance 

 than the Italians, and all of the so-called 



FIVE-BANDED BEES HAVE MORE OR LESS CYPRIAN BLOOD IN 

 THEM. 



I am aware that Mr. Doollttlo, Mrs. Atchley, and others, 

 claim that they know that their 5-banded bees have nothing 

 but Italian blood in them. 1 should like to know, though, 

 how they can be so sure about this. Have they had charge of 

 the mating of the ancestors of these bees for generations 

 back? More, I am not so sure that all yellow bees do not 

 have some Cyprian blood in them. 



I might say just here that I think the bee-keepers have 

 made something of a mistake in catering to this demand for 

 white comb honey. In many cases, J/car t/iat vie get ivIiUc 

 tumey at the expense of name other more desirable qualities. 



Especially is this true in the case of basswood honey, for in 

 his great haste to get it off of the hive while perfectly white, 

 the bee-keeper frequently removes his honey before it is well 

 cured, and then it lacks body, and richness of flavor. In some 

 cases it is so thin and watery that it sours or granulates in 

 the cnmbs, either of which spoils it, of course. 



I think the richest and finest flavored Missouri honey I 

 ever saw was gathered by a colony of bees, the mother of 

 which came direct from Syria, tlirough Mr. Frank Benton. 

 This honey was a long ways from white. I mean the cap- 

 pings. They were a rich straw-color, as nearly as I can de- 

 scribe it. So you can see that 



WE DO NOT WANT SYRIAN BEES, 



if we are to cater to the demand of the general public for 

 white hooey. I noticed, however, while I had these bees, that 

 it is very easy to teach the consumer that the whitest honey 

 is not always the best honey ; for when I would take my cus- 

 tomers some of this honey and explain the matter to them, and 

 get them to try it, they would always ask for more. However, it 

 is a theory of mine that life is too short to try to prove to every 

 man that the thing he wants is not the best, and so I say, 

 when convenient, let him have his own choice, and we can 

 take the time we might spend convincing him, in providing 

 for the wants of another customer. The public wants white 

 comb honey, and we may just as well keep the bees that pro- 

 duce it. The whiter it Is, the more ready sale it will find. 



The next thing of importance in the production of comb 

 honey is a hive, and I will begin my next article with a discus- 

 sion of this. St. Joseph, Mo. 

 (To be coutLDued.) 



Comments on Hive Constructioti and Tests. 



BY EDWIN BEVINS. 



After reading the article by P. L. Thompson, in the 

 American Bee Journal for Nov. 8, 189-1, I felt like shouting 

 with old Archimedes — " Eureka !" But, after reading the re- 

 plies to Query 950, my ardor was considerably cooled, though 

 It is not yet down to the freezing-point. I still persist in be- 

 lieving that I have found it — that is, I have found a way to 

 enlarge the breeding-room of the 8-frame hive without having 

 to change the size of the section-cases, bottom-boards or cov- 

 ers. Whether the kuowledge obtained by the reading of Mr. 

 Thompson's article will be of any practical advantage to me 

 or not, is something that I see I have got to find out by experi- 

 ment. If t ever find out at all. 



The replies to Query 950, as is the case with the replies 

 to almost all of the Queries that have preceded it, don't settle 

 anything. Some of the persons answering this Query say 

 "Yes;" others, whose opinions are equally entitled to respect, 

 say "No ;" some say " I don't know," and others answer as if 

 they neither know nor care. Talk about the science of api- 

 culture! Science to the dogs! Apiculture is one prolonged, 

 never-ending inter rogation -point. 



This enlargement of the brood-chamber downwards seems 

 to me to have some advantages over enlargement sidewise, 

 but then " I don't know." It Is one of the things, however, 

 that some fellow might find out if he thought it worth his 

 while. Some comb-honey producers I see do not think it 

 worth while, being satisfied v/ith the standard frame, or wish- 

 ing they had a shallower one. I know that I had some colo- 

 nies of bees the past season that were too big to be comfort- 

 able in the ordinary 8-frame hive, and I am going to give 

 some of them a chance to work for comb honey next season in 

 less restricted quarters. 



I shall make this winter several 8-frame hives having 

 frames with end-bars two inches longer than the ones I now 

 use. Mr. Thompson sees no serious obstacle to the general 

 use of this kind of frame except the " standard." He bewails 

 the standard very much as Shakespeare makes Lucrece be- 

 wail opportunity. If he made his own hives and used only a 

 handsaw, a hammer, a square, a plain, and a jack-knife to 

 make them with, he would not care a tinker's ladle for the 

 standard. Of course, one will have to use the open-end hang- 

 ing frame, but lots of bee-keepers do that, and don't seem to 

 know that they are hurt much. I confess that I like the V- 

 edged Hoffman a little better, and I guess that some supply 

 maker could be Induced, for a little extra pay, to cut the end- 

 bars two inches longer, and that would make fair sailing so 

 far as I am concerned, as I do not want anybody to make 

 hive-bodies for me. 



When spring comes I am going to try some double-headed 

 experiments with these deeper hives and the ordinary dove- 

 tailed liivos. In order to have the conditions as nearly equal 



