182 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Mar. 21, 



an easy and sure road to success In Italianizing. But my 

 hopes were soon to be blasted. 



When I began to rear queens from ray young queens, not 

 more than half of those I thought to be p\irely mated would 

 produce pure Italian queens. I then began to think over the 

 matter, and to read everything I could find on the subject. 

 That there was a mistake somewhere there was no doubt in 

 my mind. My queens had had but two chances to be mated. 

 They had to be either mated from drones from my tested 

 queens, or from the drones of the black bees in the country. 

 If they were mated from my Italian drones, why was it that 

 they did not produce pure queens ? And if mated from the 

 black drones of the country, why was it that their workers 

 were all ;^-banded ? I naturally fell into the idea that the 

 production of all o-banded workers by an Italian queen is not 

 a sure sign that the queen is purely mated ; and also that Ihc 

 only true test of a pure Italian queen, and that she is purely 

 mated, is the purity of the queens reared from her. 



I know that this is not a very favorable picture, but never- 

 theless, in my opinion, it is the true one, and I am not the only 

 one that is of the same opinion. I have before me the writ- 

 ings of Mrs. Ellen J. Tupper, as published in the Report of 

 Agriculture, page 471, for the year lb65, in which she says : 



"By a pin-e queen, I mean one of pure stock, and which 

 has been fertilized by an Italian drone. There has been much 

 stock reared in this country which is liybrid. By this I mean 

 that the progeny of a pure Italian queen fertilized by a com- 

 mon drone. This, in the ^rst generation, is hara to be distin- 

 guished from the pure, but it soon degenerates." 



Again she says (page 472) : " The only ceHain test that 

 I rely upon (as to the purity of a queen) is the color and mark- 

 ings of a queen's royal children, or the queens reared from 

 her. The female bee is invariably like the father, and the 

 queens are the only perfect female bee." 



And again Mr. Doolittle, on page 108 of his most excel- 

 lent work on queen-rearing, says : " To detect any slight con- 

 tamination of blood in our bees, we must always look to the 

 queen progeny, for the queen is the typical bee of the hive ; 

 hence they will show an impurity where the workers and 

 drones would not." 



I desire no controversy, but we should get at the truth in 

 this matter, and if the theory herein contained is the true one, 

 does it not follow that no one should sella queen as a tested 

 queen until it is positively known that she will produce pure 

 queens, and not simply 3-banded workers? 



Sneedville, Tenn. 



The Land of Flowers in Winter-Time. 



BY MRS. L. HARRISON. 



I am spending my fourth winter in this section of the 

 " Land of Flowers ; " and my experience has been an unusual 

 one. When I arrived in Florida, Dec. 17, the weather was 

 quite warm and summer-like — everything as green as in June, 

 strawberries in bloom, and many pear trees bending down 

 with the second crop of fruit ; in fact, it was too warm for the 

 time of the year. There was frost Dec. 27 sufficient to form 

 thin ice, and the 28th the mercury went down to 15- above 0, 

 and the ground was frozen hard ; the 29th there was a light 

 frost, and then the weather resumed its normal condition. 



Of course, early gardens were killed, and many young 

 trees either killed or badly injured, A largt orange tree will 

 stand a good deal of freezing without being permanently 

 injured ; a lemon tree is more tender ; young fig trees were in 

 many cases killed to the ground. The gardeners determined 

 to recoup their losses, replanted their grounds, and finding 

 their trees less impaired than they had anticipated, were con- 

 gratulating themselves on their escape, when on Feb. 8 there 

 came another blizzard, and the mercury went as low, and at 

 some points lower, than it did the first time, with much 

 greater injury to gardens, as, the season being advanced, 

 much more had been planted, and in the central and central 

 southern portions of the State there must be great damage to 

 trees, as the sap was flowing upwards, and the buds swelling; 

 in the northern portion of the State, the trees were dormant, 

 or nearly so, and are probably little injured. The loss to the 

 State in the aggregate will be great; but following the advice 

 of Moses to the children of Israel on the banks of the Red Sea, 

 they will "be of good courage, and go forward." Deserving 

 success, they will attain it. 



None perished of the cold here, as, alas, was the case with 

 many a poor pioneer in Nebraska and Dakota; and but little 

 physical suffering was endured, as fuel is plenty, and the cold 

 was not of long duration. There is probably no healthier 



locality than the highlands of west Florida ; and our beautiful 

 St. Andrews Bay abounds with fine oysters, and choice fish, of 

 many varieties, such as red fish, pompano, Spanish mackerel, 

 salt water trout, etc. Pears, peaches and plums do finely 

 here, and citrus fruits are a success oftener than a failure. 



This is a very good locality for bee-culture, the past 

 season about 40 pounds of surplus honey per hive being taken 

 here, which was accounted K of a crop. At Lake Chipola, 

 (near the dead lakes, so called from the many dead cypress, 

 andother dead trees still standing in the water) about 14 miles 

 from the head of East St. Andrews Bay, is a very large apiary, 

 owned by Messrs. Alderman and Roberts. I paid them a visit 

 three years ago, and they had taken the previous season 

 (1891) 250 barrels of honey. If I remember correctly, they 

 had 1,300 colonies in their apiary. Mr. Alderman also had a 

 very fine orange grove which yielded that season 5,000 bo.xes 

 of oranges. While the soil was quite rich, the location was 

 not a healthy one, there being a good deal of malaria, chills, 

 etc. The residents there said they " could get over the chills 

 or malaria, without taking quinine, just by going down to the 

 bay and staying a few weeks." 



Lands in the piney woods north of St. Andrews can be 

 bought quite cheaply — S3 to yiO per acre according to quality 

 and location. There are no manufacturing industries on the 

 bay, and but little day labor to be had ; but the settler who 

 can come there with .si,00O or Sl,5(.iO, can make himself a 

 pleasant and comfortable home, away from the cold and bliz- 

 zards of the far north. 



St. Andrews Bay, Fla., Feb. 11. 



>v 



No. 5. — The Production of Comb Honey. 



BY EirERSON T. ABBOTT. 



Before we go any further it may be well to see where we 

 are " at." 



We first reached the conclusion that Italian bees were not 

 the best for comb honey on account of their objectionable 

 habit of capping close down on the honey, thus giving the 

 combs a watery appearance. I know that some claim that their 

 Italians do not do this way, and that they produce as white 

 honey as any bees, but this is not the way my Italians cap 

 honey, and, for that matter, I have never seen any that did 

 cap in this way. If anyone has a strain of Italians that 

 invariably produce first-class white comb-honey, I presume, 

 Mr. Publisher, that you will not object if I suggest that now 

 would be a good time for him or her to insert a large advertise- 

 ment in the American Bee Journal. 



I have never seen any bees that capped their honey white, 

 which did not have a large mixture of German or Carniolan 

 blood in them. I thought at one time that a cross between 

 the Italians and Carniolans would be just the bee, but I found 

 some difheulty in keeping up the proper miixture for a suf- 

 ficient length of time to thoroughly test them. If I should 

 make up my mind in the future to devote my time to the pro- 

 duction of comb honey, I should start with a cross between 

 the Germans and Italians, and then introduce some Carniolan 

 blood to add whiteness and reduce the amount of propolis. 

 Italians, as I see things now, are the best for extracted honey, 

 but a cross between the Germans and Italians with a mixture 

 of Carniolan blood is the best for comb honey. I have no such 

 bees for sale. 



We have also discussed the subject of hives, and reached 

 the conclusion that a plain S-frame hive with halved joints, 

 and hanging frames, spaced with a metal spacer, and a loose 

 bottom, is about the best hive for comb honey, all things con- 

 sidered. On this hive I would have supers which have arrange- 

 ments for holding the sections in the form of pattern slats 

 fitted into them, with presser-board and wedges above them to 

 hold the sections. Over the sections should be placed a thin 

 honey-board with a bee-space under it, and over this a lid that 

 gives at least one inch of space above the honey-board. To 

 make a success of comb honey, one should have a number of 

 these supers, or surplus arrangements, for each hive — at least 

 four, and in some localities more. Thus equipped, the ques- 

 tion arises, what is the next thing necessary ? I answer, 



LOCALITY. 



There is no use to try to secure an extra article of comb 

 honey unless the locality is favorable. In the first place the 

 flora'should, of course, be such as will produce white honey. 

 Again, it should be of such a character as will give a rapid 

 flow in preference to a lengthy one. It will also be of very 

 great advantage if this flow comes in the early part of the 

 season. The later the flow, the more probability of the bees 



