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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



July A, 



no more than mate with a half brother, unless this mother- 

 queen mated with a drone from her own mother. In this lat- 

 ter case we should have only % blood, unless the grandmother 

 to our young queen mated with a drone produced by her 

 mother. Should such a thing as this happen (and it would 

 not be liable once in 10,000 times), we would get only % 

 blood, even then, by breeding drones and queens from the 

 same mother. Hero is a point not generally understood by 

 very many of our bee-keepers, if the questions asked me on 

 this in-and-in breeding matter is any criterion to go by, and 

 one which shows the wisdom of the Creator of the bee. But 

 to return to the original question : 



Suppose our correspondent rears his queens from one 

 queen, and the drones from the other, as he proposes. It is 

 In no way likely that both of the queens mated with brother 

 drones; hence the young queens will be only half-blood rela- 

 tion to the sister of the mother-queen ; and as the drones will 

 be only half-blood relation to the mother of the queens, he 

 cannot possibly get a relation nearer than K. Hence it will 

 be seen that, with no control of the drone, our improving our 

 bees in any one special direction must be only a slow affair at 

 best, and one in which in-and-in breeding has no very impor- 

 tant bearing. 



Now, suppose we have it all arranged as we wish, and on 

 July first we commence to rear our queens, having plenty of 

 drones flying from the aunt of these young queens. And to 

 make matters more sure, suppose that we have drone-traps 

 on each hive in the apiary, except the one we have selected 

 for drones, what proportion of these young queens will mate 

 with the drones we wish them to? Well, that will depend 

 upon how near there are other bees to our apiary. If, as wc 

 find it usually, not one queen in five will mate the desired 

 drones at this time of the year. It is a rare thing to find an 

 apiary where there are not some bees kept within three or 

 four miles of it, or where there is not some tree in the woods 

 that contains bees. This tree, or one of these hives kept by 

 most bee-keepers, will furnish more drones than the breeder 

 will get from his selected colony, as a rule ; for colonies which 

 have no attention given them are very prolific in drones. I 

 am satisfied that all the drones of one vicinity have a certain 

 place where they congregate, and that the queens go to this 

 congregating place when they fly out, which results, as I said 

 before, in the chances being against queens matijg as the 

 breeder wishes. 



To illustrate : In 1872, Italian drones were reared for 

 the first time as near as three miles of my apiary. That sea- 

 son I purchased an Italian queen, but she gave no drones, as 

 I did not get her until July. There were none but black bees 

 about me up to this time, and no queens had ever shown any 

 yellow in their offspring. This year about one queen in eight 

 gave workers that were hybrids, many of them being finely- 

 marked Italians. With this positive proof before me — that 

 bees mix to a large extent when separated three miles — I am 

 much surprised when reading the statement of some, that half 

 a mile is distance enough apart to keep two races of bees 

 pure. I find that this congregating of drones and queens oc- 

 curs only during our summer months, with perhaps a part of 

 September. As the weather becomes uncertain, the loud 

 humming that has been heard on all pleasant days, at a cer- 

 tain place, between the hours of noon and 3 o'clock in the 

 afternoon, ceases. I find that from then on, I am much more 

 sure of having my queens mated with the desired drones than 

 at any other time of the year, unless it be in early spring. 



Again, at this season of the year, nearly all the drones 

 are killed off, except those especially kept by the apiarist, so 

 that when it is possible to rear queens at this season of the 

 year, and we have a few pleasant days, in-and-in breeding 

 can be more nearly accomplished than at any other time of the 

 year, yet as I have shown above, not enough so to cause our 



bees to deteriorate very much in some time. If after we find 

 all drones killed off except those we have preserved, we go to 

 the hive having our drones some cool, cloudy day when the 

 hives can be kept open as long as we choose without danger of 

 chilling the bees, or without danger from robbers, and pick 

 out all of the inferior drones as to size, color, or any other im- 

 perfection, and kill them, we shall then have something from 

 which we can improve our stock in the way we are desirous 

 of doing, and still have it becoming more valuable along other 

 lines as well. Borodino, N. Y. 



What Dr. Miller Thinks. 



Spacing Frames. — I am interested in the article of Mr. 

 Doerr, page 389, especially as he says, "I have no trouble 

 with brace-combs." Will he please tell us whether the top, 

 bottom and end bars are all the same width, one inch ? Also, 

 what is the thickness of the top-bar ? As I understand it, 

 when Mr. Doerr holds a frame up before him, the nail on the 

 side of the top-bar facing him is on the left end, while on the 

 bottom-bar it is on the right end. Please tell us why they are 

 not both at the same end. 



In some respects I like something of this kind better than 

 the spacing of the Hoffman frame, but there is one respect in 

 which the latter has decidedly the advantage. When you at- 

 tempt to take out a Hoffman frame or put it back, there is no 

 danger of one frame catching on the other, but with the spac- 

 ing nails there is, I should think, danger that the nail of one 

 frame will catch in the bar of its neighbor. How far apart 

 must the frames be pushed so you can easily put another 

 frame between them ? 



His plan is excellent in one very important respect — it 

 makes a very small point of contact between two frames. 



Bees and Steawberkies.— On page 390, Mrs. Harrison 

 gives Bro. Abbott a little lift, and I have a card from A. P. 

 Ames, Claremont, Va., who says: "Here in the South I've 

 seen bees work on strawberries fully as strongly as they will 

 on almost any plant. Can't say whether they get much honey, 

 but they certainly do pollen." 



Mrs. Harrison, the fact that peach seed produce fruit like 

 the parent tree does not in all cases prove that bees don't 

 work on them. White clover is worked by bees, but it pro- 

 duces like plants. If there were many kinds of white clover, 

 we should expect the bess to mix them, and if a number of 

 different kinds of peaches were growing near, the bees ought 

 to mix them, but if a number of the same kind were in one 

 place, then there need be no mixing. 



Big Box-Hives. — One paragraph in C. Davenport's arti- 

 cle, page 391, makes me feel like leaning toward John F. 

 Gates' plan of tall box-hives for breeders. That paragraph 

 says bees wintered without protection and without loss for 15 

 years in hives about 13 inches square and 18 to 24 inches 

 high, and first swarms from them gave more surplus than 

 others. I honestly believe that some would do well to go back 

 to big box-hives. But what does he mean by picking out the 

 biggest of his big queens and then calling it nothing more 

 than "fair-sized ?" 



Five-Frame Hives. — I would like to ask whether the 

 plan proposed by W. D. French, on page 392, that is, keeping 

 bees on five frames through the most of the season, has been 

 followed for a series of years, and has produced good results. 

 The general teaching has been that such " swarms" would be 

 rather small and undesirable. 



Color of Befs. — John McArthur reasons rightly on page 

 292, that color alone should not condemn a colony of bees. 

 If any one is trying to drive out yellow bees simply because 



