$ J\)t Apiary. $ 



ITALIAN BEES. 



UST as the horticulturist is constantly looking for the best 

 v arieties to plant and cultivate, and just as much 

 of his success depends upon the proper selection of 

 these varieties, so the bee-keeper should consider carefully 

 the best bees to purchase when engaging in his business. 

 Unfortunately because we have only indirect control of 

 the selection of the male, the drone, we are liable to fold 

 our hands and say there is no use in attempting to secure 

 the best stock, they will run out anyway. I say only in- 

 directly have we control of the selection of the drone. Almost every one knows 

 a queen bee is the mother of the colony, and she is impregnated once in a life- 

 time only, and that on the wing. The reason why the queen is fertilized on the 

 wing is, first to prevent impregnation with her own blood which she would do if 

 impregnated in the hive. Next, the swiftest and most active drone becomes 

 the parent of the future worker bees. We can indirectly select drones by keep- 

 ing down undesirable ones in the neighborhood. Hut the fact that we cannot 

 control entirely the selection of drones, is only a reason for re-doubling our efforts 

 in carefully selecting where we can. Much as we may have the theory of selection 

 by heart, I am afraid there are but few who follow it properly. Queen breeders 

 know that a customer will be pleased when he gets a queen which pleases the eye. 

 If she pleases the eye and produces workers which prove good honey gatherers, so 

 much the better, but she must please the eye first. I have never felt justified in 

 stocking our apiary of 95 colonies for beauty alone. True, the two can be com- 

 bined very often but if anything has to be sacrificed it should be beauty. We 

 have in bee-keeping, common black or German bees, Italian, Carmolian, Cyprian 

 and Syrian, also Tunisian, or, as they have been wrongfully called, Punic bees. 

 There are others with which we are not so well acquainted, which do not require to 

 be mentioned here. Punic bees are very undesirable, and any one would be 

 foolish to purchase such. They started with a great flourish of trumpets and 

 were advertised at a high price. Cyprian and Syrian bees were, about ten years 

 ago, quite common amongst advanced bee-keepers, but to-day a pure queen can 

 probably not be purchased upon the American continent. The queens are 

 extremely prolific; when angered the bees can scarcely be subdued; for building 

 queen cells they are good. The black bees are troubled with the moth, are easily 

 robbed, when handled, instead of adhering to the combs they incline to run 

 over the combs and cluster in bunches, they are cross, cap comb honey well. 

 The Carmolian bees are very prolific, gentle, cap honey well, liable to swarm 

 often. It may be that confining the queen to certain combs the prolific tendency 



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