748 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Dec. 



BEE-KEEPING IN THE HANDS OF SPECIALISTS, 



And Mr. Langstroth has given up all hopes that the 

 masses will ever keep bees, unless it is upon some 

 different system from that which we now have. 



W. Z. Hutchinson, Sec. 

 Roprersville, Mich., Nov. 16, 1883. 



Friend H., you deserve a medal for having 

 inaugurated apian for reporting conventions 

 so as to boil it all'down into less tlian a page. 

 It is seldom that we have room for a full re- 

 port in Gleanings; but we always have 

 room for such a report as you give. Very 

 likely it is open to criticism ; and perhaps 

 you have omitted many important things; 

 but for all that, it is a move in the right di- 

 rection. — I do not quite get your concluding 

 thought, however. It seems to me that the 

 masses do keep bees, and get honey and hap- 

 piness both. Anv one who doubts it should 

 read our reports from ABC scholars. 



ARE THEY ITALIANS OR NOT ? 



AND ARE BANDS A TEST OF PURITY? 



M KB my so-called Italian hees Italians or not? 

 J(^_ Now, don't every one of you professors of 

 ' apiculture pipe in at once and say, "Why, it 

 is easy enough to tell; the Italians have three 

 golden yellow hands on their abdomen." Yes, I 

 know that that is what the books teach, and I be- 

 lieve that bee-connoisseurs pretty much agree upon 

 that point. But it seems very strange, that, start- 

 ing out as I did last spring, with 2 colonies of Italians 

 and 15 of blacKs, that 11 out of the first 13 queens 

 reared from my tested ones should turn out to be 

 purely mated. When the progeny of the first-hatch- 

 ed queens made their appearance I was tickled to 

 see those three golden bands glisten in the sun- 

 ■ shine. But as, one after another, they all showed 

 these same marks, it all began to look a little too 

 thick. One out of the 13 did not show the yellow 

 marks so distinctly, although, learning from Root's 

 primer, as I did, I scarcely needed that, from the 

 way they usually greeted me when opening the hive, 

 to convince me that they were hybrids. And I 

 might say here, that often this autumn I have felt 

 profound convictions that most of the other 11 were 

 hybrids. But last August I was puzzled. Were 

 they all Italians or all hybrids? for, including my 

 imported ones, they all looked alike to me. Or did I 

 not have sense enough to perceive the difference, if 

 difference there were? 



After watching, wondering, and worrying for 

 several weeks (I have not got over all that yet), I 

 called upon an old retired apiarist. Miles H. Wil- 

 mot, J. P., well known to many of our western bee- 

 keepers, hoping he might furnish me with some 

 solution to the enigma. 



WHAT MR. WIIiMOT THOUGHT. 



He said that the three golden bauds were regarded 

 as a test of pure Italian blood. In his julgment, 

 however, there were two such necessary tests, the 

 yellow bands and gentleness. He had had Italians 

 which he could shake or brush off tfte combs in the 

 roughest manner; indeed, he could handle them 

 just about as he pleased. Others, to all appearance 

 beautiful Italians, were of the m:)8t rabid kind. All 

 such h9 regarded as hybrids. He al33 believed that 

 the majority of queea-rearers were arrxnt humbujs. 

 What djyou all thiak abDut that? 



Now, I have always understood that all Italians 

 were gentle and quiet. Those I bought of E. T. 

 Flanagan, of Belleville, Illinois, do usually remain 

 quietly on the combs. But so persistently do they 

 stick, that any effort to brush them off rouses their 

 ire, and they stick it to me; it is then I get the bene- 

 fit of their feelers; and especially will they fight the 

 poor brush with all the choler of which bees are 

 capable. And often one will pop out of the hive in- 

 to my eye, for no apparent cause, and go to work as 

 if she would gouge it out. That in the honey season 

 too. Those I have raised myself are more excitable, 

 though quiet at times; but when full, or lengthened 

 out, the bothersome third stripe is always there. 

 What about all this? Are the marks described, 

 certain tests of purity, or is 'Squire Wilmot right? 

 Can we be certain that gentleness is a characteristic 

 of all Italian bees? Of course, if thrift and profit 

 alone are to be considered, it makes comparatively 

 little difference as to what blood they are. But 

 when I sell bees I want to know whether I can war- 

 rant them to be pure Italians or not; therefore I 

 want queens and drones of either race to be thor- 

 ough bred stock. 



SOME OTHER MATTERS BEARING ON THIS SUBJECT. 



I have among my old stocks four colonies which 

 plainly display two yellow bands. They are among 

 my gentlest and best workers. The two I had this 

 spring swarmed naturally, and raised immense 

 crops of drones. May not my Italian queens have 

 mated with these two-banded drones, and produced 

 three-banded workers? May not that often be the 

 case in the apiaries of queen-rearers? Also, I find 

 among my old races yellow-banded and yellow-spot- 

 ted bees of every degree, and bees without any yel- 

 low, and all these diversities in the same hive. May 

 it not be, that in mixed breeds of bees, as well as of 

 other live stock, the offspring of a single queen will 

 vary in their markings and disposition as well? 

 Finally, it is a curious fact that all my young queens, 

 two-banded and no-banded, appears to be purely 

 mated; for every colony seems to be of the same 

 race as its mother-bee. Is it possible that bees do 

 take after their mother more than their father? 

 Now, I do not know whether all this adds either to 

 a solution or complication of my problem. It may 

 not bother anybody else; but to me it all seems 

 enigmatical a.ud funny. 



CAN INVALIDS KEEP BEES? 



Friend Hasty and others have had their say upon 

 that point; now let me have mine. The thought 

 that invalids can not follow the business, needs 

 qualification. I certainly would not advise every 

 chronic invalid to go to bee-keeping. The class of 

 persons, possibly, to whom the term is applied, would 

 hardly be able to stand every pull the business re- 

 quires. Still there are many persons, feir from able-, 

 bodied and healthy, who can do well at it when 

 there is not much else they can do. I, if you please, 

 am just such a weakling. Raised on a farm, I have 

 yet done but little farm work, except to feed pigs 

 and chickens, drop corn, etc. — little country lasses' 

 work. I could not stand it to be cooped up in an of- 

 fice. To find an independent living has been a tus- 

 sle, la such a condition, I was fairly driven to take 

 hold of this business, with a very small start, and I 

 h ave made it the greatest success of my life. Not, it 

 istrug, sucb a sacje^^as it mi^ht have baaa if I 

 could put m? shjaldsr to every bardea. If the 

 skeptical readsr of this cjull bs m/salE during oay 



