THIE JCMERICJtN; MMM JOURNKI,. 



519 



FOREIGN BEES. 



Temper and Cliaractcrisitictt 

 the Eastern Races. 



of 



Letter writlni to S. W. Mmrison, M. D., 

 BY FRANK BENTON. 



As to your questions: 1. "Do you not 

 have in Carniola, and in your apiary, 

 queens wliich produce some workers 

 with yellow bauda?"' Yes, yes; and I 

 have yet to see an apiarv iu t'arniola 

 where such do not exist, although I have 

 visited all the most important apiaries 

 existing here, and have seen hundreds 

 of colonies. There is in therace a tinge 

 of yellow blood that crops out every now 

 and then, do the best one may. I breed 

 only from such queens as produce (jray 

 uwAor.«— such as show no yellow or or- 

 ange bands— not even a tiny of orange, 

 and I permit no drones to be reared'in 

 my apiary except those from Carniolan 

 queens whose workers and drones are 

 quite gray; but there are several native 

 apiaries (box hives) near me, over which 

 I have no control, and whose owners 

 care nothing for yellow bands if they 

 exist. 



There were at my residence to-day, 

 two intelligent bee-keepers from the 

 northern part of Carniola, and I ques- 

 tioned them on this point, and they re- 

 replied that an occasional tendency to- 

 ward orange or rusty-red bands was 

 always the case with all Carniolans, but 

 that it was no mark of impurity in the 

 race, since it exists so all over Carniola. 

 This agrees with my own observations 

 made here in 1880, 1883, 188G, 18S7 and 

 18SS. Please refer to the article on Car- 

 niolans which I published in the leaflet 

 •' Jiiis," for Jan. 20th, 1886, and you will 

 see that 1 mentioned this in the second 

 paragraph. 



2. "Are all Carniolans the gentlest 

 bees known ''? l^ike all races, individ- 

 ual colonies differ in temper. The Gross- 

 est Carniolans are likely crosser— less 

 gentle, than the gentlest Italians. But 

 for all this, it is none the less true that 

 the race— Carniolans— are far gentler 

 than Italians, and the Grossest Carnio- 

 lans by no means equal, in cros.sness, 

 the crossest Italians. And, though I kept 

 Italians in Michigan for many years, 

 and also several years in Tennessee, and 

 have handled them in many different 

 apiaries in the North and South, it has 

 never been ray lot to meet with any, (in 

 America nor in any part of Italy, which 

 I have visited some six or eight times, 

 and the length and breadth of which I 

 have travelled several times), that were 

 as gentle as the gentler Carniolans. 

 When now we take into account the fact 

 that Carniolans are much hardier and 

 more prolific than Italians, we have 

 abundant reason to place them as su- 

 perior to Italians. Tellow bands or no 

 yellow bands, they are better, and the 

 best we can do is to try to avoid the 

 bands in breeding. Hybrid bees are 

 common in Italy except in a few dis- 

 tricts. Moreover, several prominent 

 Italian breeders have imported Cyprian 



and Syrian bees from which to breed in 

 order to have niUmver stock ! Perhaps 

 also'to give fjic/;/!/ to their lazy, sluggish, 

 diorie-like workers! 



I suppose when you advertise Carnio- 

 lans as just "as proUfic as the uncked roc- 

 cs," you mean by this last, Egyptians, 

 Pale^tines and Syrians. Surely, you 

 would not commit the blunder of includ- 

 ing under this expression also the C;/}'- 

 riitnit ! Well, at any rate, you have 

 made a decided mistake in saying that 

 Carniolans are as prolific as any other 

 race, except other European • races, 

 which they excel in proliUcness. But 

 Syrians exceed all otherraoes. Cyprians 

 are little behind tbem, and, indeed, in- 

 dividual Cyprians nearly or quite equal 

 the best Syrians, Palestines, Egyptians, 

 and Tunisians are close on the tails of 

 all these others; and then come Hymet- 

 tus (Gret-k) and Dalmatian boes stand- 

 ing about the same as Carniolans. 



Strange to say. if 1 were to send you a 

 Hymettus queen, you would not know 

 her, nor her bees, from Carniolans— ex- 

 cept in their limper. The Hymettus 

 bees, or bees of Attica, will fly at one 

 when he approaches their hives, with 

 much more vigor than even blacks, and 

 also in greater numbers. Disturb them 

 without smoke, and you will want a 

 brook near at hand to jump into. The 

 same rusty-red bands, only occasionally 

 slightly lighter — almost a dirty white, 

 appear with them as with Carniolans. 



Dalmatians are curious, shining blue- 

 black bees that play and chase each 

 other like flies at the hive-entrances. 

 They are not difficult to manage, and 

 are splendid comb-honey bees. 



Carniola, Austria, July 4, 1888. 



BEE-WORK. 



jTIetliocis and Implements Used 

 in the Apiary. 



Written for the American Bee Journal 



BY G. 1'. nACHENBERG, M. D. 



The maximun standard of my apiary 

 is about 100 colimies, but like the tide, 

 it swells and recedes in number, not as 

 the moon wo\ild have it, but the contin- 

 gency of aTexas climate— its tempera- 

 ture, aridity, the yield of honey pasture, 

 etc. Bees multiply here rapidly, but 

 they are often destroyed in the same 

 ratio. The past spring I found my 

 apiary cut down to about 60 colonies. 

 many were destroyed by starvation and 

 moth, some by the cold, and a few by 

 solar heat, drowning the bees in their 

 own honey ; and in time of swarming 

 many took flight to the woods. Many 

 of these disastrous results might have 

 been avoided by attention and labor ; 

 but an old army officer like myself, made 

 stiff and clumsy by age, and in Uncle 

 Sam's service, necessarily has to con- 

 duct an apiary on principles and a meth- 

 od of his own. When I made my de- 

 hut here as a bee-man, 1 went it strong. 

 I put up a work-shop, honey house and 

 store-house, and spent a little fortune to 

 get together tlie whole stock and par- 

 aphernalia of aflrst-class bee-establish- 

 ment. It my income was not always in 

 keeping with my expenditures, never- 



theless many of tny bee-friends thought 

 I had extraordinary success. And so I 

 had, when we take into consideration 

 that I commenced about seven years 

 ago with only three colonies, and bought 

 none since. 



Hoiv I bcu:an Be<— Keeping. 



About ten years ago I bought 10 col- 

 onies with no knowledge whatever of 

 the bee-business I had an idea that 

 bees would shift for themselves, and all 

 that I had to do was to take honey from 

 them ad lihitmu. Under this system, 

 they all died but two colonies, and these 

 had a remarkable history. I kept them 

 in a dark chamber in my house (to keep 

 them from being stolen) with a large 

 auger-hole through the wall for their 

 exit. Each colony was in two hive- 

 stories, and as their location made it 

 impossible to take honey from the hives, 

 they become very strong, and linally 

 made large clusters of comb witli honey 

 outside of the hive, inside of the house. 

 For some time I cut from this comb all 

 the honey we needed for table use. 

 This was in the mountains of Texas, 

 about .50 miles from here, where 1 had 

 tarried for a few years to heal up my 

 lungs by the mountain ozone. 



HoH' I moved my Been. 



On my return to the vicinity of Aus- 

 tin, I brought these two colonies with 

 me, which had their habitation in rough 

 boxes of my own make, admitting free 

 ventilation from all corners. I don't 

 believe that there is any thing in the 

 annals of history that equals the rough 

 usage that these bees got in their trans- 

 portation to this place. 1 nailed up the 

 bottom of the hives with boards, and 

 secured the stories with side-strips. 

 The question of favoring them with 

 much breathing space was barely taken 

 into consideration, perhaps for a lack of 

 interest in a business I felt I did not 

 understand. I moved them in a com- 

 mon farm-wagon ten miles, over the 

 roughest road in Texas, running over 

 rocks of a prodigious size ; and what was 

 worse. I then left them in their contine- 

 ment. stored in a house on my ranch on 

 the Perdanalis, for over two weeks. 

 Then for 40 miles they were taken 

 through the mountains to Austin, with 

 such rough usage, even to break away 

 some of the strips of the hives, liberat- 

 ing some of the bees. Of course they 

 promptly notiUed me of the break, with 

 the song into my ears, " Stop that team." 

 To save horses, bees, and myself, I at 

 once repaired damages. 



When I got here, their music and ac- 

 tivity was very much subdued, and my 

 prognosis of them was anything but 

 favoratile. I put them on stands and 

 liberated them. Poor things! it was a 

 painful interest to see them come out 

 ono by one, looking like crippled inva- 

 lids of a hospital. Soon some took wing 

 and appeared to locate their mysterious 

 drop-down. I watched them with inter- 

 est and sympathy, and I noticed in par- 

 ticular that for a time they had lost all 

 their combativeness. As I found that 

 they survived the most cruel treatment 

 (no doul)t owing to the cool weather at 

 the time, and the mixed arrangement of 

 the comb). I concluded that I would try 

 my luck again, but not as an ignoramus, 

 but with tlie necessary intelligence for 



