1918 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



415 



demand did not require to be large 

 to exceed the supply. For the latter 

 was small. The would-be purchaser 

 was practically confined to Canada. 

 Shipments from the Southern States 

 in nuclei and pound packages had 

 not yet begun. 



Mr. Jones, if not inventive, was 

 certainly enterprising. He published 

 a bee journal, and though his Eng- 

 lish in speaking and writing may not 

 have been to the queen's taste, he 

 generally succeeded in making him- 

 self understood, while his practical 

 knowledge of all in his day pertain- 

 ing to the bee industry gave to what 

 he said and wrote, special value. 



His big undertaking, however, was 

 a visit to the East for the purpose of 

 investigating beekeeping there, and 

 to secure new races of bees for Can- 

 ada, in case he met with any indica- 

 tive of superior merits over those of 

 our own native bees. These, he be- 

 lieved, he found in Palestine and the 

 Island of Cyprus. From these coun- 

 tries he brought back a number of 

 colonies whose progeny secured 

 some popularity for a few seasons 

 subsequent to their arrival. But in 

 competition with the Italians, which 

 had been previously introduced to 

 America they eventually failed to 

 make good. The Cyprians were ir- 

 ritable and struck out vigorously 

 when disturbed, giving all who inter- 

 fered with them far from agreeable 

 reminders of their power of self-de- 

 fense. I secured queens of both im- 

 portations. I found that the Pales- 

 tinians had nothing to recommend 

 them over the Italians, while they 

 were inferior as honey gatherers, 

 and in prolificness. 



The following story is told of 

 Jones in connection with the Pales- 

 tinian shipment of bees at Joppa. 

 When the consignment arrived from 

 the interior of the country the ship 

 on which they were to be taken to 

 the West lay out a distance in the 

 offing. The space between the ves- 

 sel and the shore had to be covered 

 in row-boats. The time for the ves- 

 sel's departure was near. Hence, if 

 the bees were to go they must be 

 placed on board the vessel without 

 delay. The Arab porters knew the 

 situation and united in a demand for 

 much bigger pay or they would do 

 nothing. The strikers stood by the 

 freight and, through an interpreter, 

 listened to its owner's appeals to 

 take the colonies to the ship. But all 

 in vain. Then an attempt was made 

 to secure others. But the first gang 

 would let no one touch them. At 

 this juncture Jones seized a colony, 

 and lifting it high, let it drop on the 

 rough stones composing the pave- 

 ment. The impact freed the bees, 

 and they proceeded to make them- 

 selves felt by the recalcitrant por- 

 ters, who fled in all directions, and 

 left the owner free to engage other 

 workers on fair terms. 



At the beginning of the period un- 

 der review, the bee diseases of later 

 times were not at all widespread. In- 

 deed, an attendant at a beekeepers' 

 convention, though listening to all 

 that was said, might not hear a word 

 touching American or European 

 foulbrood, black or sacbrood. Ameri- 



can foulbrood was, doubtless, present 

 and doing its destructive work be- 

 fore much was said or even thought 

 of it. But wherever it projected it- 

 self it could not long be left to do its 

 fell work in quiet. Later came the 

 European variety, and in presence of 

 these evils a remedy was sought. 

 Many experiments were made before 

 an effective cure was discovered. This 

 became known as the starvation pro- 

 cess. The application of it has 

 greatly checked the spread of the 

 disease and lessened the area of its 

 operations. Mr. Todd, of British 

 Columbia, would have us believe that 

 the application of fire to a diseased 

 colony is the only effective cure and 

 makes bold to aver that owing to the 

 soaring application of the red flame 

 foulbrood is more prevalent than for- 

 merly. In this contention, however, 

 he will find few supporters. Those 

 seized of conditions, as they are, 

 know that foulbrood, whether Ameri- 

 can or European, has greatly de- 

 creased in volume, relatively to the 

 number of colonies, during the past 

 25 years. No doubt some credit in 

 the improvement is due to the dis- 

 placement of the native black bee by 

 the Italian. For while the claim that 

 a purely mated Italian queen will 

 cure any colony infected with Euro- 

 pean foulbrood may be more than is 

 warranted in the actual issue, it is 

 certain that once such a stock ap- 

 pears in a clean colony its immunity 

 in future is one of the things to be 

 confidently expected. 



In a comparison of beekeeping 

 forty years ago and now. mention 

 should be made of the increase in the 

 number of colonies and the decrease 

 of the number of those who keep 

 them. In the early period bees were 

 mostly kept on farms. The number 

 of colonies kept by each person ran 

 from three to thirty. They were 

 kept in boxes to which there was no 

 access, by their owners, once the 

 bees had taken possession. No ma- 

 nipulation was attempted other than 

 getting the bees to enter at swarming 

 time, and smothering them by sul- 

 phur fumes to take the honey away. 

 They might be queenless, storeless. 

 preyed on by moths, or in process of 

 destruction by disease — their owner 

 knew nothing, and, of course, did 

 nothing. This primitive method, 

 however, had this advantage, it did 

 not require much experience or time 

 t keep bees ; hence, many farmers 

 kept them. If the income was not 

 large, neither was the capital and 

 labor invested. But, when with the 

 invention of the movable frame, and 

 the extractor, beekeeping entered the 

 realm of the sciences, the habits of 

 the beehive could be studied and the 

 results utilized so as to secure the 

 largest possible profit to the apiarist. 

 Therefore to keep bees with a view 

 to securing a satisfactory profit on 

 the capital and labor invested re- 

 quired expert knowledge and time to 

 bo given to their management. Thus 

 beekeeping passed into the hands of 

 experts — men who owned from fifty 

 to several hundred colonies, and who 

 spoke of their honey crop in terms of 

 tons instead of hundreds. Some of 

 the farmers, to obtain like results, 



adopted the scientific method. Their 

 bees, too, must be kept in movable 

 frame hives, and the extractor dis- 

 placed the sulphur and straining in 

 the removal of the honey. Yet in 

 this very change came disaster to 

 beekeeping on the farm, for the av- 

 erage farmer had neither the experi- 

 ence nor the time to give proper 

 effect to the modern methods, and 

 his bees perished. 



No change in Canadian beekeeping 

 of the past half century is more 

 marked than the Government's rela- 

 tion to it. During the first half of 

 this period the beekeepers had to 

 "paddle their own canoe." Those 

 who presided over governmental af- 

 fairs were content to leave the honey 

 industry to private enterprise. 



Ontario, Canada. 



The Italian Bee—History of Its 

 Importation 



By C. P. Dadant 



THE Italian bee has long been 

 known as a superior variety of 

 the honey-bee. Our text-books 

 quote Aristotle, Virgil, Columella, as 

 having noticed, from 1800 to 2200 

 years ago, the greater beauty of this 

 bee and its high quality and peace- 

 ableness. Spinola also, about 1805, 

 mentioned it as superior. 



But there is no evidence of any bee 

 lover having tried to export them 

 until 1843, when Captain Baldenstein! 

 living in his ancestral castle, in the 

 Rhaetian Alps of Switzerland, em- 

 ployed two men to carry a hive of 

 them across the Alps to his home, 

 from the Valteline, a narrow valley 

 at the head of the noted Lake of 

 Como. The distance was short, but 

 it was across mountains inaccessible 

 to the bees, owing to the perpetual 

 snows. His failure to succeed in 

 keeping the race pure was mentioned 

 by him in the "Bienenzeitung." This 

 called Dzierzon's attention to this 

 bee, and a few years later, having 

 had some correspondence with an 

 Italian lady beekeeper living at Mira, 

 near Venice, he requested her, in 

 1853, to send him a colony of those 

 bees. It was then that the first suc- 

 cess was achieved in the breeding of 

 Italian queens, as Dzierzon, in the 

 following autumn announced, at an 

 Apiarian Convention in Vienna, that 

 he had succeeded in rearing some 30 

 queens, fecundated by Italian drones. 



There was great doubt expressed 

 concerning the possibility of these 

 bees degenerating in colder climates. 

 There was also quite a discussion as 

 to whether the race was positively 

 pure in its native country. In the 

 first volume of the American Bee 

 Journal, January, 1861, George Klein 

 states that black bees had been found 

 by Deuss, in Nizza. But Nizza is no 

 other than Nice, and is located in 

 France. Those of our readers who 

 have preserved the May, 1916, num- 

 ber of the American Bee Journal will 

 find on page 159 a letter from Mr. 

 Oreggia, a beekeeper of Liguria, ex- 

 plaining how the bees are slightly 

 mixed along the narrow border ot 

 the Riviera, confined between the 

 mountains and the sea- The bees of 



