196 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



June 



from Cyprus to Egypt, and from 

 Egypt to Palestine, modifying color: 

 and habits in the course of many 

 centuries, till they arrived at the 

 modern stage of fixity, a Palestine 

 greyness. 



When we left our country house in 

 Jaffa in charge of the Moroccan 

 guardian (see the photo, where he is 

 armed as for war, with my wife 

 holding the baby on the porch and 

 the children around the solar wax ex- 

 tractor and hives) we sent down to 

 Jaffa our extracted honey, filled into 

 oil cans, boxed and carried by camel 

 back, to be ready for shipment to 

 Europe. Single colonies often gave 

 over a hundred pounds of orange 

 blossom honey, in April. As soon as 

 the blossoming was over, the hives 

 were strapped by fours, and two such 

 packets were placed on a camel to 

 carry them towards the plains of 

 Sharon and Philistia, for an outing of 

 four or five months. As we worked 

 largely for extracted honey, tin- 

 combs wefe emptied two or three 

 times in April, once or twice in May 

 and June, out in the plains, and once 

 more in the mountains, in July. 



This manipulating stopped the 

 swarming fever, and as long as we 

 were busy about them, we rarely 

 had any swarms, though brood often 

 filled three-fourths of the hive. We 

 then, and still use, our pastoral hive, 

 containing thirteen frames in each 

 story. The frame measures lOxll 1 ^ 

 inches. We adopted the small frame 

 on account of the handy size (a full 

 comb weighs about 4 1 pounds of 

 honey) to load the camels. A full 

 hive of two stories weighing about 

 80 pounds, with comb, bees and a 

 very little honey, to reach the next 

 pasture, is also about all that a man 

 ran lift alone. 



In Palestine, the bees winter well, 

 especially in the heights of Judea, 

 where winters begin in December 

 and end in March. On the Maritime 

 plains they have very short winters, 

 and no real cold to speak of. We 

 would have very cold days from 

 Christmas to the middle of January, 

 relatively, as the thermometer hardly 



once came as low as 31 degrees Fahr- 

 enheit. At the end of January and 

 beginning of February almond trees 

 begin to bloom and bees find food 

 already, though not sufficiently to 

 live upon if they did not have their 

 10 pounds of stores. Certainly a 

 Jaffa colony, taken without prepara- 

 tion from Jaffa to Paris or London, 

 would winter very poorly, whilst a 

 Jerusalem colony would stand the 

 winter better. I have had bees high 

 up in the Alps, which came direct 

 from Jaffa the previous summer, and 

 which wintered fairly, and especially 

 in the second generation, crossed 

 with blacks. 



As for propolizing, possibly it is a 

 question of occasion; the orange 

 trees have no propolis, nor have the 

 honey-plants in the plains ; whilst 

 propolis is more plentiful where olive 

 trees abound. We, at all events, had 

 never to complain of propolis; on the 

 contrary, we would have wished for 

 more to hold the frames better in 

 place when shaken on camel-back. 

 As we always worked for extracted 

 honey, propolizing never affected us. 

 It is true that had we tried to work 

 for sections, it would have proved a 

 failure. Orientals don't build out 

 the combs easily in sections, and they 

 seal the honey at once, which gives 

 the comb a greyish or watery appear- 

 ance, not very attractive for the ad- 

 mirer of white section combs. 



Tunisian bees I have found to be 

 the worst propolizers. These bees 

 build deeper sections, but have the 

 habit of smearing the corners with 

 propolis. 



Egyptian bees are the smallest and 

 the darkest of the yellow races. I 

 have not tried to cross Egyptians. 

 but all others have readily mated 

 with ( arniolans, Tunisians, Algerians. 

 ( aucasians, Italians or common 

 blacks, such as we have in Nice. 



1 have talked with the owner of a 

 big apiary near the Pyramids. There 

 were nearly four hundred hives in 

 one yard. The Nile hives, made of 

 mud and dried in the sun. were ar- 

 ranged very much in the manner of 

 the Caucasian apiary which embel- 



lishes the cover of the December. 

 1918, number of the American Bee 

 Journal. As the stellion. already 

 mentioned, lives in Egypt and would 

 work much havoc among the bees, 

 the hives in Egypt, as well as in Pal- 

 estine, are all plastered together with 

 the same stuff, and thus prevent the 

 stellio-lizards from hiding below or 

 above the hives, as they could do in 

 the Caucasian apiary indicated. 



The Egyptian beemaster showed 

 me his hives, opened a few at the 

 back, without even using smoke, and 

 we walked up and down for more 

 than two hours without receiving a 

 single sting. A good Bingham 

 smoker, which always accompanies 

 me, subdues any race ; provided the 

 beekeeper knows what he is about 

 and never troubles his bees uselessly 

 or opens their hives without adver- 

 tisement, the Egyptians will prove no 

 crosser than others. 



Fertile workers have been said to 

 develop in abundance with all Ori- 

 entals. We reared, yearly, several 

 hundred artificial swarms and we 

 were rarely troubled by fertile work- 

 ers. Surely, if mothers fail to be 

 mated for some considerable length 

 of time, fertile workers will show up. 

 Owing to hornets and the spirit of 

 self-preservation, young queens 

 would often hesitate to fly out to 

 mate, and time and again I have al- 

 most lost patience with them, as 

 often they would mate between the 

 twentieth and thirtieth day, without 

 a single fertile worker developing 

 nor a failure in the laying capacities 

 of the queen in after life. 



The Egyptian bee is limited by des- 

 erts on all sides, the Sinaitic desert 

 to the east, the Libyan desert to the 

 west. Tripoli, beyond the desert, 

 has the black bees of North Africa. 



I never met any kind of foulbrood 

 in the East during mv stay as bee- 

 keeper, from 1880 to 1891 ; though I 

 handled thousands of hives, bought 

 in the native clay cylinder hives of 

 the plains of Sharon and Philistia, 

 and the mountains of Lebanon and 

 Judea. Transferring them from clay 

 hives to movable-frame hives, every 

 brood-comb was minutely examined, 

 \et I never saw- a touch of the brood 

 pest. It was not until 1894 and 1895 

 thai I first saw the worst kind, bacil- 

 lus larva?, or American foulbrood, as 

 you call it. I call it "gluant," on ac- 

 count of its gluey odor and sticky, 

 long-drawn characteristics. I call the 

 other kind "pu.uit." or European 

 foulbrood, as the Yanks call it, on ac- 

 count of the pestilential odor. I had 

 irerj much to battle against both 

 kinds, and find the difference very 

 great between one and the other; the 

 gluey sticks closer to you than a 

 brother and it is almost impossible 

 to get rid of. if you keep the hives 

 omb; whilst the pestilential is 

 a friend, to compare with it. as it can 

 easily mastered by the intelligent 

 beekeeper. 



In the course of time foulbi 1 



found its way to Palestine, too, aftei 

 I left. I could not make out how it 

 ., oduced, probably by some ig 

 norant beekeeper introducing foreign 

 blood with infected comb. 

 Nice, France. 



