310 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



September 



bo is, for all practical purposes, the 

 same as the Quinby. It is of the same 

 depth, but about seven-eighths of an 

 inch shorter, but has the advantage 

 of taking all the equipment of the 

 10-frame Langstroth hive except the 

 frames. Mr. Draper, the introducer 

 of the Jumbo, then known as the 

 "Draper Barns," builded better than 

 he knew when he put the Quinby 

 depth on the Langstroth length. If 

 our supply men would only be as 

 considerate when making innova- 

 tions we w-ould all be better off and 

 happier. Incidentally the supply men 

 would be less troubled with orders 

 for "special" goods, when often those 

 specials are merely an attempt on 

 the part of the purchaser to get du- 

 plication of what he had before, 

 which was "stock" stuff when he got 



it. I sometimes wish I could get the 

 factory man out on an inspection 

 trip with me and let him see what 

 awful misfits some of the factories 

 "made to fits" are. 



Apparently the beekeeping world 

 is shifting to Quinby size hives and 

 the supply men will advance t heir 

 own interests as well as ours if 

 they will get together and agree 

 upon uniformity of dimensions, so" 

 that we may not have the hundred 

 and one variations in the Jumbos 

 which we have in the L's. 



Mr. Beeman, just study the behav- 

 ior of your bees when they are al- 

 lowed to follow their own sweet way. 

 It may save you a lot of costly labor, 

 called manipulation, and give you 

 greater returns. 



Providence, R. I. 



Colony of giant be 



nsported on an elephant 

 avels, page 307) 



Bee-Keeping <M For Women 



Conducted by Miss Emma M. Wilson. Marenro, III. 



Selecting Breeders 



While examining my colonies 1 am 

 always watching each queen, trying 

 ■ mine which one is the best to 

 use as a breeder. But 1 am always 

 unable to pick out the one that is su- 

 perior to all the rest. Otiite a num- 

 ber appear to be equally good. When 

 I'm, king over colonies tin- way it is 

 quite difficult to keep in mind the 

 various points that one should con- 

 sider. It seems to me that then 

 should be some sort of a score card 

 to assist one in this work. I 

 all other breeders of pure- 

 bred stock have some sort of system 

 they follow along this line. I am 

 fully aware that some of our largest 

 producers do not care about a thing 



of this kind, but there are many tliar 

 do. Most of those who do not care 

 discover that they do when European 

 foulbrood hits them. Ill my apiary in- 

 p< i tion work I have made it a point 

 to find out just what our different 

 commercial beekeepers consider a 

 purely mated Italian queen Quite < 

 number don't know. And nearly all 

 are at a loss to draw the line between 

 dark Italians and light hybrids. We 

 should have a standard to work to. 

 But it seems that it should be the 

 work of several men. 



Ohio. 



If I understand aright the sugges- 

 tion of our correspondent, it i- thai 

 there should be some sort of a score 

 card to aid in deciding the standing 



of a queen by direct inspection of the 

 queen herself. It would surely be an 

 excellent thing if we could agree 

 up. hi certain things in a queen by 

 which we could rate her value; but it 

 seems to me that there would be dif- 

 ficulty in the present case. 



A judge, or a set of judges, might 

 pass upon a cow in the show ring 

 and arrive at a decision quite satis- 

 factory. But with a queen the case 

 is different. With a queen before us 

 there are three things we can see — 

 size, form and color. What can we 

 tell from these? Very likely most of 

 us would say we prefer a large queen. 

 But is a large queen always better 

 than a smaller one? It looks a good 

 bit that way. When a queen is in 

 full laying a large part of her bulk 

 and weight consists of the eggs con- 

 tained in her body. If one queen is 

 10 per cent heavier than another, is 

 it not reasonable to believe that the 

 difference is mostly in eggs, and that 

 the larger queen will be the more 

 prolific layer? Vet I have in mind 

 a queen that I think was the most 

 prolific queen I ever had, and she was 

 remarkable for her small size, per- 

 haps the smallest laying queen I ever 

 had. (I also remember a similar oc- 

 currence. — C. P. D.j 



As to form, the difficulty would be 

 less. We would probably agree that 

 a trim-built queen with a tapering 

 abdomen is to be preferred to one 

 that is clumsy-looking and bunty. 

 And right at this point, while noting 

 whether the queen were clumsy-look- 

 ing, we would note whether she were 

 clumsy-acting by seeing how she 

 moves upon the comb, whether in a 

 sprightly manner, or in a slow and 

 loggy way, as if afraid of falling off 

 the comb. The number of legs 

 might also be considered, yet the loss 

 of a leg would hardly affect her as a 

 breeder. 



When we come to the matter of 

 color we are very much at sea. We 

 can tell something from the color of 

 a colony of workers, but there seems 

 to be no direct relation between their 

 color and the color of their mother. 

 She may be quite dark, and yet pro- 

 duce a worker progeny of a bright 

 yellow color. 



On the whole, the result of our in- 

 spection would seem so meager that 

 we would be likely to fall back on the 

 simple way of judging her value by 

 the amount of honey stored by her 

 worker progeny. Indeed, that's not 

 so vei \ different from the case of the 

 cow. Whether the cow be perfect in 

 all the points of the score card, or 

 whether she fall down badly in some 

 of them, if she produces in the course 

 of the year more butter-fat than any 

 other tow in the world, her valuation 

 would run up into the thousands, and 

 she would be called the champion of 

 the world. 



In the same way the queen will he 

 judged by the amount of honey 

 stored by her colony, of course tak- 

 ing into account any circumstances 

 that would have a modifying effect 

 on that amount. for instance, if, 

 early in the season, a frame of brood 

 should be taken from one colony and 

 given to another, and then each 

 should harvest the same number of 



