THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW, 



261 



pure atmosphere throughout the winter is 

 laborious and expensive. Forty-eight is not 

 high enough ; it only delays the effects a 

 month or two, but our winters are long 

 enough to encompass all such lengths of 

 time. Sixty-iive degrees may answer, but I 

 am doubtful. If a sufficiently high temper- 

 ature is applied until the threatning symp- 

 toms disappear the former low temperature 

 may be allowed and it is far easier and 

 cheaper to keep up a temperature of 70- for 

 a month than 4.5- all winter and the air may 

 be enough purer by ventilation to materially 

 leugthen the lives of the bees. In fact the 

 bees need treatment to the high temperature 

 just as much at \'i as at 32 only a little 

 later on. 



When I gave my experience in wintering 

 sometime since, the editor considered it so 

 much trouble to move the bees into such a 

 repository and back again. 



Of course it was some labor for me to 

 carry a hive at a time up stairs, but Mr. B. 

 Taylor would soon invent an elevator to 

 move eight or ten at once and it would not 

 cost a fortune to make it. 



It is not necessary to be so very careful in 

 handling hives either, as when the bees come 

 out they simply run around and join another 

 colony, when if it is in the colder repository 

 they fall to the floor and die or the bees of 

 the cluster sip up the moisture and become 

 diseased. 



The constant and continued watching and 

 fussing with its attendant anxiety is almost 

 as hard to endure as a total loss and it does 

 not begin nor end w ith the six months of 

 confinement as we are in doubts when the 

 bees are set in and we are not "out of the 

 woods " until late in June, when by the 

 method of which I write each colony may be 

 divided when set out of the cellar and the 

 vitality of the bees will enable each half to 

 build up for the harvest. 



There is nearly as much variation in the 

 winter temperature of different cellars as 

 there is in the quality of different soils, and 

 Mr. Barber happened to have a high tem- 

 pered one where it was easy to keep the tem- 

 perature high all winter and he may not 

 have taken the trouble to ascertain the real 

 whys and wherefores of his excellent success 

 or whether a less length of duration of high 

 temperature would not have been as well and 

 certainly more practical for and better af- 

 forded by the general class of bee-keepers. 



Pasadena, Calif. July 29, 1893. 



Practical Breeding. 



.JAMES HEDDON. 



How doth the little lazy drone, 

 With industry bred in his bone, 

 Industrious children sire! 



TjP^HOEVER has 

 A A visited many 

 apiaries, or bought 

 l)ees of farmers to 

 r^ tart an apiary, 

 well knows the 

 great difference in 

 the nature and 

 working qualities 

 of different strains 

 of bees of the same 

 race, or races. He 

 also knows of what 

 great value is this difference. I am sure that 

 all of you have noticed the immense differ- 

 ence in the storing (lualities of different col- 

 onies in the same apiary. What causes this 

 difference, it is hard to tell, and certain it is 

 that the difference cannot be detected in any 

 way whatever, except by practical results. 

 Here are two colonies, as nearly alike as can 

 be seen or made : or perhaps No. 2 is, as far 

 as the expert apiarist can judge, the likelier 

 colony of the two. Both are in the same 

 yard, and work in the same fields and on the 

 same blossoms, we are quite sure. But, lo, 

 the results are surprising to the inexper- 

 ienced : No. 2 stores more than twice as 

 much honey as No. 1, and all the time is no 

 more numerous in workers. Well, it is not 

 at all strange that this great difference in 

 capability should exist in the physiology of 

 the bee, consequently wholly out of sight of 

 the bee-master. But because we cannot de- 

 tect these valuable qualities in any way other 

 than by actual test, it is no sign we should 

 not foster and propagate them. There is 

 every reason why we should, because of the 

 immense advantage to be gained by so do- 

 ing, and certain it is that the practical evi- 

 dences are positive, leaving no mistake as ta 

 what qualities we are breeding. 



I will now proceed, as briefly as possible, 

 to tell you what experience has taught me to 

 be the best way ; in fact it seems to me the 

 only practical way, in a locality like my own, 

 to bring my colonies up to a high standard. 

 In the first place, I have been able to con- 

 trol my field to that extent that in my home 

 apiary of over two hundred colonies, I own 

 nearly all the bees in my field. I have about 

 fifteen hives that purposely contain about 



