190 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



out. This time I gave each a frame of cap- 

 ped brood and unsealed larva?. Agam I put 

 the bees back, and, presto! they both stayed 

 just as quietly as if that had always been 

 their home. Before they had their brood, 

 they vpere crawling all over the hives m wild 

 confusion, flying out at the entrance and 

 then back. I am aware that unsealed larv* 

 will not always hold them. I have had 

 newly hived swarms vacate in fifteen min- 

 utes, even after having given them larvffi. 

 But as a general rule, in our experience, un- 

 sealed brood is a mighty good detainer. 

 It makes them contented, and sort o at 

 home." 



The above, as I understand it, is not a fair 

 test as to the efficacy of brood in retaining 

 a newly hived swarm. The bees were queen- 

 less. Their queen was clipped, and not 

 being able to follow them she had returned 

 to the old hive. A swarm having no queen 

 with it will never stay hived unless given un- 

 sealed brood, but will continue to swarm out 

 as often as hived, hence I say that the above 

 was not a fair test. I should expect that un- 

 sealed brood would invariably hold queenless 

 bees, but my faith in its detaining bees hav- 

 ing a queen has been terribly shaken. Bees 

 having a queen can snap their fingers at 

 brood. They are independent. They can 

 rear brood and establish a colony wherever 

 they please. Not so with a queenless swarm. 

 It is doomed. The bees are ready to catch 

 at anything to save the community from de- 

 struction, and a comb of unsealed brood is 

 hailed with delight and " stayed by." 



parts of Carniola, and from adjoining dis- 

 tricts toward the centre of the province. I 

 have seen a railway train bearing five thous- 

 and hives of bees and their attendants to the 

 buckwheat fields. Some colonies are even 

 brought over the mountain range which sep- 

 arates Gorizia from Carniola, whose eleva- 

 tion is from 1,200 to 2,.500 feet. Bearing in 

 mind that Gorizia borders on Italy and that 

 its surface slopes toward the Italian line and 

 the Adriatic, and, in fact, that between the 

 Oarnic Alps and the great valley of the Po, 

 which drains nearly the whole of the north- 

 ern plain of Italy, there is no mountain bar- 

 rier to prevent an admixture of the bees 

 native to these districts, it is easy to under- 

 stand how it is that the bees southwest of 

 the Carnic Alps shade off or merge gradually 

 into Italians, since migratory bee keeping is 

 not practiced to any great extent in the 

 northwestern province of Italy. With these 

 mixed bees more or less yellow blood has 

 been brought from Gorizia into Carniola 

 and scattered about. In buying or breeding 

 bees in Carniola I have always avoided 

 queens whose workers showed any yellow or 

 rust-colored tinge. Such bees are generally 

 more irritable than the pure Carniolans; 

 they do not breed true to type, and in fact 

 are more like hybrid bees. Nor have I been 

 able to discover that they possess any traits 

 superior to those shown by the distinctively 

 gray bees which are so largely in the ascen- 

 dency all over the province of Carniola. 

 The bees offered for sale in this country 

 under the name of "Yellow Carniolans," 

 or " Golden Carniolans," are simply hybrids; 

 are bees having blood of some of the yellow 

 races— Italians, Palestines, Syrians or Cy- 

 prians—in their make up. Verily, some do 

 love the color of gold." 



The True Color of Carniolans. 



It is as I suspected. The yellow that crops 

 out in Carniolan bees comes from an ad- 

 mixture of Italian or some other yellow race. 

 These conclusions are arrived at from read- 

 ing an article by Frank Benton in the July 

 Am. Bee Keeper. I copy that part of the 

 article that relates to this point: 



" The purest type of the Carniola race is 

 dark gray, or steel colored, larger than our 

 common bees, and wholly free from yellow 

 bands. Whenever yellow is found among 

 bees in Carniola it is to be taken as an evi- 

 dence of Italian blood. Carniola is located 

 in the southern part of Austria, near the 

 head of the Adriatic sea, and is only sepa- 

 rated from Italy by a single narrow province 

 — Gorizia. 



The line between the last named province 

 and Carniola follows a range of mountains 

 extending in a southerly direction from the 

 main part of the Carnic Alps. The history 

 of bee keeping in Carniola shows that the 

 migratory system has been followed there 

 for some centuries. During the buckwheat 

 yield many thousands of colonies of bees 

 are brought by rail and by wagon from all 



The Porter, Spring, Bee Escape— The Best 

 One Yet Devised. 

 Last month I desired to give the whole of 

 the following article, contributed by S. A. 

 Shuck to Gleanings, but lack of space com- 

 pelled me to be content with a short extract. 

 I now give the article entire: 



" Engraving No. 1 shows the escape com- 

 plete, which, when placed in an escape- 

 board, is ready for use. The bees enter the 

 escape at F and pass out at D, as shown in 



