a£6 



GLEA^^mGS I^ EEE CULTUE] 



Dec. 



Avickedest bees to sting, that can well be im- 

 agined, being very much more vindictive 

 than either race in its purity; they also have 

 a very disagreeable way of tumbling off the 

 combs in a perfectly demoralized state, when- 

 ever the hive is opened, unless it is in the 

 height of the honey season, and making a 

 general uproar when th ey are co m pelled by 

 smoketo"be'"dec^t:"^In attempting to in- 

 troduce some queens to hives of this class a 

 few days ago, they uncapped and gorged them- 

 selves with nearly all the honey in the hive, 

 every time I looked them over. The conse- 

 quence was, that after they had been looked 

 over several times for their queen, queen 

 cells, 'etc., a large part of their winter stores 

 were consumed uselessly, for the honey they 

 had' gorged themselves with, started them 

 to bitilding comb at a season when it was 

 not wanted, and so stirred them up, that 

 they were boiling out at the entrance at a 

 time when ''honest bees" should have been 

 snugly tucked away in their winter doze. 



Our pure Italian stocks could have been 

 opened, and their queens removed, scarcely 

 disturbing the cluster, and as a general thing, 

 without the use of any smoke at all, by one 

 who is fully conversant with the habits of 

 bees. Neither will tliis class of hybrids re- 

 pel the moth, as do the half bloods, and the 

 pure race. For these reasons and several oth- 

 ers, I would rear all queens from one of 

 known purity. If we do this, we may have, 

 almost if not quite, the full benefit of the Ital- 

 ians as honey gatherers, even if there are 

 black bees all about us. 



Suppose you get an imported queen, and 

 rear queens from her eggs, for all your other 

 hives, and all increase you may have during 

 the first season. None of your worker bees, 

 the next season, will be less than half bloods, 

 and all your drones will be full bloods. See 

 DRONE and (^UEEN. The queens that are 

 reared now, will, many of them, prove pure, 

 and by persistence in this course year after 

 year, Italians will soon be the rule instead 

 of the exception. This is no theory, but has 

 been the result practically, in hundreds of 

 apiaries. 



Now this is all very clear plain sailing, but 

 we must take into consideration that our 

 drones are all the time meeting the queens 

 from our neighbor's liives, and from the for- 

 ests. This will have no other effect the first 

 season, than to produce hybrid workers, 

 without clranging tlie drone progeny, but 

 when these hybrid stocks begin to send out 

 swarms, these swarms will furnisli hybrid 

 drones, and soon comes all sorts of mixtures. 



Well, we shall have to let them mix I sup- 

 pose, and I do not know that it does any 

 particular harm, for any admixture of Ital- 

 ian blood, improves the common stock. 



But if we are going to buy or sell bees, we 

 want to know what to charge for them, and 

 also what to sell tliem for ; we also wish to 

 know whicli queens to remove, when we are 

 Italianizing our apiary throughout; hence 

 it becomes very important to, know which 

 are Italians and which are not. To be can- 

 did, I do not believe it is possible always, 

 to tell ; but I think we can come near enough 

 for all practical purposes, as they say in 

 making astronomical computations. 



The queens, and drones from queens ob- 

 tained direct from Italy, vary greatly in their 

 markings, but tlie worker bee has one pecu- 

 liarity that I have never found wanting ; 

 this is the three yellow bands we have all 

 heard so much about. Unfortunately there 

 lias been a great amount of controversy 

 about these yellow bands and to help restore 

 harmony, I have been to some expense for 

 engravings. As is often the case, I failed to 

 get our city friends to understand just what 

 I wanted the "big bee" for, so we have made 

 a sketch of the body of tlie bee, o-urselves 

 as shown on next page. 



Every worker bee, whether common or 

 Italian, has a body composed of six scales 

 or segments, one sliding into the other tele- 

 scopic fashion. When the bee is full of hon- 

 ey, these segments slide out, and the body 

 is elongated considerably beyond the tips of 

 the wings, which ordinarily, are about the 

 length of the body. Sometimes we see bees 

 swollen with dysentery, so much that the 

 rings are extended to their fullest extent, 

 and in that condition they sometimes would 

 be called queens, by an inexperienced person. 



On the contrary, in the fall of the year 

 when the bee is preparing for his winter nap, 

 his body is so drawn up that he 

 scarcely seems like the same insect. The en- 

 graving on the right, shows the body of the 

 bee detached from thes houlders, that we may 

 get a full view of the bands or markings 

 that distinguish the Italians from the com- 

 mon bees. Now I wish you to observe par- 

 ticularly, that all honey bees, common as 

 well as Italian, have four bands of bright 

 colored down, J K L M, one on each of the 

 four middle rings of tlie body, but none on 

 the first, and none on the last. These bands 

 of do\\ii are very briglit on young bees, but 

 may be so worn off as to be almost or entire- 

 ly wanting, on an old bee, especially on 

 those that have been in the Inibit of robbing 



