V - 



9a 



TENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



enough up in the top of that hive, al- 

 ■ most enough to blow out a candle. I 

 . have often struck a match and it would 

 blow it out. 



Dr. Miller — Did the air pass up- 

 ward ? Did you notice after it was 

 blown out that the smoke was going 

 down in? 



Mr. Whitney — Not a bit of it. I wish 

 Dr. Stearns was here he was in my 

 yard once when I tried to experiment; 

 he put his handkerchief down and it 

 blew it right up out of the hive. 



Mr. Howard; — I have for several 

 years considered that upward ventila- 

 tion was necessary, and on shifting 

 the super, as Dr. Miller says, I have 

 gotten incomplete sections, so I began 

 to cast about for some way of ventilat- 

 ing the brood-chamber from the top. 

 I went to work and equipped practi- 

 cally all of my supers (I made them 

 all myself), with hollow section -rests, 

 and each of those section-rests had 

 holes at the side distributed around the 

 top of the brood-chamber, 30 in all: 

 this conducted the air along through 

 the end of the super up through the 

 end, boring a hole % or 2-3 up, and I 

 believe it has greatly helped me in 

 swarm-control. 



Mr. Cavanagh — I am satisfied that 

 it is important to have plenty of venti- 

 lation in the hive to make the honey 

 ripen. 



Workers and Drones From Italian 

 Queen, 



"Why is it that the worker progeny 

 of an Italian queen show markings 

 triie to type, while her drone progeny 

 show every degree of variation from 

 almost pure orange to black?" 



Dr. Miller — Ndbody knows. 



Mr. Smith — I don't know. I believe 

 from observation in other lines that I 

 might give some reason for it. I be- 

 lieve that comes from the preponder- 

 ance of relation, we might call it, of 

 the drone. The father of the drones 

 is not the father of the workers, as I 

 understand bee- culture. Now you may 

 take ordinary animals, and in cross- 

 ing with the best grades,- or best 

 breeds, that breed is very tnaterial to 

 the offspring; the strongest will cer- 

 tainly predominate. If that queen-bee 

 is what we might call a mongrel, and 

 if she is mated with one of pure breed, 

 we would expect the workers to Ibe 

 much nearer the true variety of the 



father of the bee than the mother. Is 

 not that true? 



Mr. Whitney — I asked that question, 

 because I have carefully observed in 

 some of my best colonies, where the 

 queens were supposed to be pure 3- 

 banded Italians or 3-banded workers: 

 I have noticed that the drones were 

 almost every variety of color, from 

 almost pure as the queen in color, to 

 drones that were quite dark, and it 

 occurred to me that it might be pos- 

 sible that there was some taint, after 

 all, in the best queens we get, from 

 away back, and whether the Italians 

 would not degenerate unless we took 

 special pains to keep up the grade, if 

 left to themselves — whether they 

 would not finally go 'back again and 

 become perhaps degenerated. 1 

 thought perhaps there would be some 

 one here who might answer such a 

 question. 



Mr. Wilcox — I can express my 

 theory on it from all I have studied. 

 The drone is the product of the un- 

 fertilized egg, and is not affected by 

 the mating of the queen, which laid 

 the egg, but will be of the same race 

 and strain as the blood of the mother. 

 The mother may have that mixed 

 blood somewhere, and it is either in the 

 may l^e called a pure Italian, and yet 

 there is in her a strain of dark blood 

 if the drones are mixed. If the drones 

 are all yellow and alike, you may be 

 absolutely sure that your queen de- 

 scends from pure blood. 



Mr. Whitney — We are often told 

 that those drones are just as pure as 

 those that are evenly marked; we are 

 often told that those that are irregu- 

 lartly marked are just as pure as those 

 that are evenly marked. 



Mr. Wilcox — I would not consider 

 them pure if they are not evenly 

 marked. If a queen produces part 

 yellow drones and part black, or 

 mixed drones, there is some mixed 

 blood somewhere, and it is either in the 

 queen or the drone. 



Dr. Miller — ^Did you ever see an 

 Italian queen that would produce 

 drones exactly alike? 



Mr. Wilcox — Yes, I bought some 

 queens from a man in Michigan that 

 produced deep yellow drones. 



Dr. Miller — I doubt their being pure 

 Italians. I am talking about pure 

 Italians. These Americanized Italians 



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