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150 



SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



his bees are about like the average hy- 

 brid bees? 



Mr. Taylor — Well, I do not know 

 that I can say as to that. They are 

 about like the average I have seen. 

 There are some colonies that show quite 

 a little yellow, and some colonies that 

 show a good many bees that you would 

 take to be black bees; but every colony 

 shows more or less of the yellow color. 

 But I do not know that I have a colony 

 in the yard that any one would call 

 pure Italians from their coloring. 



Mr. Whitney — Mr. Taylor's experi- 

 ence has been very different from mine. 

 I have been working all the time that 

 I have kept bees to make them as pure 

 3-banders as I could possibly get. I 

 have had quite a mixture of black bees 

 at times, and they have always troubled 

 me — cross, run like cockroaches. I nev- 

 er had any trouble' with 3-banded Ital- 

 ians to get them ofif the sections when 

 I wanted to get the honey out or have 

 the combs free. Take a frame of honey 

 and hold it right over the end of the 

 hive and take them off at once. Mine 

 are very gentle. I can go into the yard 

 almost any time. I think I showed Mr. 

 France once, at 5 o'clock in the after- 

 noon, without a veil, without smoke, a 

 number of my bees, and I think in a 

 recent copy of American Bee Journal 

 you will find a picture of a little girl 

 holding a frame. It was late in the day, 

 she was without a veil over her face, 

 and she held a frame of those bees. 

 They were 3-banded Italians. When 

 you come to workers, I never saw any- 

 thing equal to it before, and the only 

 surplus honey I got this year was from 

 my 3-banded Italians. I have 3 or 4 

 colonies of mongrels, one colony pretty 

 nearly black, and they did not give me 

 a pound of surplus honey — not a pound ; 

 while the 3-banders did; and the blacks 

 or mongrels swarmed, and out of 30 

 odd colonies of 3-banded Italians I had 

 but 2 swarms. It seems strange to me 

 that there is such a difference in the ex- 

 periences individuals have with the dif- 

 ferent kinds of bees. I do not believe 

 I would want what they call the gold- 

 en or all-yellow bee. You know the 

 queens of the 3-banders often are ab- 

 solutely, yellow, but their bees have 

 only 3 yellow bands. I do not call such 

 a queen as that a golden queen. I ca'll 

 it a 3-bander queen, although I do not 

 see any band on the queen at all, but 

 her bees are all 3-banders. So far as 



protecting their hives is concerned, the 

 3-banders beat anything I ever saw' 

 against robbers, and they will clean out 

 the bee-moth in a very few minutes. I 

 have put frames that were filled with 

 the larvae of the moth right in the center 

 of a 3-bander colony of bees, and in a 

 few minutes they would be all cleaned 

 out. I like them in every respect so far 

 as I have been able to investigate them. 

 Dr. Miller — I think that one way of 

 explaining the difficulty that Mr. Whit- 

 ney meets is by saying that bees vary, 

 and that they vary very much. If you 

 have a colony of Italian bees you are 

 not sure, from the mere fact of their 

 being Itahans, that they will- always 

 be of exactly a certain temperament. 

 With a hybrid bee, still less are you 

 certain of anything of that kind. The 

 Italian bees are more fixed in character 

 than the hybrids. You are more sure 

 of what you have. When you come i^ 

 hybrids, you don't know for certain 

 where you are. Now, Mr. Taylor has 

 very gentle hybrid bees, and I have 

 very cross hybrid bees. I look for those 

 colonies that will produce the most 

 honey, without regard to their temper. 

 I said. "The honey is the thing I am 

 after; i can stand all the rest." They 

 convinced me after a while that I 

 couldn't stand all the rest. I had to 

 fight with my assistant. I killed a queen 

 and she showed some temper. 



Mr. Ford — Which showed the temper, 

 the queen or the assistant? 



Dr. Miller— Both. She would insist 

 that if they only brought the honey the 

 queen must be allowed to live. If I 

 had it to do over again I would not 

 do exactl}^ the same thing as I did, be- 

 cause I know that the matter of temper 

 is a thing that must be reckoned with. 

 They can go so far you can not stand 

 it; at least I could not, without a veil, 

 and I do not like to wear a veil all the 

 time. My assistant wears a veil all 

 the time. 



Dr: Bohrer — What kind of trousers 

 do you wear? 



Dr. Miller— I don't handle them with 

 my trousers! [Laughter.] 



Dr. Bohrer — Don't the bees crawl up 

 your trousers? They do mine. . 



Dr. Miller — Answering your question, 

 I wear white trousers. It is a fact that 

 hybrids are much more variable in char- 

 acter than anything like the pure blood 

 of the Italians, and when you art 

 working and selecting to get the best. 



