ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS ASSOCIATION 



151 



as I suspect Mr. Taylor is — he was more 

 fortunate in it or else more careful than 

 I, aiid in his selections he has good-na- 

 tured hybrids and I have them just the 

 reverse. He shakes his head. How is 

 that? 



Mr. Taylor — I did not select. I have 

 killed just 2 queens in my time on ac- 

 count of the irascibility of the bees; that 

 is all. 



Dr. Miller — Perhaps I gave a wronj^ 

 impression. When I have found one 

 especially cross lot, through the years, 

 I have killed that queen, always; but 

 I have not paid as much attention as 

 I should have done to the temper of 

 queens. There is, I thiuk, the whole 

 thing in a nutshell. The bees vary a 

 great deal, and if one man says the 

 Italians are better, and another says 

 the hybrids are better, they may have 

 different kinds of the same bees. I 

 believe, as a rule, that the hybrid bees 

 will give you more honey than the pure 

 Italians. Now it does not follow from 

 that that it is the best thing to breect 

 entirely from hybrid bees, because they 

 will split all up and you don't know 

 where you are going, as I said before; 

 if you keep trying to breed pretty near 

 pure Italians, you will get enough hy- 

 brid stuff in to keep up the black. 

 Try to keep them pretty nearly pure, and 

 you will have more or less black blood 

 in them. 



Mr.Taylor — Some reference was made 

 to the Doctor's trousers. I have often 

 been amused in the remarks he has 

 made in his writing about the bees get- 

 ting up his trousers. 



Dr. Miller — Please allow me to cor- 

 rect you. I did not say anything about 

 their getting up my trousers. 



Mr. Taylor — They don't crawl up 

 my trousers. They fly. The trouble 

 with your bees, Doctor, is you' have too 

 much Italian blood in them. They 

 won't fly at all. 



Mr. Kimmey — You speak of Italian 

 and hybrid. We started out to speak 

 about golden. I understand there is a 

 difference between 3-bander and golden. 



Dr. Miller— Yes. 



Mr. Kimmey — What is the difference, 

 in your experience, between the 3-band- 

 er and the golden? 



Dr. Miller — As I said before, the gold- 

 ens vary so much it would be hard to 

 answer that directly. Some of them 

 are one kind and some of the goldens 

 are another. They are a variation from 



the pure stock. I do not count them as 

 pure. There may be black blood in 

 the golden stock, in the leather-colored 

 variety, or in the 3-banders. I would 

 not expect to find any black blood in 

 them, although possibly there might be 

 some there, and the thing has got where 

 I do not see how we are going to talk 

 about what pure queens are. If you 

 have golden stock with 5 bands, and 

 then get a little black blood mixed in 

 and cut down to 3 bands, then you can 

 not say 3 bands is a sure sign of pure 

 stock. 



Mr. Wilcox — What is your standard 

 of purity, then? 



Dr. Miller — I haven't any. 



Mr. Lyman — I don't know that I am 

 correct in this, but it has seemed to me 

 that there is quite a httle difference in 

 which way the cross is made, whether 

 you start with an Italian queen or a 

 black qmen I think in my experience 

 that the black "queen- cross, from an Ital- 

 ian drone with a black queen, produces 

 a gentler bee than the other cross. 



Mr. Sewell — I hate to hear the golden 

 queen slandered here. I would like to 

 speak right out in meeting and say 

 where the golden queen comes from, and 

 you will know what I am talking about. 

 A golden queen from one breeder and 

 one from another are different. If I 

 say it comes from Doolittle, you know 

 what it is. That queen led the yara, 

 after coming from New York State 

 by mail; but this year a leather-color- 

 ed queen led the yard. And so it is — one 

 year it may be one, and another year 

 another. But those golden queens have 

 decided advantages. One is finding the 

 queen; another perhaps is gentleness; 

 and those golden bees crossed with 

 some of the other blood are very prolific. 

 In managing and manipulating them, 

 getting hives for them, etc., I have an 

 idea that the 8-frame hive would be 

 very much better for them than the 

 10. I have had leather-colored queens 

 from about 5 different breeders. Some 

 were not good for anything. Some have 

 been very good. They are very prolific. 

 They lay, all the year round, more than 

 the golden, but they lay in the spring — 

 they just fill the hive all at once, while 

 the golden queens will lay right straight 

 along through the year. Two years ago 

 the flow was a gradual one all through 

 the year, and that is the reason I think 

 the golden produced more honey than 

 the other bees, whose queens laid the 



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