Apiculture, 



256 



[March 1908. 



the virgin and that containing the dr ones 

 are situated near one another. 



But this is not enough. You want to 

 be able to insure (or practically insure) 

 selective mating at any time in the sea- 

 son ; and this you can also manage with 

 care. First, you must remember that, in 

 the middle of the honey-flow, all your 

 hives are likely to contain drones. This 

 you do not want. You require to 

 select the hive whose drones you decide 

 to utilize and get rid of all other drones. 

 This you can do by using a drone-trap, 

 which can be bought cheap from any 

 dealer. 



But there are still the wild drones and 

 those in your neighbours' hives to elimi- 

 nate ; and, just as before you got over 

 this difficulty by selecting the time of 

 year for your breeding-operations, so 

 now you can select a time of day when 

 it is unnatural for drones to be outside 

 the hive. A drone is a lover of the warmth 

 and only ventures out in the warm 

 hours of the day. If, therefore, you can 

 induce your virgins and selected drones 

 to fly after 5 p.m., your queens are prac- 

 tically certain to mate with your selected 

 drones. You can do this, provided the 

 evening is warm, by pouring warm 

 syrup into the hives. The bees at once 

 become so excited over the sudden feast, 

 that the temperature of the hive rises 

 considerably, which induces the drones 

 and young queen to imagine the outside 

 temperature to be higher than it really 

 is. As a last resort, if they will not 

 take wing, you can lift out a frame or 

 two and shake the drones outside — it is 

 usually the drones that are the laggards. 



I have more than once heard it said 

 that mee-messas are so bad-tempered in 

 comparison with European bees, and 

 withal such inefficient honey-gatherers, 

 that we can never make any marked 

 improvement in them in one person's 

 lifetime ; therefore we ought only to 

 keep European bees. Now, though I 

 prefer European bees, I regard this as a 

 most mischievous dogma. Depend upon 

 it, the bee that is native here has an 

 enormous advantage by heredity over 

 all others. In England people are giving 

 up keeping pure Italians, preferring a 

 cross of English blood as tending to 

 harden the race. And the same applies to 

 the mee-messa. If you notice that one 

 of your hives contains mee-messa of a 

 larger size than the rest, then, by breed- 

 ing (and even a little excessive in-breed- 

 ing) from that hive, you will increase 

 the size of your bees. It is believed that 

 the dog has been under man's control for 

 somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 

 years— that is, about 15,000 to 30,000 

 generations. And during that time man 



has produced from common ancestors 

 the Great Dane and the Blenheim 

 Spaniel, the Greyhound and the Bulldog ; 

 and it is extremely unlikely that he has 

 been following out scientific lines of 

 selective breeding for more than five 

 centuries. We are so situated in Ceylon, 

 that it would be perfectly easy to breed 

 eight generations of bees in a single 

 year ; and we by no means require such 

 marked differences in our objective as- we 

 observe in dogs. In three years we can 

 get through twenty-four generations of 

 bees ; and if you really think we should 

 be unable to make an appreciable 

 difference to our bees by then, I would 

 recommend your studying the question 

 a little. With our present knowledge, I 

 should think twenty-four generations 

 would be ample to breed the mee-messa 

 up to the size of the European bee. 



Then, again, why are mee-messas bad 

 honey-gatherers and ill-tempered ? I do 

 not know how long ago people in Ceylon 

 began to keep bees in chatties ; but I 

 imagine 3,000 years is a very moderate 

 estimate. Well, during those 3,000 years 

 — say 3,000 generations — which bees have 

 been consistently destroyed for the 

 sake of their honey ? Naturally, those 

 that had stored the most honey — and to 

 a certain extent the more gentle bees. 

 We prefer to get the greatest good at 

 the least inconvenience ! Therefore, any 

 stock that was lazy over honey-gather- 

 ing, any stock that was bad-tempered, 

 any stock that was unprolific in bees 

 was left severely alone to continue the 

 species. All that were really good were 

 destroyed. I feel inclined to parody 

 Lord Clive : " By God ! Mr. Beekeeper, 

 at this moment I stand astonished at 

 the goodness of the mee-messa ! " 



In a former paper I gave a rough out- 

 line of how to increase the number of 

 your colonies on what we may call 

 " bumble-puppy " lines. This succeeds 

 perfectly well ; but it suffers from two 

 disadvantages. First, the strong colony, 

 from which the frames were taken, is 

 materially weakened, and the newly- 

 formed colony is likewise by no means 

 strong. Thus both require plenteous feed- 

 ing. Secondly, both stocks are so dis- 

 heartened, the one by being deprived 

 of much of its brood and the other by 

 losing (if even fora short time) its queen, 

 that it is often a matter of weeks before 

 they either of them settle down content- 

 edly to work. And so the parent hive 

 gathers far less surplus honey than it 

 would otherwise have done, and the new 

 stock gathers none — in fact, barely 

 enough to tide it over the Monsoon. 

 And owing to the chilling of young 

 brood in the operation, a fearful wast, 

 age of strength takes place in any case. 



