74 
DR. MILLER'S 
A. The probability is that your neighbor’s drones will be 
obliging enough to meet most of your queens. Can’t you get him 
to change to Italian blood? 
Q. Would you advise rearing drones and queens from the 
same mother? 
A. It will be better to rear queens from your very best 
colony and drones from a few of the next best. Yet if you should 
try to rear queens and drones both from the same colony it is 
not certain that much harm would come from it, for the young 
queens would be likely to meet drones from other colonies, per- 
haps from a colony a mile or more away. 
Q. I thought I saw a few black drones in an Italian colony. 
Do you think I was right, or was I fooled in the kind of bees? 
A. Nothing strange about it. Drones are freebooters, and in 
prosperous times will be accepted in any colony. So black drones 
may have come from some other colony. It is also true that pure 
Italian drones are sometimes very dark when the workers are 
properly marked. 
Q. Are the drones from a mismated Italian queen still pure 
Italian, or are they hybrids? 
A. It is generally considered that the drone progeny is not af- 
fected by the mating of the queen, although some maintain that 
the blood of the queen may be so affected as to affect the char- 
acter of the drone progeny slightly in the direction of the drone 
which the queen met. 
Q. I have one colony that has two kinds of drones. About 
half show yellow bands, while the -others do not. The workers do 
not all show three yellow bands. What race are they? 
A. The drones are not uniform, and only the workers are re- 
lied on to decide purity. Your colony of bees that do not all show 
three yellow bands is hybrid unless some bees have entered 
from other hives — a thing that often occurs. To be sure entirely, 
examine the young bees that have not left the hive; if all of these 
have three yellow bands you may count them Italians. 
Q. About how many drones should there be in a healthy 
colony? 
A. Some think it best to try to keep them down altogether, 
except in one or more of the best colonies. I think G. M. Doolit- 
tle allows to each colony what drones they can rear in a square 
inch of drone-comb. 
Q. When should the drones be caught? Why are there so 
many when it is only necessary for them to meet the queen once? 
