92 
FOLLOWING THE BEE LINE 
yellow-banded bodies, and the queens often being 
beautiful golden blondes. 
There is ordinarily no pleasure in keeping “black” 
bees, for, although often splendid honey gatherers, 
they and the hybrids resulting from a cross between 
blacks and Italians, are too vicious for comfort in 
handling. 
Some time ago, Carniolan bees were called “ladies’ 
bees,” but that term has lately fallen into disuse, since 
ladies have become women and come into their 
own! 
Carniolans, however, are very gentle and a beau¬ 
tiful silvery gray; they are industrious, but their 
great drawback is a tiresome propensity to swarm. 
In that they overindulge—from a beekeeper’s stand¬ 
point—one colony often sending out swarm after 
swarm right through the summer. The result is 
much trouble for their keeper. He must choose 
between attempting to discourage this impulse by 
cutting out queen cells from the combs every week 
or devoting much of his time to capturing swarms. 
. . . And why does a swarm so often choose to 
cluster on the topmost branches of an old apple 
tree? 
As different races have their general characteris¬ 
tics, so do different strains of a race each have their 
