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332 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 May, 1902. 
winter. A leak in the roof of a barn, or a loose board flapping in the wind, if 
promptly attended to, well repays the exertion required to do a thing properly. 
Then the satisfaction, as well as the added appearance of buildings kept in good 
repair, with the addition of paint or whitewash, should be reward enough even 
it did not make them more durable, which it certainly does. 
‘Many other sources of joss might {be mentioned, but sufficient has been 
said to suggest others. . 
HOW TO TELL HYBRIDS FROM PURE ITALIANS. 
Mr. Root, in his excellent work, the ABC of Bee Culture, says that if the 
beekeeper gets an imported queen, and rears queens from her eggs for all the 
other hives and for all increase, none of the worker bees, the next season, will 
be less than half-bloods, and all the drones will be full-bloods. Many of the 
queens will prove pure, and by persisting in this course, year after year, Italians 
will soon be the rule instead of the exception. This has been proved practically, 
he says, in hundreds of apiaries. 
It must, however, be taken into consideration that the drones are constantly 
meeting queens from neighbouring hives and from the forests. How then? 
This will have no further effect the first season than to produce hybrid workers 
without changing the drone progeny ; but when these hybrid stocks begin to _ 
send out swarms, these swarms will furnish hybrid drones, and soon will come 
all sorts of mixtures. This does no particular harm, for any admixture of Italian 
blood improves the common stock. 
But, if we are going to buy or sell bees, we want to know what to charge 
for them, and also what to sell them as. We also wish to know which queens 
to remove when we are Italianising our apiary throughout; hence it becomes 
very important to know which are Italian and which are not. Mr. Root says 
candidly it is not alwrys possible to tell, but one can come near enough for all 
practical purposes. 
The queens, and drones from queens obtained direct from Italy, vary greatly 
- in their markings, but the worker bee has one peculiarity never found wanting ; 
that is, the three yellow bands we all heard so much about. Unfortunately 
there has been a great amount of controversy about these yellow bands, and to 
help to restore harmony Mr. Root went to the expense of having engravings 
made, but, failing to get the engravers to understand just what was wanted, he 
made the sketches which are here reproduced— 
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