. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. 776 THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL Nov. 9, 1S»( 5 its general, all-around worthlessness—how does this black bee, I repeat, manage to run out of existence its yellow cousin whose splendid attributes are printed on the advertising sheets of every journal devoted to apiculture ? The question is a difficult one, and one which I should have been inclined to give up had I not stumbled upon a possible answer the past season. It has been my purpose for some time to save this black bee from contamination with other races, if possible, and seek to give it a chance th
. American bee journal. Bee culture; Bees. 776 THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL Nov. 9, 1S»( 5 its general, all-around worthlessness—how does this black bee, I repeat, manage to run out of existence its yellow cousin whose splendid attributes are printed on the advertising sheets of every journal devoted to apiculture ? The question is a difficult one, and one which I should have been inclined to give up had I not stumbled upon a possible answer the past season. It has been my purpose for some time to save this black bee from contamination with other races, if possible, and seek to give it a chance through careful breeding to prove its quali- ties. During the past summer I have been rearing queens from an old black queen of unusual excellence. The task has been very up-hill labor. I have reared 30 or more queens with great care, and now have only a few mated queens to show for my labor. Out of the last dozen which emerged most promisingly, more than half failed to mate or were crippled on their return by being balled. Many were killed outright. Yellow queens at the same time were mated with no dilHcuUy. To account for this thing was a puzzle till I happened to see one of the black queens fly. She went like a bullet. Surely it would take a swift drone to catch her ! One of the queens was gone nearly, if not quite, half an hour, yet returned unmaled. This was during the last week of September, and only a few drones were still alive. The yellow queens, how- ever, mated in spite of the scarcity of drones. There seems to be but one answer. The flight of black bees is stronger than that of Italians. The drones found it easy to overtake the yellow queens, but were mostly distanced by the black queens. Here we have an explanation for the frequent mismates which we encounter when trying to rear Italian queens. In the wedding-race the black drones distance the yellow drones, and, unless the yellow drones happen by chance to be better situated in the race, the accepted suitor is bl
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1860, booksubjectbees, bookyear1861
