THE APIARY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3111, 29 October 1913, Page 13

THE APIARY.

(By J.A.)

COMMERCIAL BEE-KEEPING. No. V.—BREEDING. In both animal and plant life a great deal has been attempted and a great deal has been accomplished by systematic breeding. To talk about doing this in connection with insect life will to some seem incredible, and yet it can and is being done with the bees, though only within comparatively recent years. Previous to the. advent of the frame hive but little stock was taken of what went on within the beehive, and, except through the observation of men like Huber, but little was known. Now all that is changed. Wo have the bees under control, and we know all about what is going on inside the hive, and to the skilful great possibilities are opening up along the lines of improving by breeding, in some ways the work ol improvement still hampered —we have not got control of the mating of the queens. Mating in confinement has been repeatedly tried, but so far without success. The queen in her bridal flight must get out into the open, and there either find for herself or be found by a mate. Still, much can be done by careful management in breeding drones, and having drones only flying from the queens we wish to breed from. (I would commend to the reading of those interested the article, gleaned for this issue and given below, by G. M. Doolittle. It will repay careful reading.) These queens should be encouraged to breed large numbers, and the drones of all others as far as possible suppressed. And now let us note some of the qualities that we wish to develop in our bees. Wo do not seek for a broad and well-marked escutcheon. The dairyman may be able to judge of what is to come by marks of that kind. The beekeeper must judge from results. What wo place first, then, is a queen capable of keeping her hive fid! of bees and, as a result, filling it well with honey. It is nice to see tiie combs in the broodchamber practically all brood, with nice round capping, not flat and pinchcd-look-ing as is sometimes the case. Very often we got queens that give great promise ai this way; but when it conics to the critical moment out they come. While the fields are whitening with clover they are madly intent on just one thing, and that is swarming. The queen that is fairly easy to prevent from swarming, even when her hive is full of bees, is better every way, and such arc- certainly to he preferred for breeding. Another good point about a queen is a disposition on the part of her progeny to bo quick to start work and slow to stop. There is a quite noticeable difference between the Italian black bers in this respect, the Italian being decidedly the quickest. Still another good point is a readiness to keep strangers out of the hive and to prevent robbing. Hero, again, the Italians are much the best. There is still another point in which the Italians excel the blacks, and that is as fighters against disease. But ail Italians are not alike in this respect. Some of them are no beiter than the blacks. From a long experience of black boos and also of foulbrood. I cannot remember over to have found evidence that the blacks over uncap and remove disease, nor, as I have said, will all Italians do it. But there are some that will, and on that account they greatly assist in the fight; against it. Sometimes they will cut the cells right down to the septum and rebuild thcni.^ To summarise, the commercial beekeeper wants bis queens to be prolific, to be nonewarmers, to be persistent workers, to be good homo defenders, and to 100 good diseasc-rcs : eters. There arc. of course, other things to work for; for instance. Roots, of Medina, had a queen which they valued at 200dnl. all because her progeny had an unusually long tongue, and were therefore able to got honey from red clover. The points we have mentioned are such that every observant beekeeper usually takes note' of. and it is the colonics that excel in them that should got a large share of drone comb to produce drones, and from whose queens all requeening should be done. There is another point, and that Is the frequency with which queens should he superceded. Queens are usually credited with being able to do four seasons’ work; but. except in the ease of queens with an unusual record, it is doubtful if they should he allowed more than two seasons. My own experience seems to indicate that, it pays to requoen after two seasons’ laying. WHY SO MANY DRONES? “If I am correct, you advise that only a little drone comb bo allowed each colony in the apiary, except to those which have queens especially selected from which to

rear improved stock for mating purposes. Now, there are a few of us who think that there is some unknown or unseen advantage in having a lot of drones in a hive, just as we find them in box-hives, or where the beekeeper pays no attention to this matter of comb-building. From a close watch I feel assured that colonies having their own way jn this matter are fully as, prosperous, if not more so, than those from which I . have carefully excluded all but about lin of comb. This being the case, are not you folks who are advising only an inch or two of drone comb making a mistake?” It may be well to look into this matter a little, as I do not wish to advocate a false doctrine. In a state of nature, colonies do not exist in very great numbers in any one place; and when colonies are from one to several miles apart, either in hives or in trees, it becomes necessary that a great number of drones emerge in each colony in order that a sufficient number of such bo found within easy reach to render the queen’s bridal flight successful. Otherwise the queen is liable to be caught by birds, or overtaken by some mishap through long-continued roaming, so that she may never return. Nature is very lavish, and has provided a great number of drones in a hive, or any home of a colony of bees, at swarming time, and this is but another evidence of the correctness of the theory of natural selection. In other words, there must be enough drones reared in each colony to make it an almost absolute certainty that the queen of this colony (or of any other for that matter, for several miles) will be sure to find one in a few minutes, or the half-hour at most that she spends in the air. Upon her life and successful mating the existence of the colony depends, as there are often no other means left for the continuance of her colony. But in case of 10, 25, 50, or 100 colonies being congregated together, all of this, through domestication, is changed, and thus the drones reared in the two or three colonies from our selected drone mothers will serve the same purpose as if those two or three hives were the only ones within the range of flight of the bees. From this it is plain that it is useless to rear such a great number of drones in every hive. That the drone-roaring colonies are any more prosperous than those being restricted to an inch or two of drone comb js something I have never been able to discover; but, on the contrary, I have many times noted that this multitude of drones consume so much of the honey gathered by the minimum number of workers, necessitated through a minimum amount of cells of the worker size, that very little surplus could bo obtained from such colonies, to say nothing about having to supply the needed amount of stores for winter. What advantage can there be in the rearing of a large number of drones? They do not work; they are never seen out in the fields on the bloom which secretes nectar; they eat the honey of the hive, and their rearing decreases the number of workers reared. Arc these facts to be laid aside and overlooked? In a square inch of comb only about 36 drones can be reared, while the same space will give about 55 workers, both sides of the comb being reckoned ‘as a matter of course. Taken in round numbers, a square foot of comb will give BCOO workers, or about' 5000 drones. Then it takes 24 days of time in which to perfect' those drones, while the workers will emerge in 21 days from the laying of the eggs by the queen. And it will take about the same amount of food for the rearing of each, since both occupy the same space. Is not this reasonable? And when all the 8000 have emerged from this foot of comb wc have a fair-sized swarm of honey-gatherers added to the other forces of the hive which will almost, if not quite, turn failures into a successful surplus. Hence these -drones that are reared at great expense arc in the way of the household duties of the homo; and they decrease the profits by the loads they carry out rn evorv flight. It is claimed that drones keep the brood warm ; but is it not plain that, when there wore fcweV bees in the hive than when they arrived, they had to bo first kept warm? And these drones emerge only as warm weather is coming on, at a season when there is little dancer of any brood getting chilled. Then on all eold days, and as night comes, all the forces of the hive are gathered together there, so this warmth from the drones is hardly a sufficient plea for their existence. All things considered, it seems clear that it pays to exclude all except an inch or two of drone comb from all but one or two colonies in any apiary having 10 or mar colonies in it. allowing much drone comb onlv to our best drone-breeders.—G. M. Doolittle.