Purity of Italian Queens.
Your correspondent, E. L. Briggs, in the August number of the Journal, has stirred up the bee-keepers a little; and for fear they will not discuss the point which most interests me, I drop you a line, hoping that those who have had more experience may be able to settle the question.
It is a fact which I think no one will deny, that it would be for the interest of every one selling queens, to send only such as are purely fertilized. It being as easy to rear queens from pure eggs as from any other, we may look to some other cause than selfishness or cheapness of the price for the difficulty. I have managed my apiary under the impression that the Dzierzon theory is correct, that the drones from a pure queen which had mated with a black drone, were pure.
I have failed in keeping my stock pure enough to breed from; and in my opinion, other bee-keepers who have reared queens in the same way, are as badly off as myself. If we wish to improve the Italian bee, we may do so by selecting the best of its race, both male and female, to breed from; not by crossing with the black bee. The type of the Italian bee should be so fixed, that the bees all show the same marking. We may fix the type of any admixture of the German and Italian bees, so that they will have similar markings. The crossing has been so recent in many cases, that there is no uniformity of color. Breeders of choice stock look as much to the quality and purity of the male as the female parent. It is my present belief that bees are as much subject to the rule, as the animal creation are.
I look for higher results than any yet attained, when we control (as we soon shall) the mating of our queens; and the low priced ones have given me the most satisfaction so far.
L. C. Whiting.
East Saginaw, Mich.
[For the American Bee Journal.]