“…I tell you frankly that sooner or later,
sooner most likely, your apiaries will be
depopulated and ruined…” -(Henry Alley 1892)

The reason Henry Alley says  
“in-breeding”

In a letter to The Homestead
November 25, 1892 Des Moines, Iowa.
Henry Alley writes:

=====Start=====

A Warning. 

(Henry Alley, American Apiculturist.)

Do the bee keepers of this country,
who are introducing those five-banded
bees and queens, yellow clear to the tip,
realize what they are doing? Have
they forgotten the story of the fearful
loss of bees all through the West and
northwest In the winter and spring of
1892? Can not they learn anything
from such costly and dearly bought experience?
It seems not. The call still
continues by many who order queens
for those five-banded bees. Now, friends,
I tell you frankly that sooner or later,
sooner most likely, your apiaries will be
depopulated and ruined, and you will
be ready to retire thoroughly disgusted
from the bee business; your complaints
that "bees are doing nothing" will be
heard as long as you persist in Introducing
such a strain of bees as you are
pleased to call five-banded Italians.

Throw such worthless bees to the
dogs, and you will soon have reason to
say, "My bees wintered well and have
stored lots of honey." Did you ever
get an imported queen whose worker
bees were marked with five yellow
bands and whose daughters were yellow
clear to the tip? Of course you have
not. Every queen that ever reached
this country from Italy produced three banded
bees. Five-banded bees are produced
by in-breeding. Every experienced
bee-keeper knows the deteriorating effects
of such a method of propagation.
In-breeding destroys the constitution,
vigor and all that goes to make up the
life of a well bred, hardy and vigorous
animal. I know of nothing in the
animal or Insect kingdom that more
thoroughly illustrates the debilitating
effects of inbreeding as a colony of
those five-banded Italian bees. They
are too lazy to sting or to resent an insult
of any kind; they will not oven
keep out of each other's way. True,
these bees are handsome and beautiful
to look at. I want something beside
beauty to fill the bill for me so far as
getting profit from an apiary. Give me
beauty if it is not at the expense of other
qualities. Do our large honey producers
boast of having their hives
stocked with five-banded bees? Did
you over hear one of thorn say he
could show the handsomest bees to be
found In the world ? Does Mr. A. E.
Manum, of Vermont, one of the largest
honey producers in the world, advertise
queens that will produce five-banded
bees? I think his advertisement reads
thus: "Leather-colored queens for sale"
Don't you know one of those leather colored
queens are worth one hundred
of those yellow-clear-to-the-tip sort.

They surely are. What a novel sight it
would be to see a crate of fine honey
made by those five-banded bees! Did
any one ever see anything of the kind?
Most of those follows who keep such
beautiful bees report bad weather and
bees doing nothing. is this not correct?
Why don't our larger honey producers
introduce five-banded bees into their
apiaries? Well, why don't they? Why
can not our younger and smaller apiarists
profit by the experience of the prominent
and larger bee-keepers? In my
experience in rearing Italian queens I
have found that "breeding" queens
whose daughters were more or less
black at the tip, striped and leather colored
produced the most reliable and
hardy, as well as the most superior
honey-gathering bees. The fact is, that
such markings as black at tip, striped
and leather-colored indicates hardiness
and vigor; while the pale yellow which
reaches clear to the tip, means a delicate,
puny constitution, and short existence.
I hope I have said enough
here to satisfy the readers that it is not
to their interest to rear or to introduce
queens that produce five-banded bees.
As surely as you do it, your apiaries will
be ruined, and you will soon give up
keeping bees in disgust. Purchase
queens of those dealers who rear the
common, or in fact, I might say the typical
and real Italian bees. Pure,
profitable and the best strain of Italian
bees are not five-banded. The queens
vary in color from quite dark to golden
yellow. Do not complain to the dealer
of whom you purchase the queen that
she is a hybrid. If the bees are good
workers, the queens prolific, you certainly
have a queen worth all you paid
the dealer for her. On the other hand,
if the queen is unprolific and fails to fill
the hive with bees, or those that are
poor honey-gatherers, you have good
reasons for complaint and for demanding
other queens to replace all Inferior
ones.

=====End=====

Best Wishes,

Joe Waggle ~ Derry, PA   
‘Bees Gone Wild Apiaries' 
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/HistoricalHoneybeeArticles
FeralBeeProject.com

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