“I made five nuclei this year, with fresh brood from pure original Italians. When fitting them up, I recollected a suggestion of the Rev. Mr. Stahala, and inserted both drone and worker brood in four of them, omitting the drone brood in the fifth. The queens of the first four mentioned were purely fertilized, while the one in the fifth nucleus mated with a common drone. This result induces me to invite your attention to the fact, for it is reasonable to presume that queens making their excursions will be more likely to mate with drones from their own hives flying simultaneously, than with drones from other and distant hives. The queen usually makes such excursions only at periods when drones are flying, and there is then generally great commotion in the hive, as though there was much eagerness to get abroad and enjoy the genial air. Still, too much must not be expected from this suggestion and its adoption. It is not supposed that any preliminary arrangements or appointments are made by drones or queens, before the excursion is undertaken; but merely that there is a much greater probability that parties flying at the same time and necessarily in close proximity, will mate, than those starting from remoter points. Hence since it can do no possible harm to supply our nuclei with drone and drone-brood in this manner, the plan should by no means be disregarded when preparing to Italianize an apiary.” By means of this process, having selection to a great degree in my power, I frequently obtain queens nearly entirely yellow, having black only at the extremity of the abdomen. I have procured queens for breeding from both Dzierzon and Mona. The young queens breed from Dzierzon’s stock were at first handsomer than those bred from Mona’s. But in later years, since using the method I now recommend, I obtain equally fine queens from the latter’s stock. The drones from Mona’s queens were, from the start yellower than those from Dzierzon’s, which were only faintly tinged with yellow on the sides, and had dark orange bands. Observing this, I then took worker brood and queen cells from the Dzierzon’s queens, with drones and drone-brood from the Mona queens, to furnish the same nucleus, and thus obtained regularly very handsome queens, bright workers, and very fine drones. J. STAHALA, _Pastor_. _Dolein, near Olmutz_, Feb. 5., 1870. [For the American Bee Journal.] 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.