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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



July, 1918 



^ 



lELD OF EXPERIE 



CONVERSATIONS with DOOLITTLE 



Conditions That Surround the Purchase of Queens 

 from Breeders 



[Our readers will be glad to learn that before his 

 death, which occurred on June 3, Mr. Doolittle had 

 written several " Conversations " in advance, and 

 these will appear as usual for several months to 

 come. His widow has written us that it was his 

 custom, on account of the depressing influence of 

 hot weather on his health, to write his articles for 

 summer in advance of the coming of the heated sea- 

 son. Accordingly, Friend Doolittle will still " con- 

 verse " with Gleanings readers for a time, altho his 

 heartbeats have been stilled. — Editor.] 



"The subject of superior stock is now the 

 most interesting to me of any connected 

 with the bee business. But there is one 

 thing that I do not understand, and that is 

 that so many queens sent out by breeders 

 turn out to be poor when they are received 

 by the purchaser. I have never advertised 

 queens for sale, but have bought queens 

 from nearly every breeder in this country 

 who claims to have anything superior, and 

 I am sorry to say I am generally disappoint- 

 ed. Should not the daughters be all that is 

 claimed for their mothers?" 



At present, the most promising field in 

 which to turn our energies loose, is that of 

 improving our stock. Our hives and method 

 of management are jirobably not perfection, 

 but they are at least fairly good, our method 

 of putting up honey and marketing it may 

 possibly be considerably improved; but, at 

 present, too many of us look at bees in some- 

 thing the same way a storekeeper here used 

 to buy butter — ' ' it 's all butter, ' ' he would 

 say. The man who has kept bees for several 

 years, trying different strains has reason 

 to believe that there is quite a difference in 

 bees, and so he sends for queens from those 

 who advertise having such that are superior 

 to most, if not all others. When they prove 

 to be .little, if any, better than those he 

 already has, of course he is disappointed. 



To my mind there are several reasons why 

 the queens may not be as good as we expect 

 from reading the advertisements. (1) The 

 young queens may not have been so well 

 reared as the mother was. (2) The young 

 queen may not have mated as well as her 

 mother. (3) Beekeepers who are accustomed 

 to seeing queens in their own apiary are 

 quite likely to be disappointed when they 

 begin buying queens and having them come 

 by mail. A queen sent by mail is quite 

 likely to be small and insignificant looking 

 as compared with a queen that is laying in 

 a full colony. Not only is the shipped 

 queen smaller, but there is a dinginess about 

 her that is in striking contrast with the 

 bright, fresh color of the queen at home on 

 the combs of her own colony. Time and 

 again some beekeeper who has purchased 

 a queen and has bad luck in introducing her. 



and perhaps bad luck in other ways, sits 

 down and writes to some of the bee papers, 

 not in as pleasant terms as our questioner 

 has. Some buyers had expected a large, 

 golden-yellow queen, and, above all, had no 

 idea that the one purchased would not be 

 accepted by the bees, as the directions for 

 introducing had been followed as found up- 

 on the cage. But the queen was received 

 and lost, and she was small and dark color- 

 ed, and the accompanying bees looked little 

 better than hybrids. 



Does a purchaser expeot to get a queen 

 whose condition will be as good when receiv- 

 ed as when the queen was put into the cage? 

 Just consider for a moment what a hard 

 time those bees have had while they were 

 cooped up in the little box and being rushed 

 about for a week or more in a mail bag, with 

 the temperature ranging from 90 to 100 de- 

 grees in the shade. Is it not a wonder that 

 the bees are alive? Many mail bags are 

 grabbed from a crane while an express train 

 is traveling from 40 to 50 miles an hour. 



Then, again, think of the effect on the 

 bees when a mail pouch is thrown from the 

 door of a car with the train going at the 

 rate above mentioned. Some years ago I 

 was standing just outside the door on a 

 platform next to the station to see one of 

 these trains come thru on the New York Cen- 

 tral, not knowing that the mail was thrown 

 off there from this train called the "Faa(t 

 Mail." Some ten rods before it got to 

 where I was standing, a door on the mail 

 coach opened and a bag was thrown out. I 

 saw it bound in the air, strike the farthest 

 end of the platform, give two or three more 

 bounds, when it proceeded to roll along, go- 

 ing slower all the while, and looking very 

 innocent, but just as it looked as if it was 

 going to stop, Doolittle was lying prone on 

 the platform amidst laughter from others, 

 while the bag went on a rod or two further, 

 after knocking me down. I then and there 

 thought of a batch of queens I had mailed 

 the day before to start out on this train 

 bound for Australia, and what would happen 

 to others going to Ohio, Iowa, and Califor- 

 nia. Sometimes the mail pouch is left at 

 some station in the hot sun with a tempera- 

 ture of from 110 to 140. And what is still 

 worse, when queens are sent down into the 

 southern tier of States, the mail pouch is 

 sometimes placed on the top of a stagecoach 

 and carried for a score to fifty miles into 

 some back town, and all the time Old Sol 

 is doing his best to cook the contents en- 

 closed. 



These things are often overlooked by the 

 purchasers of queens, and a few are unkind 

 enough to accuse the breeder of sending 

 them inferior queens. It is hardly thinkable 

 that a queen-breeder would select out and 



