346 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July 



I forwarded the money at once. Their next reply 

 came to hand in 18 days, and reads as follows: 



Your order for queen at hand. Have noted instructions. 

 Will do our best for you. Will ship Monday 31st. 

 , May 20, 1X80.' 



From the foregoing- any person would expect the 

 queen in a few days; but notice the next postal; 



We ship your queen by this day's mail, and trust she may do 

 as well for you as she has done here. If so you will be well 

 pleased. 



, June 9, 1880. 



As I write this, on June 17th, no queen is at hand, 

 and there are no more falsehoods on postals from 

 friend . 



What do you think of them? I have concluded 

 that they are chief of humbugs. They obtain money 

 under false pretenses, and solely by putting on such 

 a fine show of outward clothing in your advertising 

 columns. But, by the by, you say that you hold 

 yourself responsible for all who advertise in your 

 paper. "Will you make this loss good? I made a hive 

 queenless to receive queen, and it is queenless yet. 

 I have walked to the post ofiice, a mile distant, for 

 20 days, in all 40 miles. It is to me a great loss, to 

 quit work in the middle of the day, when work is in 

 its busiest form, and to be deceived in this manner 

 is not pleasant at all. I will suggest to you a plan 

 which would save us apiarians from such sharks as 

 I have shown you in the foregoing, and I find that a 

 good many supply dealers have the same habit. My 

 plan would be for you and all the publishers of bee 

 papers to exact a deposit of $500.00 from each of 

 those who advertise in your papers, to be applied by 

 you when such advertisers fail to fulfill their en- 

 gagements. We have nothing to depend on but the 

 respectability of the paper they advertise in, and in 

 this we are deceived 19 times out of 20. 



To yourself, Mr. Novice, I would say the dollar 

 queen you sent me last fall was of no use whatever. 

 With all the feeding and coaxing, she never laid an 

 egg, and passed away quietly, and her remains were 

 consigned to mother earth before winter. So that 

 cures me on the dollar queen business, although she 

 cost me $4.50, with express charges, duty, &c. The 

 tested queen I got from you last July is undoubted- 

 ly the most prolific queen on this continent. I have 

 not seen any thing equal to her. Her hive is always 

 full of brood and bees. I have drawn largely on her 

 for eggs for queen rearing, but it matters not to 

 her. Truly Yours,— R. L. Mead. 



Nassagaweya, Ont., Can., June 17, 1880. 



As I am somewhat at least an interested 

 party m the above, I will try very hard to 

 take a fair, impartial view of the matter. If 

 our friend made you promises he did not 

 keep he certainly owes you an apology, if 

 nothing more ; but, in any case, are you not 

 certainly in want of the spirit of our little 

 text above, when you call him a humbug, 

 and accuse him of falsehood. Even if I did 

 not know him to be honest and upright, I 

 should never think of using such terms from 

 the statement you have given. In the queen 

 advertisement, in every number of Glean- 

 ings, it is stated that we agree to return the 

 money, whenever our customers are impa- 

 tient of such delays as are unavoidable. If 

 your queen did not come when you wanted 

 her, you should have asked for your money 

 back, and this should have closed the mat- 

 ter pleasantly, on both sides. If the queen 

 had been sent, as I am sure it was in this 

 case, it would be rather hard on your friend 

 who sent her, to ask for the money back 



after he had lost one. I think I should, out 

 of courtesy, if nothing more, inform him 

 that she was never received, and let him 

 send another. Queens by mail, to Canada, 

 are rather risky, for some postmaster may 

 imagine that duties should be paid, or some- 

 thing of that sort, and hold them until they 

 are all dead. I have had some bitter expe- 

 rience of that kind, but, of late, the matter 

 seems to be getting righted, and it is a very 

 great saving to our Canada friends. It 

 seems rather hard, as you present it, to be 

 obliged to go to the post office twenty times ; 

 but, friend M., folks who live only a mile 

 from the post office generally get mail about 

 once a day anyway, do they not? I will pay 

 for the queen cheerfully, if our advertiser 

 does not; but, I cannot for a moment think 

 it my duty to pay for your colony, and the lu 

 miles travel. This comes on the same 

 ground of holding seed dealers responsible 

 for the crop, if the seeds do not grow. Every 

 seed dealer in the U. S. has given notice that 

 they will not be held responsible in such a 

 way, and, I think, justly. I would by no 

 means take a queen from a hive, before the 

 new one comes ; neither would I ever think 

 of letting a colony perish because a queen 

 did not come that I expected. If I were to 

 put the matter to vote, I am sure, friend M., 

 a large majority of your fellow bee-men 

 would say you were at least at fault in this 

 respect. Suppose you try rearing queens 

 and sending them by mail a Avhile, friend M. 

 Shall we not try a little harder to look at 

 both sides? I know you have not been used 

 entirely right; our friend is perhaps dila- 

 tory and may be careless, but 1 know he is 

 not dishonest. Exacting a "deposit," would 

 be "by might, and by power;" don't you see? 



Are you not given to extremes, friend M.? 

 You speak extravagantly of the tested queen 

 I sold you, but because the dollar queen did 

 not lay, you plunged headlong into the con- 

 clusion that all dollar queens were imperfect. 

 A man once declared that he would never 

 go to meeting again, because his neighbor 

 was sun struck while on the meeting house 

 steps. Queens of all kinds are liable to be 

 found deprived of their powers of laying, 

 after a long trip. Suppose those to whom I 

 send them should declare they were unfer- 

 tile, and never did lay ; or suppose I should 

 say, as they were excellent layers in our own 

 apiary, I did not believe your statements, 

 and that you were trying to get another 

 queen for nothing; do you see how much 

 charity we need? 



This next complaint falls entirely on my 

 shoulders. 



Mr. Root:— The selected queen you sent me is 

 nothing else than a poor hybrid. I reared 5 or 6 

 queens from her, and I ought to kill them. I killed 

 some of my hybrid queens, and reared some hybrids 

 or blacks from yours. I had a dream last night, and 

 I saw Hell, where you are going, was plumb full of 

 such honest men as you are. John Kress. 



New Hampton, Iowa, June 18, 1880. 



On turning to our queen books, we And 

 the one in question was sent from neighbor 

 II. 's apiary. He has a number of fine im- 

 ported queens, furnished by us, to rear from, 

 and has not a hybrid or black queen in his 

 apiary. I can but think our friend is mis- 



