1880 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



347 



taken, and that he has a good, pure queen, 

 possibly dark, like most of the imported 

 stock. You remember, on page 261 of the 

 last No., the man who called his queen a hy- 

 brid and received two, and now admits that 

 both were pure, and pays for them. Friend 

 K., has it not occurred to you that it would 

 be a very foolish thing for me to send out a 

 hybrid for a selected tested queen V Is it 

 likely I should ever build up a business re- 

 quiring a hundred hands, if I did things that 

 way? If it were really as you state, would it 

 not be far more probable that it was a mis- 

 take, than that it was intentional? Would it 

 not have been better to have had a little 

 more charity than to have rushed to the con- 

 clusion that I am dishonest? Men who use 

 the language you do, eyen in telling a dream, 

 are, as a general thing, hardly the ones who 

 are most honest and upright in their deal. 

 I do not know you, of course, but I fear you 

 have at least been in bad company. Should 

 I comply with the demands of every one 

 who swore at me, or used bad language, it 

 might be noised about, that I could be scared 

 by threats, oaths, and abuse, and I should 

 then encourage just what I seek to abate. 

 I fear God, but not man. Write a civil let- 

 ter, stating that the worker bees from the 

 queen you purchased are not 3 banded ac- 

 cording to the tests given in the ABC, and 

 I will send you another queen. Bear in 

 mind that the color of the young queens 

 reared is no test of purity. We have a coal 

 black queen in our apiary, producing very 

 pretty 3 banded workers. Of course, she is 

 a daughter of an imported mother. 



Some of you lay great stress on obeyiug 

 orders. Here is a very plain order. 



A. I. Root .'Enclosed please find $10.00, for which 

 you will send me as many of your Langstroth, mov- 

 able frame hives for bees as the amount will pay 

 for. 1 want the hives here as soon as I can get 

 them by express; and please remember that I want 

 them complete; that is, all the pieces, and I will 

 put them up myself. I will rely on you and hope 

 that you will secure as low rates of express as can 

 be had. H. H. Brooks. 



Belmont, Texas, March 23, 1880. 



After carefully reading the letter, I decid- 

 ed that friend B. was a man of business, and 

 knew what he was doing, and so I directed 

 the clerks to send by express as he twice 

 plainly ordered. A notice came soon that he 

 refused to pay the charges, which were 

 $28.75. I told you a while ago, that we had 

 an especial arrangement with all the express 

 ( 'o.*s, whereby any thing with our card on it 

 would go straight through, no matter what 

 the value, or what the charges, but the con- 

 ditions tinder which we secured this unusual 

 immunity from delays of any kind was, that 

 we gua rank i all charges. Here is a letter 

 from friend B., in regard to the matter. 



Dear Sir:—I am in receipt of your postal card of 

 the 29th, and, in reply, I would say that I am sorry 

 that I was not able to pay the express charges on 

 the bee gums in question. I am willing to pay 

 $10.00 and take the gums; that would make them 

 cost me $1.00 more than I can buy them for here. I 

 will tell you how I came to order gums from you. 

 It was through your friend, O. It. Flournoy; he told 



me that he bought his gums of you, and that I could 

 buy them at 50c a piece, and the charges for trans- 

 portation would be about 50c, making the total cost 

 $1.00. In this country, we have always been doing 

 business in the way of freighting on wagons. The 

 express business is new here, and from what Mr. 

 Flournoy told me I supposed you had some way of 

 sending gums to customers that they could stand. 

 If I had known any thing about such charges I could 

 not have thought of ordering them. You will know 

 that I could not pay 5 or (3 dollars for gums. In clo- 

 sing, I will say again, that $10.00 more is as much 

 as I can pay on the gums. If this will do, let 

 me know by return mail. H. H. Brooks. 



Belmont, Texas, June 4, 1880. 



You see I am out $18.75, just for obeying 

 orders. Is it right that I should suffer for 

 doing exactly as' I was bid, and for a mis- 

 take that was entirely his? Should t have 

 written before sending the goods? He says 

 plainly he wants them as soon as he can pos- 

 sibly get them by express, and I have been 

 severely blamed for not sending goods along 

 instead of asking if the writer really knew 

 what he wanted. In real trouble and dis- 

 tress, my friends, I ask you what I shall do 

 with such cases, for there are a great many 

 of them. When you thoughtlessly refuse to 

 receive goods because the express charges 

 are more than you expected, please bear in 

 mind that it all falls on my shoulders. You 

 have no moral right to refuse to take goods 

 you have ordered, for you can always go to 

 your express agent and find out beforehand 

 what the charges will be. If you make a 

 blunder through ignorance, is it right to 

 blame the innocent express Co.'s, or let them 

 lose? It is this very work that has made them 

 so prone to stop goods when carried about 

 so far, and send back for the charges before 

 they go any farther ; can you blame them? 

 It is now the season for sowing buckwheat, 

 and our girls are sending off pecks and half 

 bushels all the time, but I shall have to give 

 up trying to sell it at a close profit, if so 

 many of you keep refusing to receive the 

 packages because the express charges are 

 more than the buckwheat cost. I do not 

 like to delay your orders this nice growing 

 weather, but what can I do to have you re- 

 member that "'Charity suffereth long, and is 

 kind?" 



Dollar queens are now $1.00 again. We have 

 them put up ready to ship on our table all the time, 

 and, if you want to see how promptly we can send 

 queens, just send us a dollar and see. In regard to 

 buying queens, I shall pay $60.00 per hundred for 

 them, when I need more than our neighbors can 

 supply. You must not send me any until 1 give you 

 permission, for I do not like to have them on my 

 hands more than 24 or 48 hours at a time, if I can 

 help it. You will see on another page, that our new 

 cages go now even to California safely by mail. 



I am always willing to have you return any thing 

 in the line of regular goods which you do not want, 

 but those who, from thoughtlessness, or because 

 they are vexed, send heavy packages back by ex- 

 press, before notifying us,— do a most unkind thing, 

 to say the least. To illustrate: One friend ordered 

 500 sections without saying a word as to whether he 

 wanted the new or old style. Our orders are now, 

 very rarely for the old style at all. As soon as ho 

 got them, he wrote a very unkind letter, saying he 

 wanted the old style, sent them back by express, and 

 demanded his money back. I have not as yet sent 

 back his monev, or accepted the box from the ex- 

 press office. What ought I to do, in such a case? 



