1901 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



291 



(lent in law. But if I join now I shall be too 

 late to help, anyhow." 



" Oh ! but the case may be carried up still 

 higher ; and, besides that, if there is a large 

 increase in membership, and consequently a 

 larger sum in the treasury, we shall be in a 

 better position to protect bee-keepers' inter- 

 ests in other ways." 



" Well, you can send in my name for mem- 

 bership, and here is the dollar. It will be 

 read}', if needed, to help carry on the fight ; 

 but if not, it can go to replace one of those al- 

 ready taken out. It goes to pay for a real 

 service in either case, for we don't want to be 

 at the mercy of every ignorant fruit grower 

 who may want to go to law with us." 



Oberlin, O. 



[For the information of some of our friends 

 who may not be able to understand the pic- 

 ture, I would explain that Secor, our genial 

 General Manager, is represented as the "good 

 Samaritan," and the man whom he is help- 

 ing, and about to put on the faithful animal 

 that will carry him safely out of trouble, is 

 Mr. Utter. In the light of past events there 

 is more of truth than fancy in the picture, and 

 I hope those of our readers who have not yet 

 joined the Association will do so at once. Send 

 $1.00 to Eugene Secor, Forest City, Iowa, and 

 thus help along the good work. It may be 

 that you will be the man to fall among thieves. 

 —Ed.] 



. . . ..«»t»« 



STRENUOUS QUEEX-REARING. 



Read before the California State Bee-keepers' 

 Association. 



BY J. H. MARTIN. 



In these twentieth-century days we hear 

 much about strenuous living and working. I 

 suppose strenuous is only another term for 

 high pressure, and we have had high-pressure 

 farming, high-pressure poultry-rearing, high- 

 pressure commercialism, and high - pressure 

 many other things ; but I have never heard 

 much of high-pressure bee-keeping. 



High pressure is, however, too much out of 

 date to apply to twentieth-century bee-keep- 

 ing, and " strenuous " is the term ; and I have 

 an idea that, to commence at the root of the 

 matter, we need a more strenuous queen-rear- 

 ing. 



Let us consider the subject. Durmg the 

 past season I found a strain of bees in the 

 apiaries I was managing that were so far supe- 

 rior to the rest that, had the bees all been bred 

 from the queen of that colony, our honey crop 

 would have been increased by several tons. 



The discovery that this strain were such 

 good rustlers for honey was not made until 

 the season was well advanced ; and now, in 

 order to get the full benefit from that strain, 

 it must be gradually diffused through the 

 whole apiary. , 



When I find a strain of bees like those men- 

 tioned I am impatient to get the whole apiary 

 up to that standard, and the need of queens 

 when I want them, and the lack of time to 



rear them when my energies are devoled to 

 the extractor or at other work. In fact, I am 

 strenuous at something else, and ne^d an ex- 

 tra-strenuous plan to supply the queens. 



I think every bee-keeper present has observ- 

 ed that not one apiary in a hundred is proper- 

 ly queened, and I think we all have a dim sus- 

 picion that our own apiaries are not up to the 

 standard we desire. We hear of golden-)'el- 

 low queens, leather color, long tongues, and 

 even §100 queens. To make a good start we 

 should like one of those.? 100 queens ; but aft- 

 er considering the lank condition of our purse 

 we finally conclude to send for a dollar queen, 

 and that is about as far as we get this year ; 

 but next year, if we have a big crop of hon- 

 ey, we will do better. Our dollar queen may 

 be either good, bad, or indifferent ; and, 

 whichever it is, we do not get much out of 

 her. 



Then you know that queen-rearing has be- 

 come a great science of late years. Alley's 

 plan used to be good enough for me ; but now 

 it is dipping-sticks, tooth-picks, transfer of 

 royal jelly, transfer of larvte, and putteration 

 until your head swims. Oh, it is so strenu- 

 ous ! 



But I see light at last. When I read Prid- 

 gen's plan of making queen-cells by the peck 

 and queens by the quart, a great load seemed 

 to be lifted from my mind, and I formulated 

 the following more strenuous plans for queen- 

 rearing. 



In the first place, every bee-keeper needs 

 the very best queens that can be reared — test 

 in hardiness, prolificness, and notably in the 

 honey-gathering qualities of her progeny. 



In the second place, there are but few bee- 

 keepers who have the combination of quali- 

 ties that will insure their success in modern 

 strenuous scientific queen-rearing. Now, my 

 plan is that a certain number of bee-keepers 

 in a given locality turn their queen-rearing 

 over to an expert in that line of work. A 

 contribution from each bee-keeper interested 

 would enable the expert to commence opera- 

 tions with the best available stock. Each bee- 

 keeper in the district should agree to take a 

 certain number of queens per annum; and, 

 having a definite number of queens to rear, 

 and a large number of them, the expert could 

 rear them at a minimum cost to the bee-keep- 

 er, and at the same time with a good profit to 

 himself. 



A person devoting his entire attention to 

 queen-rearing will strive to improve his stock, 

 and his patrons will receive the full benefit, 

 or the patrons in this case would have an in- 

 fluence in keeping the str ck up to an approv- 

 ed grade. 



Our usual plan is to send for a breeding- 

 queen and rear daughters, granddaughters, 

 and great-granddaughters from her, and trust 

 to a promiscuous mating with our drones. 



Our expert could be so located as to control 

 the mating of queens with selected drones, 

 and the bee-keepers in the district would get 

 queens only one removal from the original, or 

 daughters, and from the very best stock in the 

 country. In our present haphazard way we 

 dilute the blood too much by the many re- 



