3S6 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 1 



to produce honey in comb, how about us who 

 are on American soil ? While the great bulk 

 of Cuban honey goes to other countries rath- 

 er than to the United States, it behooves us 

 here in America to be ready to meet competi- 

 tion that may come in time from Cuba — Ed] 



FERTILIZATIOX OF QUEENS IN THE HIVE. 

 Truth or Heresy— Which ? 



BY H. L. JEFFREY. 



A CO-OPERATIVE ORGANIZATION FOR BEE- 

 KEEPERS NEEDED. 



BY J. P. BERG. 



Friend Aikin, on page 82, has hit the nail 

 on the head. Sitting on his ridgepole as he 

 does, he has taken a full view of the matter. 

 Such an organization is absolutely necessary 

 for bee-keepers to prosper in the future. See 

 how all business is organizing in its various 

 lines, except the bee-keepers and farmers in 

 general. 



Now for the farmers. I have given up all 

 hopes, on account of the total ignorance of 

 so large a share of them. You can never ed- 

 ucate them, as a class, to be honest with each 

 other, and have confidence in each other, like 

 other business men. And what is the result ? 

 Farming is the poorest-paying business in 

 America. And we bee-keepers (I am a farmer 

 too) are served not much better. Seven years 

 ago I moved to the State of Washington with 

 110 colonies of bees. I sold my honey that 

 fall before I went there, in Traverse City, at 

 18 cents a pound, wholesale. I bought good 

 pine lumber for 12 to 14 dollars per 1000. I 

 bought my nails to make my bee-hives for lyi 

 cents per lb. Two years ago I came back from 

 there, and found honey worth 12)^ cents, and 

 many sold it for 10 ; but the lumber I had 

 bought 5 years before for 12 to 14 dollars was 

 worth $26.00 to $28.00, and nails were worth 

 .5 cents per lb. Did they run short of mate- 

 rial for nails ? Our bee-supply manufacturers 

 were obliged to raise prices on nearly all sup- 

 plies, on account of raw material rising in 

 price. Has the price of honey raised corres- 

 pondingly ? All the lumber men of this part 

 of the country have their monthly meetings 

 here at Traverse City. In their December 

 meeting they passed a resolution that none 

 should be allowed to lumber this winter more 

 than half as much as they did last winter. 

 Do you see, brother bee-keepers, how they fix 

 us? This seems to be the order of the day : 

 " Limit production and raise the price." Let 

 us organize thoroughly and systematically for 

 co-operative business as well as intelligence. 

 Let's not be afraid that some other bee-keeper 

 might get a dollar out of it that we should not 

 get. This is the snag that all farmers' organi- 

 zations go to pieces on — miserable jealousy 

 and distrust. Is it not more profitable and 

 honorable to give a faithful officer $1.00 than 

 to give a dishonest dealer $100? I have more 

 hopes of the bee-keepers getting together than 

 the farmers, for the bee-keepers as a class are 

 better informed, and have more confidence in 

 each other. But, as Bro. Aikin says, "We 

 must have a national head," and should at- 

 tend to it at once, before another crop comes on. 



Traverse City, Mich. 



[In publi-^hing the following I do not wish to be un- 

 (Itrstood that I am in any_ sense giving it editorial in- 

 dorsement. While I believe Mr. Jeffiev is honest, yet 

 I can not help feeling some mil-take has been made. 

 On the other hand there is just a little dinger that 

 over-conservatism on this question may shut us out 

 from receiving new knowledge of unorthodox truth. 

 Some thirt3' odd years ago there was a great deal said 

 on this question, and some even claimed that fertili- 

 zation could and did take place insideof the hive ; but 

 at the time, I believe it was finally decided that no 

 really authentic proof from careful and competent 

 observers was offered. While I believe that fertiliza- 

 tion might take place in a mammoth cage, as illustrat- 

 ed and described last issue, I feel very, very skeptical 

 about the possibilities of the act taking place within 

 the hive. — Ed.] 



3Ir. Editor : — Dr. Miller writes, "That 

 dead decayed thing that has been carried out 

 and buried comes up smiling." Not dead but 

 sleeping. That mating queens in confinement 

 is and has been made practical is true, and 

 has been made practically a success, is also 

 true, and was proven fully possible away back 

 in the '70's by a man named Cooke, of Ger- 

 man-American ancestors, who lived in Beacon 

 Falls, Ct. Cooke did not use any big cage or 

 tent, but I do know that he made a reasona- 

 ble and practical success of it. He worked at 

 it for several years, and tried to get the results 

 of his labors published, but none of the pub- 

 lications would give him a fair showing. In 

 every attempt he triade to publish his works, 

 he met with sarcastic rebuff. Finally he be- 

 came despondent, and died in the early '80's. 

 The minute details of his modus operandi I 

 never tried to ascertain until too late. For 

 three or four years he mated queens for me 

 with drones that I selected for him. He 

 would succeed with from half to three-fourths 

 of the queens that I sent him, and that was 

 far more satisfactory than to run the chances 

 of natural chance mating ; and from some of 

 the results of Mr. Cooke's labor was one of 

 the main factors that made me believe — yes, 

 and by which I know — that the damaging in- 

 breeding clack is all a humbug. 



So far as confinement matings of my own 

 experience are concerned, I have been just 

 successful enough so that I do know it can be 

 done ; but just how to succeed every time, I 

 do not know how. Provoking success is the 

 only fitting term for it. 



Twenty years or more ago some writer in 

 the American Bee Journal used these words, 

 in meaning : ' ' When both sexes and condi- 

 tions are ready, mating will take place any- 

 where. ' ' I will give one instance out of many, 

 to illustrate. 



In 1884 I had a three-year-old queen I was 

 using as breeder. Her own record, several of 

 her sisters' and her mother's records were 

 above the best average. From a batch of 30 

 or more I selected 8 that were very good re- 

 semblances of the old one. They were in two- 

 frame nuclei, and were watched very closely. 

 On the evening of their seventh day they were 

 closely examined, as they had been every day, 

 and they showed that uneasiness that is ap- 



