i889 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



;>?5 



they would be lost; but I felt so certain 

 that the legs belonged to a queen, and noth- 

 ing else, that I kept my eyes on the same 

 spot, or nearly there, and eventually I would 

 lind her. I am much obliged to you for re- 

 minding me of this matter. Now, I believe 

 that, if the queen I was hunting for to re- 

 place should prove to be a fine large one I 

 would let her alone. Very likely, however, 

 it would be a mistake. I can not quite see 

 why any colony should receive a virgin 

 queen when they would not receive a laying 

 one — that is, unless they have already a 

 queen of some sort. In that case they 

 might neglect to notice the virgin queen, 

 where there would very soon be a hubbub 

 were we to put in a laying queen. I believe I 

 have always succeeded in getting any col- 

 ony to accept a queen by simply taking all 

 their combs away, and leaving them clus- 

 tered on the side of the hive, without any 

 combs at all, say for from ten to twelve 

 hours. 



IMPORTED QUEENS AS HONEY 

 QUEENS. 



HOW TO MAKE SELECTED HONEY QUEENS DUPLI- 

 CATE THEIR QUALITIES IN OTHER QUEENS. 



flCCASIONALLY there is found one of those 

 queens (see p. 508, June 15) that will produce 

 workers better than the average, and there 

 are two very strong chances to run in breed- 

 ing- from these abnormal freaks of nature. 

 The chances are, the strong- tendency of perpetua- 

 tion of either an establishment of the peculiarity 

 or of the direct reverse. These peculiarities are 

 occasionally found in every thing, and the best way 

 is to test the reproductive tendency, and by in- 

 breeding establish it. I knew of such a case hap- 

 pening among half a dozen imported queens ob- 

 tained from the Home of the Honey-bees in 1882. 

 The queen was dark, small, and inferior-looking. 

 Her workers were dark leather color, very large 

 and long in the abdomen, and heavy-winged. They 

 were gentle in the extreme, and rather lazy in their 

 actions. But they just lugged in the honey. Now, 

 the law, as a rule, is to show characteristics mostly 

 in the alternate generations; and to dispose of that 

 alternation, this plan was resorted to, that proved 

 true: Queens were raised in abundance from her, 

 and a whole apiary of 30 colonies were queened 

 with them; drone-combs were inserted in the hives 

 of those queens mostly resembling their mother's 

 workers in general characteristics. The queens 

 that raised the most even drones were then given 

 an abundance of drone-comb, and it was excluded 

 from the other hives, and the drones all trapped off 

 that were in the apiary. More queens were raised 

 late in the fall, and were mated with these drones, 

 because there were no others permitted to come 

 out of the cells. In 1883 these queens showed the 

 characteristics in their workers that were in those 

 of the old queen; and from these young queens an- 

 other set were raised to be used as drone-breeders, 

 to raise drones for mating with the old queen's 

 daughters which showed the result, and the daugh- 

 ters from other strains were brought to the mating 

 apiary to further test the results, which proved to 

 be continually becoming more established; and I 

 know where there are hives to-day that have queens 

 containing a tincture of that blood which was sur- 



prisingly apparent during the two very poor sea- 

 sons of 1887 and '8. Neighbor H. had better stock 

 one apiary with queens for drone-raisers from that 

 best queen, and use her for a second-generation 

 breeder. H. L. Jeffrey. 



New Milford, Ct., June 29. 



FALSE STATEMENTS IN REGARD TO THE HON- 

 EY BUSINESS OF OUR COUNTRY. 



As a protection to our bee-keeping population, we propose in 

 this department to publish the names of newspapers that per- 

 sist in publishing false statements in regard to the purity of 

 honey which we as bee-keepers put on the market. 



MORE WONDERFUL STILL. 



T THINK I have before mentioned that 

 M we send Gleanings to the pastor of 

 W our church. Although we are so unfor- 

 **• tunate as to change pastors quite often, 

 somehow it does not seem to take very 

 long for a minister and me to get acquaint- 

 ed, and to become very intimate friends. 

 As a matter of course, he takes Gleanings. 

 I think I have mentioned that our last pas- 

 tor was called back to China. Our new one 

 is quite a young man ; but for all that, when 

 he read that passage in our last journal, 

 asking all the bee-friends to go right to 

 work and look over cyclopedias, he pulled 

 his down from the shelf, and what do you 

 think he found? Well, right here it is be- 

 low : 



Dear Brother Boot:— In accordance with your sug- 

 gestion in Gleanings for July 1, 1 consulted the 

 American Cyclopedia on the subject of artificial 

 honey. In the body of the work, under the article 

 "Glucose," we are referred to the Supplement; 

 namely, the Annual Cyclopedia. In the Annual for 

 1881 (Vol. VI. of the New Series), under article 

 " Glucose," p. 351, column D, line 25, I find this 

 statement: "Glucose is very extensively fed to 

 bees, which eat it with great avidity, and store it 

 away unchanged as honey. It is also put up direct- 

 ly in trade, as honey— with which bees have had 

 nothing to do— being put up by means of appropri- 

 ate machinery into artificial combs made of paraf- 

 flne." As Messrs. D. Appleton & Co , publishers of 

 the above, issue a supplement every year, I hope 

 you can secure a retraction in the issue of 1889. 



Medina, Ohio, July 3, 1889. Norman Plass. 



Now, the astonishing part is, the state- 

 ment above has been eight years before the 

 American people— in fact, in the American 

 Cyclopedia; and yet with all our zeal to 

 hunt up newspaper editors and take them 

 to task, not one of us has in all these years 

 found the above scandalous and ridiculous 

 statement. I presume the publishers of 

 cyclopedias pay the men who write up a 

 special subject for them a good price for so 

 doing, and these men are supposed to obtain 

 their facts from actual practice. Suppose a 

 man should be employed to write up the 

 subject of brick-making for a cyclopedia ; 

 and instead of going to a brick-yard and 

 spending several days and weeks in watch- 

 ing the workmen, and talking with the pro- 

 prietor, he should simply hunt over news- 

 papers and talk gossip with people who had 

 never been in a brick-yard in their lives. 

 Well, it is just what they have been doing 

 on the subject of bee culture. A man was 



