SEPTKMBEU 1. 1915 



are hard. . The facts arc, lioney, foi- the 

 money, stands at the very top of the list of 

 foods as an energy-producer. 



Can Good Queens be Raised and Sold 

 for Fifty Cents? 



Wk have received a number of letters 

 endorsing' our editorial on p. 573, July 15, 

 cnlilled "Complaints against certain Deal- 

 ers; Avhcn Patience Ceases to be a Virtue." 

 ATiionsi' the number is Kennith Hawkins, of 

 Plainfield. 111. He writes: 



" I Avisb to speak a Avord in api)robation 

 of your stand. Any advertiser who will not 

 give an iron-clad guarantee, and stand by 

 it until his patrons are satisfied, does not 

 deserve any business from beekeepers." 



Again, on this subject, Mr. J. Ivan Banks, 

 of Dowelltown, Tenn., who, to use the par- 

 lance of the day, has been "stung" by some 

 queen-breeders, writes : 



I read with interest Mr. Doolittle's article on 

 rearing good queens, page 573, July 15; also your 

 editorial, page 008, current issue — '" Complaints 

 against Certain Advertisers; when Patience Ceases 

 to be a Virtue," and now wish to arsk the question, 

 Can good queens he reared at a profit at 50 cts. and 

 even less? According; to my experience they cau 

 not. I find that at fT.OO per dozen there is very 

 little profit in qiieen-rearintr. I think if breeders 

 would ask a fair price for queens, and then aim to 

 rear better queens, there would be fewer complaints. 



Dowelltown, Tenn., Aug. 9. J. Ivan Banks. 



In answer to Mr. Banks' question, we 

 may say that the demand for queens comes 

 and goes. Sometimes the breeder may have 

 more orders than he can handle promptly. 

 At other times he may have a big stock. If 

 he has his work systematized, weather con- 

 ditions not being too unfavorable, he will 

 be having a certain weekly output of queens. 

 There will be limes when he will ha\e one 

 or two bundled on hand. In order to make 

 room for his virgins still coming on he can 

 a/ford at such times to sell fifty or a hun- 

 dred laying queens in the hives at a very 

 low ]5riee. He had better get 50 cents a 

 queen, perhaps, than to lose his virgins 

 and. worse yet, throw his queen-rearing 

 operations all out of gear. In times like 

 this he can afford to sell queens at a low 

 price in order to reduce his stock; but as a 

 regular proj)osition. week in and week out, 

 he cannot afford to sell them at 50 cents 

 apiece, pay the cost of advertising, the cost 

 of labor, the o^ist of select breeders, cost of 

 feeding sugar syrup, cost of replacing 

 queens that arrive dead, lime in answering 

 correspondents, and cost of bad weather 

 when his matings will be low, or heavy 

 windstoims when sometimes he will lose a 

 half or two-thirds of all his good drones. 

 It costs something to turn out a first-class 



699 



l)roduct; and as a general thing the price 

 uf a good laying queen from a good breeder 

 will circle around a dollar, the price vary- 

 ing according to the season and the supply 

 on hand. 



We agree with our friend Banks that it 

 will be far better to put the price up, and 

 witii it the quality, rather than to put it 

 dov/n and sell any old thing in order to take 

 care of the trade. There are some queen- 

 breeders who, we are told, make it a regu- 

 lar practice to lake cells of any kind from 

 any colony, and sell such product to their 

 customers. Such people usually furnish 

 queens at low prices, and the quality is cor- 

 respondingly low as a result. 



Cost of Letting Colonies Get near the 

 Verge of Starvation ; the Value of 

 Young Queens in the Fall 



Mr. J. L. Byer in his department in this 

 issue says very truly that when a colony 

 has got down to just a few cells of honey it 

 will be almost sure to destroy a great deal 

 of young brood by eating up the larval 

 food. Instinct teaches that it v/ill be folly 

 to raise more consumers, and therefore 

 natural prudence would suggest a saving in 

 the living force through rigid economy 

 until the time comes for honey to come in. 



But the real point of Mr. Byer's caution 

 is not that young brood is destroj'ed, but 

 rather that the beekeeper himself should not 

 let the bees get to the danger-point. It is 

 exceedingly wasteful to let unsealed brood 

 die for want of food. If a colony is to 

 winter well it must have a large stock of 

 young bees to go into w^inter quarters. To 

 .stop brood-rearing now by cai'elessness is 

 inexcusable. 



But this naturally bring-s up the question 

 (hat, during August and September in the 

 North, brood-rearing (under ordinary con- 

 ditions) will automatically cease, even 

 tliough there are plenty of stores in the 

 hive. If the queen is a year or two old she 

 will let up in her egg-laying .soon after the 

 haivest, and may not commence again until 

 a late flow of fall asters causes another 

 How. It may then be too late to get much 

 of a stock of young bees. 



It is right here that a young queen is far 

 more ])rofitabl(; than an old one. Given suf- 

 ficient i^fores, a young queen will keep right 

 on laying through summer and until late in 

 (lie fall, and she will stock that hive up 

 with young blood (hat can stand the rigors 

 of winter. An old queen that has exhaust- 

 ed herself in Ihe early part of the season 

 will usually stop laying when the main hon- 



