198 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



March 26, 1903. 



took hold at that time and helped me all they could, and 

 sent me lists of the apiaries that they wanted inspected, 

 and urged the bee-keepers everywhere to go strictly by my 

 treatment, which helped me immensely to get the disease 

 wiped out. 



The first season that I went out on my rounds through 

 the Province, I found the disease in every village, town and 

 city that I went into, and also in every country place where 

 bees were kept, and now I am very much pleased to say 

 that I have succeeded in getting the disease almost driven 

 out of our Province, and now have it under perfect control, 

 and can very easily attend to the few apiaries that are sus- 

 pected to have a little of the disease in them. I hjive a few 

 apiaries in the county of Norfolk that are suspected to have 

 the disease, and a few in the county of Simcoe, and a little 

 work to do in western Ontario, and some down east ; this is 

 all that I know of, and I know more about the true condition 

 of the apiaries of Ontario than any man in it. 



N. E. France is, and has been, the only inspector for 

 Wisconsin. W. Z. Hutchinson is the only inspector ap- 

 pointed for Michigan. But here in Ontario we have two 

 inspectors to do the work (myself and Mr. Gemmill), and I 

 have sent him out but twice in the last ten years. 



Mr. Gemmill and I are not enough to satisfy some three 

 or four men, and these men want local inspectors appointed 

 all over the Province. We have 43 counties in Ontario, and 

 counting that we have eight townships in each county, that 

 would make 344 townships. Now, suppose that we appoint 

 an inspector for each township, and that each of these 344 

 men was to send in his bill at the end of the season for $30, 

 that would only amount to f 10,320. Where would this little 

 sum come from ? Would these men make no mistakes ? 

 They certainly would, and very many of them, and when 

 they would find foul brood, black brood, starved brood, 

 chilled brood, and brood that had been poisoned through 

 some foolish man spraying fruit-trees while in full bloom, 

 they would report many cases to be foul brood when it was 

 not. I have received more or less reports of this kind every 

 year since I have been inspector, and some from bee-keep- 

 ers that I did think would know it, and when I got to their 

 place was very much surprised to find that they were mis- 

 taken, and that it was a dead brood of another kind, and 

 not foul brood at all. 



Any bee-keeper tha: has foul brood should apply to me 

 to help him, and he can depend upon it that I will never 

 report to any person but the Minister of Agriculture what I 

 found in his apiary. No bee-keeper should be foolish 

 enough to allow any person to examine his colonies that 

 would report that his apiary had foul brood, if he found it 

 there, because it hurts the sales in all such cases long after 

 the diseased apiaries have been cured. Cure your diseased 

 colonies if you can, and, if you can not, apply to me, and if 

 you have good reason to believe that the disease is in other 

 apiaries in your locality, send me a list of the apiaries you 

 want inspected, and I will see that they are cured ; but do 

 not ask me to tell if I find the disease in any of them, be- 

 cause it would cause trouble and do others no good. I have 

 to see that the diseased apiaries are cured, and that is suf- 

 ficient. Woodburn, Ontario, Canada. 



Queen-Rearing— Replies to Critics. 



BV HENRY ALLEY. 



I HAVE seen much in this journal during the past winter 

 that was of more or less interest to the general reader. 1 

 have also seen much that could only interest the persons 

 who wrote the articles. 



Now I admire having anything I send the papers for 

 publication criticised in a fair, manly way. In fact, I court 

 criticisms at all times. But when criticisms run to mere 

 personalities, I surely shall call a halt, so far as paying any 

 attention to them. Competent critics can do any opponent 

 honor ; but he who has had no experience in the matter under 

 discussion, and his argument is very personal, or says " I 

 think so," "I don't believe it," etc., these are the people 

 who should not appear in public print as critics. Such peo- 

 ple think they count, and have done a smart thing, but the 

 readers who possess a fair amount of horse-sense take no 

 stock in their cheap talk. For instance, a man away out 

 in Oregon made .some remarks, on page 130. This man said : 

 " I can pick out conclusive evidence enough to condemn his 

 entire method of rearing queens." I want to say to that 

 man that the methods I use in queen-rearing were tested, 

 found good, and pronounced so by the foremost bee-keepers 



of the world long before that man's head was as large as a 

 cranberry. The idea of any man criticising another when 

 what he says plainly shows that he has had no experience 

 at all in the matter he so violently condemns I 



" Beware of the $100 queen-man !" Why, I am unfortu- 

 nate enough just now to have a queen-bee I would not sell for 

 $100. Isn't that really a misfortune ? Just my luck ! What ! 

 a queen-bee not worth $100? Let me tell a little experience 

 in this connection. Now, I am not certain about the year, 

 but I think it was the season of 187H. All the bees in east- 

 ern New England perished during the winter, not on ac- 

 count of a hard winter, but from some unknown cause. The 

 next spring I was not the owner of a colony of bees, not one, 

 not even a SO-cent queen. Well, I had to go among my 

 friends hunting up bees, and if possible a ir£?^rfzn^ queen. 

 Had I not found one I surely would have gone out of 

 the bee-business that year. I found one man in a town 

 6 miles away who had lost all his bees but one col- 

 ony in which I had put a fine Italian queen the 

 summer before. There was about a handful of bees 

 and as fine a queen as I ever owned. She was a $ioo 

 queen, dead sure. See if she was not worth that, when 

 you have finished reading this story. That queen and 

 the few bees were my entire stock in trade until I 

 went for miles around the country and found 25 colo- 

 nies of bees. I bought all the bees I needed after a while, 

 though only a colony here and there, and many of the colo- 

 nies were very weak. A good honey season and favorable 

 queen-rearing weather prevailed through the season. Now, 

 here's how I came out in the fall : I reared and sold more 

 queens that year, and at a greater profit, than in any other 

 year I have been in the queen-rearing business. My whole 

 success was in the one queen and handful of bees. Now, 

 Mr. Whitcomb, you set a price on that queen. 



Mr. Whitcomb starts his article, on page 130, by saying: 

 " I see Mr. Alley disdains to refer to my $25 proposition, 

 etc." I am in total ignorance as to what Mr. Whitcomb 

 refers. I have seen no proposition from anyone, directed 

 to me in any publication. There, Mr. Whitcomb, I am done 

 with you. You may shoot away as much as you please. I 

 can spend my time to much better advantage than reply to 

 such articles as you or any other unheard-of bee-keeper can 

 call my attention to. 



I also see in the same copy of the American Bee Jour- 

 nal that my old friend, Dr. Gallup, has not forgotten me. I 

 only want to say to the Doctor that he need not accuse me 

 of doing free advertising for myself. It is all unnecessary 

 for me to do that. I have been in the queen-rearing busi- 

 ness 40 years, and never in any year could I rear enough 

 queens to fill all the orders that came to me. Last fall I re- 

 turned $100 sent me for queens that I could not supply. AU 

 this business came through the American Bee Journal, as I 

 did not advertise in any other paper last year. Doesn't this 

 speak well for York and Alley ? 



Some people are always happy in lauding their own vir- 

 tues and belittling those of other people. 



Now I'll come down to something that will please the 

 readers of the " Old Reliable." 



It has been said in this paper that no queen-breeder 

 sends out good queens. Of course, that is very sweeping, 

 as it takes in all but the person who makes the charge. He's 

 all right. I remarked in one of my previous articles that 

 the rearing of black queens and yellow-banded queens were 

 quite different things to do. 'Tis the easiest thing in the 

 world to rear black queen-bees. It requires no experience 

 nor science. Anybody can do it whoever saw bees. Doesn't 

 the reader remember when the only fowls in existence were 

 the old dung-hills ? Everybody had good success in raising 

 chicks and in setting eggs by the millions. An old hen 

 would " steal " her nest and bring a chick out of every c^^ 

 that happened to be under her when she commenced to sit 

 on them. Just so with rearing old-fashioned bees and 

 queens. How much success do the people have nowadays 

 with the new-fangled breeds as compared with the dung- 

 hill variety ? 



I'll ask all the queen-breeders in the land if they do not 

 have a good deal more trouble to rear what are called 

 "pure" Italians than they do in rearing hybrid queens ? 

 It is so. No one will deny it. Yet we are condemned be- 

 cause all our queens do not prove to be as good as those 

 hybrid queens reared by some people. We all can rear just 

 as good hybrids, and by much less fussy methods. Bee- 

 keepers do not want to buy hybrid queens; they won't 

 have them. Nor do people care any more to buy the old 

 (iiing-hill breed of fowls. 



Some of the queens we send out do not prove to be as 

 good as they are expected to be. But these same queens 



