344 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURINAL. 



May 28, 1903. 



stroth hives. I bought one, and it was a good one, too. 

 There was a glass in the rear of the hive and I could see 

 that the brood-chamber was crowded with bees. I took a 

 peep at the entrance to watch the bees going out and in, 

 and observed the size of the pellets of pollen they had on 

 their legs. All was satisfactory but one thing, and that 

 was a great objection so far as I was concerned. Right in 

 front of the hive on a board was a large, fine dead queen. 

 I was satisfied that the queen came from the hive I pur- 

 chased. 



When I arrived home I soon found that the colony had 

 very recently lost its queen. I had queens in plenty and I 

 soon fixed the colony up all right. Now, what caused this 

 queen to die, and exactly under the same circumstances as 

 the queen in the other hive died ? This colony, like the first 

 one mentioned, had swarmed the previous year, and so the 

 queens were young in both cases. Some one will say the 

 queen was injured in removing the frames. There never was 

 a frame removed from this latter hive till I removed it. And, 

 in the case of the first hive, it is impossible to remove one, 

 as the combs are built crosswise. In a few days I shall 

 transfer the colony to another hive. 



I cannot tell why those queens died. Who can tell ? 



Now, if natural-reared queens die in this way, is it any- 

 thing strange that now and then a queen reared by artificial 

 methods dies? Why, gentlemen, don't you know that where 

 one queen is reared by natural methods, there are hundreds 

 reared by forced methods ? 



It's unjust to condemn a queen-dealer and say he doesn't 

 know how to rear queens, for no other reason than that now 

 and then a queen turns out to be worthless or lives but a 

 few months and then disappears, especially after such 

 queens have been thousands of miles in a mail-bag. Bear 

 in mind that the two queens above mentioned never went 

 hundreds of miles by mail, hence it will be seen that they 

 were not injured in that way. Now the two queens that I 

 sent Dr. Gallup were confined in a mailing cage 7 days, and 

 traveled 2500 miles. 



As I have before stated, had some of the queens Dr. 

 Gallup reared been sent from California to Massachusetts 

 by mail, they would, most likely, have been as worthless 

 and short-lived as queens that were sent him from Massa- 

 chusetts. 



I have never heard any one else say that Dr. Gallup's 

 queens were wonderful, except Dr. Gallup. He, I am told, 

 had never been largely engaged in bee-culture, and never 

 had reared many queens. No doubt Mr. Doolittle and 

 myself, whose queens Dr. Gallup has so strongly con- 

 demned, have reared thousands of queens where Dr. Gallup 

 has reared one. I have spent my whole life in this branch 

 of apiculture, and now, after 40 years' experience, if I can- 

 not rear a queen that will live four months, I cannot help 

 thinking that I have wasted lots of valuable time. Of the 

 20,000 customers to whom I have sent queens in the last 

 40 years, I am willing they should say whether Dr. Gallup is 

 right or wrong in his statements. 



As before stated, any one can rear hybrid queens such 

 as Dr. Gallup reared, but few can rear hardy, strong queens 

 that will produce beautiful bees and produce lots of honey. 

 Every queen-breeder in the land will bear me out in this 

 statement. Essex Co., Mass. 



Spring Feeding of Bees— A Reply. 



BY C. P. DAD.\NT. 



ON page 278, Mr. A. C. Miller finds fault with my method 

 of spring feeding and says that stimulative feeding is 

 " always done at a loss." This is not the first time that 

 I find objections to my methods, and I, myself, often find 

 objections to the method of others. But because one man has 

 not succeeded in a certain direction, it is not at all an evi- 

 dence that the method is bad, or that others cannot succeed 

 in the same way. For instance, one of our most practical 

 apiarists, Mr. R. C. Aikin, of Colorado, takes all his extract- 

 ing combs home from his out-apiaries to extract the honey, 

 and returns them after extracting. I would not for a min- 

 ute think of doing such a thing, and told him, when I visited 

 him, that in my practice this method would be too slow. 

 But he has his reasons for doing it, and they are good. So 

 we are each right, in our own sphere. 



When we come to the matter of spring feeding, I want 

 to insist on my methods being correct. The ideas I emit 

 are not theories — untried ideas. The reader will bear in 

 mind that I have worked with the bees since 186S, for years 

 almost exclusively at this business, in from two to six apia- 



ries, and for a long time it seemed to me as if no one else 

 could be trusted with the management of the bees that we 

 possessed, and do it correctly. We have practiced spring 

 and fall feeding in all sorts of ways, not only experimen- 

 tally, but practically, and on a large scale. Under these 

 conditions, I should be much to blame, if I gave to the 

 readers of the American Bee Journal theories based on mis- 

 taken notions or false opinions concerning the habits of the 

 bee. 



The present season is a very good one to show the ad- 

 vantages of stimulative feeding in the spring, and when I 

 read Mr. Miller's letter in the evening, we had just been 

 feeding some 60 odd colonies. I say that the present season 

 is a good one for feeding, because it is a very irregular one. 

 In a season when the winter is long-protracted, and the bees 

 are comfiued to the hive until late, and in which, the crop 

 once begun: it continues uninterrupted, feeding will do 

 harm if begun too soon, and will do no good after the bees 

 have commenced haresting honey. But when the colonies 

 have been breeding as they have this season, a little early, 

 and a change in the weather is causing them to stop, a little 

 judicious feeding stirs them and causes them to continue 

 breeding. If we fed colonies that were heavy with honey, 

 we would make a mistake. If we fed when the days were 

 so unpleasant that the bees that went out foraging would 

 die of cold we would do the bees damage. But the colonies 

 which discontinue their breeding because of a change in the 

 weather, when the weather is so that they can still fly, but 

 find nothing, will be benefitted by stimulative feeding. 

 This is not a theory, it is experience. 



Mr. Miller charges me with stating incorrect physio- 

 logical facts. I am not infallible, neither am I a microsco- 

 pist, but there are things which any of us can see. 



Mr. Miller says, " Except during a peculiar operation 

 which I have termed ' grooming,' bees never show anything 

 which approaches respect or deference for their mother." 



What! The very name "king-bee," "queen-bee," 

 given to the queen by the observers of the bee-hives cen- 

 turies ago, show that every one who had taken any pains to 

 investigate had noticed the wonderful respect, yes, the "de- 

 ferential treatment," of their mother. They had noticed 

 that as the queen walked on the combs the bees respectfully 

 backed out of her way, as soon as they perceived that it was 

 she who was there. The bees do show deferential treatment 

 for their mother, just as if she was a " queen " ora " king." 



We are, all of us, too apt to make light of the knowledge 

 and of the teachings of the old masters in our art. Only a 

 few months ago, in Gleanings, a Mr. Wright wrote a very 

 interesting article in which he gave, with microscopic stud- 

 ies, some arguments that seemed to overthrow the teachings 

 of Leuckart, Siebold, and Cheshire, on the fertility of 

 drones produced by virgin queens or drone-laying workers. 

 His arguments seemed so irresistible, his ideas so plain, 

 that I concluded at first that he had added some knowledge 

 to the general information on the bee's anatomy. But a few 

 weeks later Mr. Adrian Getaz, in a very short and pithy 

 article, showed that the microscopic diagrams of jSIr. Wright 

 were only evidences of the age of the drone in question, and 

 not at all of their greater or less fertility, and that Cheshire, 

 Iveuckart, and Seibold, were still standing on impregnable 

 ground with their discoveries. 



Our departed friend. Dr. Gallup, told us of an umbilical 

 cord in some queens, as yet undiscovered by scientists. But 

 the umbilical cord proves to be very probably nothing but a 

 portion of the cocoon spun by the insect during its meta- 

 morphosis. 



Again, a few months ago, a European scientist. Dr. 

 Lambotte, came forward with the assertion that the famous 

 bacillus alvei of foul brood was nothing but a very much 

 scattered and very common microbe, existing all over the 

 world, and we all became very much excited over the possi- 

 bility of getting foul brood at any time, and without being 

 able to protect ourselves, owing to its being so very com- 

 mon. But this also turns out to be very probably an incor- 

 rect observation. I see in the Revue Internationale d'Api- 

 culture an article by F. C. Harrison, in which he establishes 

 plainly some imperceptible difi^erences between bacillus 

 alvei, and bacillus mesentericus vulgaris of Lambotte, 

 which he calls Bacillus mesentericus vnlgatus, after its 

 original discoverer, Flugge. It would appear that there are 

 differences between those two microbes which, although 

 small, would result in about the same conditions as the dif- 

 serence between a venonous snake like the rattle-snake, and 

 the harmless water-snake. Hancock Co., III. 



The Hiemlums offered this week are well worth working 

 for. Look at them. 



