1909 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



243 



lion therein, so that, when he came under the 

 personal instruction of Mr. Henry Alley, the 

 veteran bee-master, he at once became a loyal 

 disciple and an enthusiast in all that pertained to 

 bee culture. 



To show his high appreciation of his teacher, 

 when he recently advanced the theory that a por- 

 tion of the abdomen of the bee secretes a fluid 

 which emits an odor to attract other bees to the 

 entrance of the hive and to aid them in finding 

 their home and in swarming time, he termed this 

 organ " Beverly," in honor of Mr. Alley's home 

 town. 



Mr. Pratt soon learned all the details of the 

 Alley system of queen-rearing, and, naturally 

 enough, tried to improve on it, though his teach- 

 er would not always admit the inventive genius 

 of his pupil. In this instance the schoolmaster 

 wa? rather jealous of the ability of his scholar, 

 though in after years he was glad to admit the 

 brilliancy of his disciple. 



He did not rest content with following blindly 

 the system of his teacher, but early evinced a ten- 

 dency to improve on it. This he continued dur- 

 ing the whole of his career as a bee-keoper, and 

 hardly a season passed without his discovery of 

 some new idea or plan for the improvement of his 

 system of queen breeding. 



Some of his plans were held by many to be 

 impractical and visionary, but he could make 

 them work readily enough. In fact, Mr. Pratt 

 was such a past master in the art of rearing queens 

 that what was easy for him was difficult for others 

 to do. His critics did not sufficiently allow for 

 this. He was no amateur. 



The eastern coast of Massachusetts is not the 

 very best place in the world for a queen-breeder, 

 and some sixteen years ago he moved his apiary 

 to Swarthmore, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia, 

 where he continued to the end. Here he devel- 

 oped and rounded out his system of queen culture. 



One of his signal achievements was the inven- 

 tion of "baby nuclei," for which he was much 

 criticised. His idea was to render the work of 

 queen fertilization much cheaper by using a tea- 

 cupful of bees instead of a two-frame nucleus 

 He undoubtedly succeeded. This was due to his 

 consummate knowledge of bee life and habits. 

 He seldom allowed for the fact that other breed- 

 ers with a limited experience were not so advanc- 

 ed in bee knowledge, and consequently they dub- 

 bed his " baby nuclei " a failure, whereas these 

 succeeded admirably in his own yard. 



On nearly all of Mr. Alley's inventions he 

 made improvements or alterations calculated to 

 advance the art of queen-breeding. For example, 

 take the portable swarm-box, a sort of up-to-date 

 twentieth-century invention. Here is his descrip- 

 tion of it: 



Build a neat light hive-body to bold just live frames; cover the 

 bottom of your box with wire netting nailed on firmly with cleats 

 all round. Now provide a lid of thin staflf that will just fit the 

 top of the swarm-box; cleat it well and provide means for fasten- 

 ing this cover. Bore an inch hole at one end of the box, low 

 down, for an entrance, and provide a cork or a button of section 

 stuff for the purpose of speed in opening and closing the entrance. 



This box may then be used on the same plan as outlined above, 

 and you will have something that can be conveniently carried on 

 street or steam cars — just like a suit-case. 



Shake your bees in the morning, and at evening run in the 

 nueen. After dark throw a strap or cord around the box; board a 

 car with it and set it out one mile iway. Draw the cork from 

 the Aigbl-hole and catch the next car home. 



When yoa take out another boxful, bring home the one form- 



ed a few days before, and so on. In this manner two boxes will 

 keep you going with all the increase you can take care of. 



The foregoing is an excellent sample of Mr. 

 Pratt's style and his methods — short, quick, and 

 concise. Of course, he supposed his readeis 

 -would be well informed on the subject of bees; 

 but in many cases this was far from being so. 

 To him every thing he described was easy. He 

 believed in short cuts. He could not very well 

 help this, for he was born not very far from Cape 

 Cod, where the genuine Yankees originate. His 

 head was a seething mass of new ideas that were 

 continually finding concrete expression in some 

 sort of invention. 



His wooden cell-cups are Yankee enough, but 

 he went beyond that and made the queen lay in 

 them — in spite of herself. Queens lay in queen- 

 cells only when the colony is possessed of the 

 swarming fever, and when the welfare of the bees 

 is at the highest pitch. But he went further, and 

 by a stroke of New England economical genius 

 used the same cells over and over again. A Cal- 

 ifornian who despises copper cents can't under- 

 stand this sort of economy. But it requires gen- 

 ius to do it. 



Here he showed his schooling under Mr. Al- 

 ley, for the latter never practiced " grafting," for 

 two reasons; first, the cost and bother of making 

 wax cups; and, second, the undoubted fact that 

 the little larva never suffers for a moment for 

 want of pap if natural ceils are used, whereas they 

 do when "grafting" is done. No matter what 

 critics may say, it was certainly a great achieve- 

 ment when Mr. Pratt invented his plan for mak- 

 ing queens lay in cell-cups, and these easily re- 

 movable, one at a time. It marked another mile 

 in the progress of queen-breeding. Coming gen- 

 erations will appreciate it more than we do. There 

 are great possibilities in it. 



To acquaint the bee-keeping world with his 

 work, Mr. Pratt, under the 7iom de plume of 

 "Swarthmore," issued a number of short mono- 

 graphs on various subjects connected with queen- 

 rearing. The principal ones are " Baby Nuclei," 

 "Increase," "Cell Getting." and "Forcing the 

 Breeding Queen to Lay in Cell Cups." Gradu- 

 ally his work became known in foreign lands, 

 and these works were translated into various 

 European languages, more particularly French, 

 German, Scandinavian, Dutch, Italian, and Rus- 

 sian. 



If imitation is flattery, then he was well flatter- 

 ed by our foreign brethren of the craft, and there 

 arose in consequence a new interest in Europe in 

 all that pertained to bee-breeding. 



The climax came when the bee-keepers' Cen- 

 tralverein of Austria invited him to go to Vienna 

 (with all expenses paid), to be their guest of hon- 

 or at a great meeting held in connection with the 

 diamond jubilee of the Emperor Francis Joseph. 

 Mr. Pratt went in response to this invitation, 

 where he was feted and dined by the enthusiastic 

 bee-keepers of Austria. He was introduced by 

 Mr. Alois Alfonsus, the editor of the leading bee 

 journal of Austria, and author of a handsome 

 work on bees and bee-keeping. He entertained 

 them with practical demonstrations of his work, 

 and showed them his beautiful golden-all-over 

 Italian bees, with which they were delighted. 



On February 14th the Centralverein of Auslria 

 unanimously elected him an honorary member — 



