JUNE 1, J912 



327 



thirds of a standard Langstrotli frame. 

 These nuclei worked much better — that is 

 to say, they are more dependable. But even 

 they showed a considerable tendency to de- 

 port themselves unseemly, much after the 

 manner of their smaller prototypes. 



During the last year or so we have been 

 trying the full-sized two and three frame 

 nuclei, and also the larger " babies." While 

 the small nuclei, we thought, would mate 

 the queens more cheaply than nuclei using 

 standard frames, yet the latter, because of 

 their greater reliability, and because they 

 can be developed into colonies of bees, will, 

 in the end, produce queens more cheaply 

 than or as cheap as the unreliable "babies." 



We can illustrate it more specifically by 

 putting it this way: Suppose a "baby " will 

 mate a queen for 25 cents, and a full-sized 

 standard nucleus for 40 cents. At the end 

 of the season, the full-size-frame nuclei will 

 be fair colonies, or in shape to unite with 

 full colonies, while the "babies" are prac- 

 tically good for nothing. The frames will 

 not fit any thing, and the small bunches of 

 bees growing smaller and smaller as the sea- 

 son advances are not worth fussing with. 

 The veteran queen-breeder, tlie late Henry 

 Alley, who used large-sized baby nuclei for 

 many years, made it a practice at the close 

 of the season to shake the bees all off the 

 frames of his "babies" on to the ground. 

 While they could be put together in one 

 lot, such a heterogeneous mass of bees, he 

 claimed, would never make a decent colony 

 to winter. 



And he was right. This queen-rearing 

 proposition may not be interesting to a cer- 

 tain class of /ione?/-producers except in this 

 way: It will convince them that, with very 

 little trotible on their part, they can make 

 up queen-mating nuclei; and when they 

 have all the queens they need for their own 

 purpose they can unite these nuclei back 

 into colonies, especially if they take these 

 nuclei from an outyard and bring them to 

 a home yard where they do their uniting. 

 It takes a great deal of skill and fussing to 

 make the "babies" behave themselves as 

 babies should, and the average honey pro- 

 ducer has neither the time nor the skill to 

 make them "behave." 



ADVERTISING FIVE-BANDED BEES. 



On page 126, March 1, we made the state- 

 ment that we did not believe there were a 

 dozen colonies showing all five-banded bees 

 in all the United States. On previous oc- 

 casions we have protested against the adver- 

 tising that claimed to furnish five-banded 

 bees, and aci'«a^?^ furnishing three and four 

 banded ones instead. 



Mr. Geo. M. Steele, of Philadelphia, chal- 

 lenged our statement on page 126, that there 

 were not a dozen colonies showing all five- 

 banded bees. He said he had sixty colonies 

 that would go one better than five bands in 

 95 per cent of the workers, and that he had 

 some five colonies that would run gold to 

 the tip in 100 per cent of the workers. 



Tv\'o years ago a representative of ours call- 

 ed upon Mr. Steele, and found that he had 

 very fine yellow stock, and hoped that, 

 when a favorable opportunity came, we 

 would editorially make mention of the fact. 

 This we did in our April 15th issue. Since 

 that time two of Mr. Steele's customers 

 have come back at us, saying that the stock 

 they had received did not come anywhere 

 near the standard claimed. We referred 

 this matter to our representative, who call- 

 ed upon Mr. Steele again last summer, and 

 found that the bees, at the time of his visit, 

 were not up to the former standard; but at 

 the time we wrote the statement on page 

 126 we were not aware of his second visit. 



It appears that Mr. Steele had been hav- 

 ing an extraordinary run of orders for q ueens, 

 and used up all his extra-yellow stock, and 

 in endeavoring to fill his orders he had used 

 other yellow stock, which apparently was 

 not equal to his own original yellow blood. 

 Mr. Steele has just written that he will make 

 the matter good, and we have no doubt that 

 he will, but it is due our subscribers to state 

 the facts as they are. 



In the meantime we still insist that ad- 

 vertisers of yellow bees should be very care- 

 ful about making statements concerning 

 their stocks. If they run out of the special 

 grade of queens advertised, and have to se- 

 cure other stock, they should notify their 

 customers of the fact. When a breeder of- 

 fers to furnish yellow-to- the-tip or five-band- 

 ed bees, he should furnish precisely that 

 stock. If unable to do so he should charge 

 less or return the money. In our judgment 

 it is a great deal better to advertise extra- 

 yellow or four and five banded stock; then if 

 the breeder is able to furnish better — that is 

 to say, yellow all over, or strictly five-band- 

 ed bees throughout, his customer is more 

 than pleased, and in all probability he will 

 send a duplicate order for more bees and 

 queens. In most if not all cases, those who 

 have advertised the five-banded stock have 

 been perfectly willing to send additional 

 queens that will meet the standard; but that 

 does not avoid complaints in the first place, 

 nor does it release us of our embarrassment 

 in adjusting these differences. 



In the meantime we have heard from sev- 

 eral other advertisers of five-banded stock, 

 claiming they have stock that will run all 

 five-banders. While we do not question 

 their word, we want proo/ that will be sat- 

 isfactory to our 7-eaders who are beginning 

 to doubt whether there are any queens that 

 will furnish cdl five-banders. 



Later. — Mr. Steele guarantees to prove 

 that his "breeding queens will and do pro- 

 duce 95 per cent over four-banded bees," and 

 that his "drone mothers will produce drones, 

 99 per cent of which will be golden to the 

 tip. This is a considerable recession from 

 the first statement, where he said he had 

 "60 colonies that would go one better than 

 five bands in 95 per cent of the workers." 

 This we interpreted to mean that they would 

 be six-banders, while now tlie guarantee is 

 for 95 per cent over four-banded bees only, 



