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Fublisbeil Weekly, at ^l.OO per azmuzn. 



Sample Copy 



it on Application, 



36th Year. 



CHICAGO, ILL., OCTOBER 15, 1896. 



No. 42. 





Number of Bees Needed as a Queen Escort. 



BY G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



On page 555 is a letter from Mr. H. Galloway, the closing 

 two sentences reading as follows : 



" I think it would be a good thing for the one who sends 

 queens, and also for the one who receives them, to have all go 

 through safely. I would like Mr. Doolittle's opinion on the 

 matter." 



I do not suppose that all Mr. G. desired to know was, 

 whether I agreed with his " think " or not, although quoting 

 as I have done would lead us to draw that conclusion. I take 

 it that he wishes to know what my opinion is on the subject of 

 few or many bees being sent as escorts with a queen when she 

 is sent by mail ; but as I wished to notice that "think "a 

 little, I quoted so I could be asked the question I wished 

 asked me. 



Then Mr. G. thinks it would be a good thing for one who 

 sends queens to have them go alive. Well, that think agrees 

 exactly with my think, and did I lose as many queens enroute 

 as I did ten years ago, I would give up the queen-business in 

 disgust. Ten years ago, if two-thirds of the queens went 

 through alive, it was doing pretty well, no matter how many 

 bees were put into a cage; for with our hard candy and 

 water-bottles of that time, the water would leak out, moisten 

 the candy and drown the bees, or else the bees would fail to get 

 water from the bottle to moisten the candy, and as they could 

 not eat it hard, they died of starvation. Thus sending queens 

 at that time was very unsatisfactory to all concerned. 



But with the advent of the powdered sugar-honey candy, 

 a new era dawned upon us as regards sending queens in the 

 mails. The uncertainty which before existed, began to nar- 

 row down to the skill of the one who made this new candy, so 

 it was neither too soft nor too hard; the number of bees 

 placed in the cage with the queen, according to the length of 

 the journey, with candy in proportion to that journey, and the 

 age of bees used, also. Where all was planned as it should 

 be, the uncertainty was turned to a certainty, as far as send- 

 ing queens to any part of North America is concerned. Of 

 the hundreds ofqueens I have sent this year, not one has been 

 reported dead, except during that extreme hot week in August, 

 which was unprecedented as a universal hot wave, during 



which the candy melted in some of the cages and drowned the 

 bees. 



If the loss from a queen arriving dead makes the one who 

 ordered the queen feel badly, that one may rest assured that 

 the reports of queens arriving dead makes the queen-breeder 

 feel fully as much so, for It means that he is to send another 

 queen immediately to replace her, no matter how much he is 

 behind in orders, or how badly he is being pressed for queens. 

 Often have I gone to full colonies, working in sections, to get 

 queens to replace these lost ones, because I could not bear to 

 keep those waiting whose orders were past due, on account of 

 an unforseen loss of queen-cells, a cold spell in which queens 

 did not mate, or something of the kind, which made these 

 losses fall more heavily if possible on me than they did on the 

 one receiving the dead queen ; and how any queen-breeder 

 could have laughed at suggestions as to the cause of the loss 

 of queens by the receiver of those arriving dead, is more than 

 I can comprehend. I have always been glad of these suggest 

 tions, and they have been of profit to me more than once. 



Why ! the whole of our bee-keeping fabric has been built 

 out of the suggestions coming from the many, far more than 

 it has by the prominence of any one individual, or any few 

 individuals. Then what folly to think that "i" am head and 

 center of the whole affair. But to the main point : 



" How many escort bees should accompany a queen while 

 she is confined in a cage traveling through the mails ? Well, 

 if I were in Dr. Miller's shoes, I should feel just like saying, 

 " I don't know." But being in Doolittle's shoes, I will tell the 

 readers of the American Bee Journal just what I do now, dur- 

 ing the year 1896, this doing being governed by all the ex- 

 perience of the past. 



If the distance the queen is to go is from 600 to 800 

 miles, or not so great but that I can reasonably expect she 

 will go through in three days, I use one of the small, penny 

 postage cages, during June, July, August and September, put- 

 ting 11 bees in the cage during the first and last months, un- 

 less it is warm for the time of year, and eight bees at all other 

 times ; and I never intend to send any queen with less than 

 eight attendants at any time of year. 



If the distance is greater than that named above, I gen- 

 erally use a large cage, or one requiring two cents postage to 

 take it, so that I can put in more food and more bees. In this 

 cage I put from 14 to 20 bees during June and September, 

 according to the weather, and 12 during July and August. 

 This would be the kind of a cage and the number of bees I 

 would use to reach the State of Washington during those 

 months, and were it earlier or later in the season, I should 

 most likely use one of the foreign shipping-cages, into which 

 I put from 30 to 40 bees as an escort for the queen. 



I used to say that the hardest place in the world to get a. 

 queen through alive, was southwestern Texas, where the 



