Another lot of honey had natural-comb 

 starters of liberal size, and so dark that it 

 could be distinctly seen through the honey. 

 This is worse than the use of comb founda- 

 tion, for the flavor of the white clover honey 

 was almost destroyed by the old and black- 

 ened comb used for starters. If natural 

 •comb be used in surplus boxes, it must be 

 new and nice. Any other is but a damage 

 to its sale as well as to its flavor. 



"No separators "—an "occasional ugly 

 comb !" The one is consequent upon the 

 other. Separators are a necessity, if all 

 straight combs are desired ! And they 

 should be one inch narrower than the boxes 

 are in height— and that will give one-half of 

 an inch at both top and bottom for means of 

 communication between boxes. Some, this 

 season, used them the right width, but had 

 them close up to the top— giving the bees no 



COMB-HONEY RACK. 



means of passing from one comb to another 

 without going down to the bottom— but the 

 worst feature of it was the fact that as soon 

 as the bees got below the separator they 

 lengthened out the cells, and packing was 

 thereby made deficient, while glassing was 

 impossible. The right position for the 

 separator is shown on page 311, in the cut of a 

 case for a Langstroth hive. When the 

 Comb-Honey Rack is used, the same rela- 

 tive position must be maintained. If it is 

 desired to make the "Boxes," "Oases" or 

 " Racks " at home, it will save much annoy- 

 ance if all will take pains to procure one as 

 a pattern, to be sure they are right, before 

 they " go ahead." Large packages and odd 

 sizes of boxes bring a much less price than 

 the regular " Prize Box." That is the 

 standard package for wholesale and retail, 

 and it will pay all apiarists to adopt it. 



Wire for top-bar, with starters fastened, 

 has been tried and it is not a success. 



It is best, in shipping comb-honey, to turn 

 the boxes on their top bar, for strength. 

 With a "muslin top" this cannot be done. 



To use a large wood box and cut out the 

 honey would be to retrograde .50 or 100 years 

 —and adopt a plan '.long since proved very 

 undesirable.— Ed.1 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Standard of Purity. 



Friend Newman :— I was interested in 

 reading those articles under the above head- 

 ing. Queens that will produce such won- 

 derful results are remarkable queens indeed. 

 My experience with the Italians covers a 

 period of 17 years, and I have probably 

 reared 15,000 queens, but I hever had a 

 queen to come up to the standard of purity, 

 as pictured by several correspondents, and 

 they only give it as a matter of opinion, I 

 believe. 



My experience has been, that while a 

 queen would produce beautiful royal and 

 worker progeny, she would not produce 

 three banded drones ; in fact, drones from 

 such queens are seldom handsome. The 

 color seems to run all one way, either to the 

 drones or to the workers and queens. 



Some 13 years ago I purchased a beautiful 

 queen of a well-known breeder ; the worker 

 and queen progeny were beautiful, but the 

 drones were as black as any common drones 

 that I ever saw. Was such a queen im- 

 pure ? By no means, for all lier young 

 queens that were fertilized by handsome 

 drones were as pure as their mother. 



In rearing queens, those mothers that 

 produce the handsomest workers should be 

 used, and only handsome drones to fertilize 

 them. Then can the standard of purity be 

 maintained. Queens and drones from the 

 same mother should not be permitted to 

 mate. Like does not produce like, in breed- 

 ing bees, any more than in the breeding of 

 any other animals. Friend Moon says 

 he has no queens that will duplicate them- 

 selves every time. I have had many such 

 queens, and hundreds of my customers can 

 testify to the fact. I have such queens 

 now, and would not attempt to rear from 

 any others. Imported queens will not do it. 

 Their royal progeny will be almost all colon*, 

 from black to very light-colored— although 

 I have had some that would produce a ma- 

 jority of yellow queens. 



That all queens will not duplicate them- 

 selves every time is an established fact. — 

 The thing is impossible. Time, and friend 

 Newman's space will not permit us to say 

 more now, and we will drop the subject 

 here. 



SENDING bees BY MAIL. 



Queen breeders and their customers will 

 be put to some inconvenience on account of 

 fresh orders by the Post Master General, 

 forbidding bees to be sent in the mails. — 

 The story that some one put a lot of bees in 

 a paper- box and mailed them at some 

 office seems to me to be a very improbable 

 one, and appears much like a put up job.— 

 No bee-keeper can be found in. the country 

 who would attempt to do such a silly thing. 

 Nevertheless, reports have been sent to 

 headquarters, by some officious postal agent, 

 that such was the fact ; hence the order to 

 shut the bees out. 



I called at the post office in Boston the 

 other day to see the postmaster there, and 

 to get a lot of my bees tnat some of his under- 

 lings had detained. The postmaster being 

 absent, I did not see him, but I learned that 

 he knew nothkig about the bees being de- 



