AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



445 



Topics of Interest. 



supping Queen-Bees l)y Mall 



G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



No one can go back over the past 

 decade, and especially over the past 

 quarter of a century, without noting the 

 great strides our pursuit, bee-keeping, 

 has made. It would be very interesting 

 to dwell on many of the features covered 

 by this advance, but as this would take 

 many articles, I only propose at this 

 time to speak of the progress made in 

 sending queen-bees by mail. 



Those familiar with the pages of the 

 Amebican Bee Journal during the im- 

 mediate past, know that the honor of 

 sending the first queen by mail belongs 

 to Mr. C. J. Robinson, as per his state- 

 ments alluded to. The first queen was 

 sent only a few hundred miles ; this dis- 

 tance not being encumbered by any of 

 the slow, tedious stage routes which have 

 to be encountered when sending queens 

 into some of the newer portions of our 

 country. 



To have a queen reach her destination 

 alive, where she travels over only a few 

 hundred miles, on our fastest railroad 

 trains, is a very different thing from 

 what it is to place a queen in a custo- 

 mer's hands who lives thousands of miles 

 away, where the last part of the route 

 has to be taken in a stage coach ; or, 

 worse still, where the queen is allowed 

 to stay in a mail bag, which is left for 

 hours in the sun of some tropical clime. 



I commenced to send queens by mail 

 when the only food known or used was 

 honey in the comb. Later, honey in a 

 sponge was used, but the sending of 

 queens in the mails, with honey as food, 

 as then used, became a nuisance to 

 those handling the mails, in that it was 

 liable tf) daub much of the contents of 

 the mail-bag in which such food and 

 queens went. 



For this reason the postal authorities 

 ■' sat down " on us, and we had to look 

 for something as a substitute in the line 

 of food. This brought forward hard 

 candy, tin water bottles, cream candy, 

 etc., all of which proved inefficient, and 

 hundreds, if not thousands, of queens 

 perished, unless their destination was 

 reached within a few days after they 

 were started. 



But bee-keepers are a persistent set, 

 and through this trait was brought the 

 food that we now use, namely : honey 



with powdered sugar stirred and kneaded 

 into it, until a stiff dough is formed, 

 which proves to be all that is required 

 in the shape of food. This food required 

 a remodeling of shipping cages, and they 

 have grown from the old, rough cage, 

 made by nailing up pieces of sections, to 

 the handsome cages on the Benton prin- 

 ciples, of the present, with their differ- 

 ent compartments, and many little 

 windows and doors for ventilation. 



With the former cages and food, I 

 succeeded in sending queens to all near 

 and direct points, with a loss of only 

 about 5 per cent. ; but when it came to 

 sending queens to Texas, California, 

 Oregon and such distant States, my loss 

 would be fully one-half of all queens 

 sent out. These losses were hard to be 

 reconciled to, and many a time have I 

 resolved that I would send no more 

 queens to such remote parts and guaran- 

 tee safe arrival. 



Skipping the intervening years, with 

 all their minutia of detail, I will say that 

 in shipping queens, last year was a 

 decided success with me, where the 

 queens were not destined beyond the 

 bounds of North America. I have sent 

 queens to the Northwest Territory and 

 Florida, and to Quebec, Nova Scotia and 

 to Texas, with a loss not to exceed one 

 per cent. ; while the loss has not been 

 greater than 25 per cent, in sending 

 them to the British Isles and the West 

 Indies. 



Some of the older readers of the Bee 

 Journal will doubtless remember that 

 some ten or twelve years ago I was the 

 first one to successfully mail queens to 

 Scotland, and from the report which I 

 gave of this successful mailing, came an 

 order from New Zealand for queens by 

 mail, to that place at that time. 



This I tried, and actually succeeded in 

 getting one queen over there alive, 

 although she only lived a few minutes 

 after the cage was opened. This queen 

 was only 37 days en route, owing to my 

 starting her at just the right time to 

 take an out-going steamer without de- 

 lay. Not knowing the dates on which 

 the steamers sailed, the next one sent 

 was 72 days en route, when, of course, 

 everything was dead, and I became dis- 

 couraged, giving up the project until the 

 past season. The food used with these 

 queens was honey in the comb. 



Last season I mailed 15 queens to 

 Australia, from 11 of which reports 

 have been received. Of this number 7 

 reached there alive. One of the 7 was 

 very weak when she arrived, and 

 although she lived for nearly two weeks, 

 she never laid an egg. The other 6 are 



