18 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



really, compavali^^ely, a small matter. Thus, 

 in prolificness, the queen bee lags far in the 

 rear of her royal sister, the queen of the white 

 ants. In a recent communication to the Ohio 

 Farmei\ Ur. Lane, pfeaking of what he saw of 

 this iu«ect in his visit to Siara, siys: — "The 

 countiy is literal.y full of these pesis, and they 

 seem to be as diligent as ants Avere in the days 

 of Solomon, for they were always at work, and 

 in almost every place. It often seemed to me 

 surprising tkat there could be so many, until I 

 I learned that a single female is capable of lay- 

 ing thirty millions of eggs in a single year, or 

 eijjhty thonmnd in a day. After this I ceased to 

 tcnnder, aud was thankful there were no more." 

 As one of these queens lives two years in her 

 perfect stale, 11)e multitude of her ofFspiiug 

 reaches a figure in comparison with which that 

 of the most fertile queen bee dwindks almost to 

 insiiruificance. 



Mr. C. F. Muth, of Cincinnati, having suc- 

 cessfully tried the Ulde process of introducing 

 queen bees, described in the May number of the 

 Bee JouR^^AL, writes to us as follows, under 

 date of J une 19. 



" On Monday last I took a small tumbler full 

 of syrup made of sugar, and flavored it pretty 

 strong with grated nutmeg. I removed the 

 queen from a hive of black bees, and fed the bees 

 with most of the syrup. I then opened an 

 Italian hive, caught the queen, and holding 

 her with the thumb and fore-finger, dipped 

 her several times in the syrup left in the tumb- 

 ler, and set her on one of the combs of that 

 hive of black bees. The third day after, on 

 Wednesday afternoon, I examined the hive, 

 and found the Italian queen, bright yellow as 

 she was, marching among the black popula- 

 tion as quietly as it she were still among her 

 own people. This, no doubt, is a success; and 

 this mode of introducing queens is worth very 

 much to the beekeeper." 



Dr. Devron writes us from New Orleans, on 

 the 17th instant, ""With me swarming (natur- 

 al) commenced on the 19th of March— three 

 weeks or a month earlier than the previous 

 year ; and I have already, within two weeks, 

 obtained some two hundred (200) pounds of 

 surplus honey from four (4) colonies, swarms 

 of this year, placed in empty hives of the Lang- 

 stroth pattern. Two swarms were Italian hy- 

 brids, and two ordinary black bees. No ma- 



terial ditTerence found in the quantity or qual- 

 ity of the honey, save that the first swarm, 

 having laid the surplus in frames, gave alone 

 about eighty (80) pounds. In the North, 

 wintering the bees is the trouble. Here it is 

 in summering them, in exceedingly dry or 

 rainy seasons, when virgin swarming or star- 

 vation often produce desertion or useless 

 swarms." 



It it stated, in a Silesiau agricultural docu- 

 ment, that, since 1850, when he iutiodiiced the 

 Italian bees in Germany, Mr. Dzierzon has 

 reared and sold a.hout five thousand queen bees, 

 at an average price of five dollars each. This 

 might seem to be a large and profitable busi- 

 ness ; but when we reflect that it is the net 

 produc', of fourteen years' unremitted labor 

 and attention, and that meanwhile probably 

 five-fold that number of queens were reared 

 and lost, or proved to be of no commercial 

 value, it can hardly be regarded as. a very 

 remunerative employment. 



Correction. 



In the report of the Michigan Beekeepers' 

 Convention, published in our last issue,' Mr. 

 Moon is represented as having said that "he 

 could control the time of swarming as follows": 

 Raise queens artificially, and by putting one Trt 

 a large full stand, swarming immediately takes 

 place." 



Mr. Moon saj^s it should have read queen 

 cells, instead of queens. He also adds'th^t 

 those cells will sometimes be destroyed. 



[For tlie American Bee Journal,]- 



A Rare Case. 



I had a rather singular occurrence hnppen in 

 my apiary a few days ago, such as I have never 

 known before. I had a young Italian queen 

 reared in a nucleus. One day I went to it and 

 found that she had that day met a drone ; and 

 having a stock from which I had taken a queen-, 

 I thought I would introduce her there, which I 

 did. The stock was standing some twelve or 

 fifteen rods fiom the nucleus. Several days 

 after, on opening the nucleus, I found the yonn^ 

 queen in there, with indications of having agarri 

 met a drone. In endeavoring to catch' htr, she 

 took wing and I have not seen her since. • 



C. H. HOT5T. 



NoKWALK, . Ohio. . „ ....^ 



