188 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



mother-bee, and taking the Italian 

 bee, of which Virgil wrote 2,000 

 years ago, she has a yellotv body and 

 not a b/ack one like the ordinary queen 

 of the English and American hives. 

 I was very much rejoiced when I 

 first saw an Itahan queen, seeing by 

 the facilities afforded in Mr. Alley's 

 apiary more cjueens in a single hour 

 than I had seen in all my own bee- 

 keeping experience. It was a real 

 apiarian revelation, and I only re- 

 gretted that it had not come to me 

 at an earlier day, when fitting boys 

 for college, I encountered this des- 

 cription by Virgil, then wholly ob- 

 scure and inexplicable. 



I do not now recall any explana- 

 tion of the difficulty by any annotator 

 of the Georgics, even Martyn, the 

 learned Professor of Botany in 

 the University of Cambridge (Eng- 

 land), in his admirable translation 

 (1740-41), being wholly silent on 

 the subject. Now, Virgil's descrip- 

 tion is intelhgible, as well as wholly 

 accurate. Henry K. Oliver.^ 



Salem, Mass., June 11. 



ON LOSS AND SAVING OF HONEY 

 COMB. 



Ed. Am. Apiculturist. 



It is a mystery to many tvhy 

 good clean honey comb is worth from 

 two to four dollars per pound. Now, 

 my dear reader, let m.e say it is true 

 that it takes twenty-five pounds of 

 clean, nice honey to make a pound 

 and a quarter of comb ; Hkewise it 

 takes from fifteen to twenty days, 

 precious time, for the bees to secrete 

 and make the above amount of comb. 

 It is also true that a good swarm of 

 bees will gather from five to twenty 

 pounds of honey each day when the 

 flowers secrete most bountifully. So 

 you see that this will make at least a 

 hundred pounds of a clear loss. 

 Whereas, if we will save our l)cst 

 combs, we can use them by putting 



' The sad intoUijrence comes to us this 

 moruiug, (Aug. 13) of Mr. Oliver's dcutli. 



them in our movable frame hives 

 and save all this loss, as well as 

 keep our bees in a better condition 

 ready for their winter quarters. It is 

 not worth my while to enter into a 

 mathematical calculation, for be you 

 reader, who you may, I say make 

 your own calculation, and see what 

 you can sell a pound of wax for and 

 subtract it from fifty pounds of honey 

 at twenty-five cents per pound, which 

 makes a difference of $12.25 ^^^^ 

 you have your loss told, after you have 

 your pay for wax at twenty-five cents 

 per pound ; and yet we often find 

 many beekeepers melting their prec- 

 ious combs into wax, that should be 

 utilized in a different way, and saved 

 for future use. 



J. M. Hicks. 

 Battle Ground P. O., Indiana. 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



— -A certain party seems terribly 

 troubled now that the "lamp nursery" 

 is doomed, because it cannot be 

 shown that all parties who invent 

 queen-nurseries copied their ideas 

 from the "Jewell Davis" nursery. 

 What a pity that they did not learn, 

 ere this, that the "Jewell Davis" nur- 

 sery was practical and useful. An- 

 other case of "dog in the manger." 



— The editor of one of our bee- 

 journals states that " Mr. Benton has 

 had the largest experience of any 

 breeder in shipping bees by mail, 

 and that he is having the best success 

 in shipping queens long distances. 



The party making this assertion 

 is well aware that Mr. Benton was 

 never heard of as a queen breeder 

 until within a few years, and this same 

 editor knows that there are a large 

 number of queen breeders in this 

 country who have shipped quanti- 

 ties of queens where Mr. Benton has 

 shipped one. 



We have in our possession the 

 cages that Mr. Benton sent to the 



