THE AMERICAN xiPWULTURIST. 



20^ 



next year, and to induce our man- 

 agers to offer something in the way 

 of premiums on articles, thereby 

 working up more interest and a spirit 

 of competition. I am highly de- 

 lighted with volumes i and 2 bound 

 in one, of the "Apiculturist," as I 

 also am with the current volume. 

 The " Api " is certainly advancing 

 things in Kee-ology. 



P. S. Our honey season has been 

 a failure, white clover all frozen out. 

 Italians worked on red clover and 

 gathered some surplus, blacks none. 

 David Brown, who has Holylands 

 (Syrian, I suppose, as he got his -queen 

 from Alley), reports some honey, 

 plenty of brood, and a good pros- 

 pect for wintering. Bees generally 

 wintered badly ; I lost heavily. 

 Sweet clover is abundant along the 

 water courses and railroads, but the 

 farmers are uneasy at seeing it mak- 

 ing its appearance on the roads fear- 

 ing its encroachment on their farms 

 and that it will be hard to get rid of. 



Francis W. Blackford. 

 Cliillicothc, O. 



how can a virgin queen L!E 

 SAFELY introduced ? 



Eds. Am. Apiculturist : 



We have been engaged in bee- 

 keeping more than forty years, antl 

 have often hatched some very fine 

 queens, from stocks possessing such 

 desirable traits of character as to 

 warrant us in the effort of hav- 

 ing all our stocks of bees composed 

 of the same, if it were possible ; but, 

 after hatching many fine queens 

 from the eggs of a chosen stock as 

 above, I have also made special ef- 

 fort to have some of the young 

 (queens properly introduced into other 

 queenless stocks, made so for the 

 purpose, but in nearly every instance 

 the queens were killed, and the 

 reader can best judge how I felt un- 

 der such circumstances. I have 

 always found rjueens that were 



hatched in strong and vigorous 

 stocks, to be much the best ; hence, 

 it will be readily seen that all 

 stocks to which I attempted to in- 

 troduce virgin c][ueens were strong 

 and full, having been robbed of 

 their ([ueen but a short time. In some 

 instances a day or two, and some- 

 times only two to six hours they were 

 left queenless, before I attempted the 

 introduction of the virgin queens, 

 all of which were hatched in a queen 

 nursery, placed in strong stocks. 

 Now be it remembered that, to my 

 certain knowledge, I have never 

 had but one virgin queen accepted 

 and become fertilized when I have 

 attempted to introduce as above, 

 and this one case was accomplished 

 in one of my Ohio apiaries, in 1883, 

 which I do not really look upon as a 

 success, from the simple fact that 

 she was superseded in less than sixty 

 days. Hence we are of the same 

 opinion now as we were thirty years 

 ago, that all forced queens, as well 

 as those reared in nucleus hives, are 

 short-lived as well as worthless. We 

 ask who can fully explain why it is 

 that virgin queens cannot be siifely 

 and surely introduced. Try it who 

 will, and we will guess a failure 

 eighty-five times in one hundred 

 trials. What say you, brothers 

 Locke, Alley, Heddon, Cook and 

 other apicultural teachers? Please 

 answer and oblige your readers. 



J. M. Hicks. 

 Battle Groi/iut, Iiui. 



THE cowing frame. 



Ed. Am. Apiculturist. 



In Cook's Manual, i)age 131, 

 among others. Dr. Tinker is (juoted 

 as using the Gallup frame. It ap- 

 pears from the doctor's circulars that 

 he has now abandoned this size and 

 adopted one 14I by 9^ inches as his 

 standard. Up to this I had imag- 

 ined the "Gallup frame" to be all 

 that could be desired ; but, as the 



