THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



Althoup;h small, this queen produced 

 very fine, large young queens. It has 

 always been our aim to rear large queens 

 as they give much better satisfaction, 

 even if they are no better in other re- 

 spects than suKill ones. 



OrU TWO-IIUNDUED-DOLLAR QUEKN. 



We have so many new suliscribers 

 that would like to know about this v^ilu- 

 able Italian queen, tlie old story of 

 her history will be repeated. It is worth 

 repeating, as another queen the equal 

 of this one cannot be found in the 

 jvorld. We ought tosayof heras Bing- 

 ham & Hetlierington say of their cele- 

 brated smokers, ''l>esf in the world.'''' 

 Well, we really think she is the best 

 queen on the face of the glolie. 



She is a sort of come-by-chance. In 

 the month of Jime, 1889, a lot of fine 

 selected Italian queens were introduced 

 to colonies in the Bay State Apiary. 

 Later in the season one of the colonies 

 seemed exceedingly full of bees ; a good 

 deal more so than any other hive m the 

 apiary and the bees uncommonly active. 

 This led us to an investigation of the 

 interior of the hive to see what it all 

 meant. The combs were fjund solid 

 with brood, not a missing cell, and 

 every bee a large and beautiful speci- 

 men of the golden Italian race, in fact, 

 it would have been hard to find a more 

 perfect colony of bees. The queen was 

 found and she was an extra large one 

 and of that rich, golden color that 

 pleases the beekeeper when he receives 

 such a queen by mail. Youug bees 

 were coming out of the cells by hun- 

 dreds. Like all breeders of queens, we 

 selected this one for a mother and in 

 the course of a week a large number of 

 cells were maturing from her eggs. In 

 due time the young queens appeared ; 

 they were large, and in color exact du- 

 plicates of their mother. When the 

 queens were feiiilized they were mailed 

 to our customers and the result and 

 also what is said of them generally may 

 be found in the testimonials given on 

 another page, this issue of the Api. 



About twelve hundred queens were 



reared from this one mother in the sea- 

 son of 1890. Some sixty odd L. frames 

 well filled with eggs were taken from 

 her colony in one season for queen- 

 rearing alone, yet her colony was even 

 more crowded with bees than many 

 others in the apiary. The workers of 

 this colony are more active, and seem 

 larger than the common strain of Ital- 

 ians. They fly and are at work when 

 other bees dare not venture out, and 

 gather honey when other bees do not. 



Visitors to the Bay Slate Apiary have 

 seen the frames removed from this hive 

 and the queen exhibited without the use 

 of one puff of smoke, and no one was 

 ever stung in the operation. So the 

 disposition of the bees is all that any 

 one can ask for or even expect. Her 

 colony has gone through two winters in 

 perfect condition and is to-day the best 

 colony in the apiary. The bees have 

 remained perfectly quiet and there is no 

 mould nor moisture ^ about the hive or 

 combs as there usually is of a colony 

 that does not winter well. This queen 

 has proved herself so much superior to 

 any other that we considered her worth 

 one hundred dollars. After testing her 

 one year as a breeding queen and getting 

 so many testimonials from those who 

 had received queens reared from her 

 eggs, her value has been raised one 

 hundred per cent and now two hun- 

 dred dollars cash cannot purchase this 

 queen. Any experienced queen dealer 

 will tell you how an extra breeding 

 queen is appreciated as a mother bee. 

 Every daughter reared from this queen 

 is large, handsome and perfect. There 

 is no culling, or rather there need be 

 none, yet, when there are plenty of 

 queens in the nurseries we do select the 

 best from the best, and that is why the 

 queens sent out from our apiary have 

 gained such a high reputation. 



Some people think that most any 

 sort of a queen is a queen. They do 

 not so pass at the Bay State queen- 

 rearing apiaries. Every queen reared 

 here must come up to the standard in 

 size and activity, or they are not intro- 

 duced to nucleus colonies to become 



