THE AMERICAN APICULTUBIST. 



19 



means of handicappino; progress. I 

 am sorry to say that I do not believe 

 wooden combs are going to entirely 

 prevent swarming. About "the 

 queen's reluctance," allow me to sa}' 

 that I had not seen a word from Bro. 

 As[)inwall on "the bees preferring nat- 

 ural comb." It was my own concep- 

 tion of the matter. I do not Jcnoiv 

 about this, but the way I now look at 

 it, it would be with reluctance that 

 the queen would use such combs for 

 brood. I know it to be a fact, from 

 my own experience, that young queens 

 desperately in want of drone comb 

 will use worker size for drone brood. 



I believe bees will swarm even if 

 they have no drone brood at all, pro- 

 viding there are drones anywhere in 

 the 3'ard. 



I do not generally give away my 

 experimental failures, but I will do it 

 this time for the sake of explanation. 

 I tried keeping drone brood from off a 

 hive by cutting out the drone comb, 

 decapping, etc., for this very purpose. 

 They were contracted down to six 

 frames, solid with worker brood. 

 Every time I opened that hive I found 

 a few drones present that had come in 

 from other hives. Well, to make the 

 story brief, that colony swarmed nat- 

 urally. This is why I have no faith 

 in wooden combs as perfectly non- 

 swarming. 



Our good Brother Aspinwall has 

 made a valuable implement for ex- 

 tracting honey producers. To him 

 belongs the credit of first making a 

 practical artificial comb for which his 

 reward will doubtless come later, as 

 with the perforated metal discovery. 



Clipping queens' wings. 



I could tell a long tale of woe on 

 this subject but I shall not bore you 

 with it now. 



The act of clipping may be utterly 

 painless but the jmrt is forever after 

 useless. I dislike to see cripples of 

 any kind. If the wing would grow 

 again, like a finger nail, I would not 

 object to the practice. To my way of 



flunking the act is cruel and inhuman 

 because you intentionally cripple the 

 insect. It is like throwing out sheep's 

 joints to keep them in the field. Is 

 not that ci'uel, although painless? 



Low' prices. 



My dear doctor man ! you must 

 understand that every l)eekeeper has 

 not the experience and judgment in 

 this matter 3'ou are blessed with, al- 

 though perhaps it is just as well now 

 that you have made the matter clear 

 to all! 



Marlboro, Mass. 



How to increase the product of the 



hives, to secure the most 



honey and regulate and 



control the price. 



A. C. Tyrrel. 



How to increase the product of the 

 hives and secure the most honey there- 

 from, is a question that has been up- 

 permost in my mind at all times when 

 I have had leisure to ponder upon this 

 vital matter. 



While it is true that heretofore all 

 crops have been disposed of by farm- 

 ers, and apiarists have sold what sur- 

 plus they may have had in store, yet 

 in the majority of instances at prices 

 which counting their labor and expen- 

 ditures has left little or nothing to be 

 placed to the credit side of the ledger. 



It may be that there is an over-pro- 

 duction of cereals (occasional!}^), but 

 it cannot be said that there is now, or 

 has been for nianj'^ years an overplus 

 of honey, viewed in the light that the 

 visible supply of farm products is re- 

 garded in the great commercial cen- 

 tres of this country. 



There are many who seem to think 

 that great danger menaces the far- 

 mers of the west and northwest, and 

 the country at large, which may also, 

 they think, prove disastrous to api- 

 culturists. 



I refer to Major Powell's paper read 

 before the Chamber of Commerce in 



