no 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



writer for the Api. He is also one ol' 

 the largest lieekeepers in America. 



Selma, Jexax. May 19, 1800. 



Mr. Henry Alt^ev: 



DkatjSik: — Two years ag;o you srnt me the 

 nicest, It.ilJan queen I ever saw. Tlie colony 

 gatliercd lots of lioney and is uow the l)est colony 

 in niyai)iary. L. SrACHEr.iiAUSEN. 



Considering that Mr. S. has several 

 hundred colonies in his apiary, we are 

 inclined to the opinion that we have 

 I'oarcd more than one queen tiiat is 

 worth $100. Mr, S. was not leqiiested 

 to send us tiie above testimonial, and 

 we realU' had forgotten that a queen 

 Avas ever sent him from our apiaiy. 

 Now here is another testimonial that 

 seems to favor us, but is bad for other 

 parties. As no names of dealers are 

 given, no one will be badly hurt if we 

 ^ publish all the writer says about the 

 queens he has [)urchased. 



Little Rest, N. Y., May 28, 1890. 



Uli. ALLKV: 



Please send me one of your nice queens as I 

 have a (jneenless colony. The queens I got of 

 you last vear cari-ieil their colonies ihronj^h the 

 winter all ri^ht. Tho.'^e jiurchased IVoni other 

 parties tailed to winter theii- colonies. 



WM. H.TOMPKIN.S. 



Now this is the result of rearing 

 queens on the haphazard plan, and 

 sending out everything for queens that 

 look like a queen bee. There are thou- 

 sands of queens sent out every year 

 that ought to have had their heads 

 pinched the minute they left the cells. 

 The person who pays fifty cents or 

 seventy-five cents for such queens 

 and introduces them to his colon- 

 ies will surely regret it. Good queens 

 cannot be reared and sold at fifty 

 cents nor seventy-five cents each. At 

 any rate I cannot do it and will not. 

 True, we sell one queen to each sub- 

 scriber of the Api for seventy-five 

 cents ; but do you not know that we 

 get more or less orders for other goods 

 from each subscriber of the Api ? We 

 do, and our way of increasing our sub- 

 scription list is to sell each subscriber 

 a queen for seventy-five cents, that 

 generally brings out just such testi- 

 monials as are given here. We re- 

 ceive hundreds of testimonials each 

 year, but we do not think it best to 

 publish them all. 



Rearing good queens— How it is done in 

 the State Apiary. 



All queen-cells are built in the 

 strongest colonies and no weak col- 

 onies are ever pei-mitted to rear queens 

 for us. Here is our plan, and it will 

 be well for those dealers who sent Mr. 

 Thompson the queens that ruined liis 

 colonies to make a note of what we 

 sa3' here. 



Our queens are started by queen- 

 less bees, and by the strongest colo- 

 nies we have in tlie a[)iary. The other 

 day we removed all the bees from a 

 large colony for starting cells. It be- 

 ing an unusually strong colony I took 

 a notion to weigh them (the bees 

 alone) and there were twelve i)Ounds 

 of bees. Those felloves will rear 

 queens that will take their colonies 

 through the winter in the best condi- 

 tion. This strong colony was not 

 permitted to work on the cells until 

 they were finished. When they had 

 worked ui)on them thirty-six hours, 

 the cells were removed and j)laced in 

 colonies to be finished having more 

 than twelve pounds r)f bees even. 

 There, reader, do you see the point? 

 Do you see that there were not less 

 than twenty-four pounds of bees, prob- 

 ably 100,000 bees in all, that built 

 those queen cells? Another point is 

 this : no one colony is allowed to rear 

 over fifteen cells. We have had col- 

 onies build a larger number of queen 

 cells but, if we are to rear good 

 queens, not over twelve or fifteen cells 

 should be built in the strongest colon}', 

 and under no circumstances rear queens 

 in weak colonies. Did you ever hear 

 any dealer in queens say that he reared 

 his queens by using the number of bees 

 for cell-building that we do? Not a 

 queen dealer in the world has ever 

 done it, nor has it ever been done b}' 

 any one outside the Ba}' State Apiary. 



We have always made it a practice 

 to examine all queens before they were 

 allowed to become fertile. ]f any 

 seemed inferior in any respect, their 

 heads were [)inched at once. 



