122 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



but, if tliey are to swarm and swarm 

 and do nothing else, why, that will 

 not altogether suit me. 



Here is a comparison. At the time 

 I got my first swarm of bees, a neigh- 

 bor got one of blacks. That was two 

 years ago in June. Last year I should 

 have increased to eleven swarms if I 

 had not put them back in all the 

 while, sold two swarms, lost one; and 

 increased to five that I wintered over, 

 and took off three hundi'ed pounds 

 one pound sections, and so for this 

 year I have six young swarms, all 

 sold. My neighbor with the blacks, 

 increased to thi-ee swarms last year, 

 lost one, one starved next spring, and 

 they now have the old colony, and one 

 just now (July) issued. No honey, 

 not an ounce. 



I am certain of some points about 

 Carniolans. They are gentle, hardy, 

 and excellent workers, capping the 

 whitest honey I ever saw, and getting 

 the least dark honey, but if they are 

 bound to swarm too often, I just 

 want some kind of a trap to catch 

 them. 



No use to tell me to put salt on 

 then' taUs, I can't do it. 



Do give me a little light on this 

 matter. 

 Dubuque, la. 



For reply to this communication see page 121. 

 —Ed, 



How our queens and the manager 

 of the Bay State Apiary are ap- 

 preciated. 



Editor American Api : 



Yoiu' postal at hand somedays since 

 and the qneen and her escort arrived 

 safel3' this a. m. She is as handsome 

 as a gold coin fresh from the mint, a 

 sort of personification of be(e)atific 

 perfection. If any one can show finer 

 queens or handsomer bees as tlieir off- 

 spring than is to be found in our little 

 amateur apiary, we should be pleased 

 to hear from them. In selecting at 

 tlie start tlie strain of bees we would 

 cultivate, we feel that we made the 

 right choice. We have strictly ad- 



hered to tliat choice, without any 

 deviation and all the colonies are 

 "queened" either by one reared in the 

 Bay .State apiary, or a daughter raised 

 by ourselves. Our deal with you is 

 one of the exceptionally few instances, 

 in which we hav'n't been swindled or 

 deceived in some way or other in deal- 

 ing with agents or dealers in supi)lies ; 

 and we contemplate that fact with as 

 much satisfaction as we do the nice 

 coating of honey on the matutinal 

 griddle cake. 



We hatched three queens last 

 night in some nuclei we had pi'epared, 

 and they all are that same splendid 

 color and size as that fi'om you. You 

 see we had a good chance to compare 

 them, and prove our standard, yours 

 being caged. The bees are all right. 

 We had one colony with a two-year 

 queen that filled about three-fourths of 

 their brood frames with honey. We ex- 

 tracted twenty-seven pounds and put 

 them back and now they are well filled 

 with brood. Your queen is to super- 

 sede her to-night. We have taken off 

 but little of our honey yet — it ripens 

 well in the hive. We took forty-nine 

 pounds capped and i)erfect from one 

 hive leaving just half the sections on ; 

 they were filled but not quite capped 

 We have several others that will do 

 as well or better — say a dozen or so. 



To-day the bees have taken to rob- 

 bing some new swarms we had started 

 (three oi- four) and we have shed 

 much vigorous P^nglisli and lots of 

 smoker manipulation at this evidence 

 of their moral turpitude ; have closed 

 the new ones up tight to keep them 

 out. 



On the whole we are doing very well. 

 We've found out that there's lots of 

 things we don't know about " bee cul- 

 ture " but we're learning and you'll 

 hear from our apiary yet. We mean 

 to have a good one At the same time 

 there's lots of things we do know — such 

 as what hive we want, also on the sub- 

 ject of bee culture as a pursuit for 

 women and some other things of which 

 I may sometime write you. Am glad 



