THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



185 



Virgin-queen traffic. 



Letter from Texas. 



A. L. SWINSOK. 



MitS. S. E. SlIEUMAN. 



TiiK sale of virgin queens is now in its 

 infancy, though ilcNiincd to become, if 

 properly understood, one of tlie most sat- 

 isfactory methods of introducing new 

 stoclv among tiie l)eelveepers of America, 

 insteail of the higher priced Ijreeding 

 cpieens as is now practised, for introduc- 

 ing the best blood, at a much higlier rate 

 and attended by much greater risk and 

 danger of loss compared to the amount 

 expentied and tlie prol)abIe results of l)en- 

 etit to be derived therefrom, compared 

 witli the value of the two methods. Any 

 queen breeder in America who breeds 

 queens for sale, will very reailily sell a 

 virgin queen from the very best breeding 

 queen in his apiary at a nominal sum of 

 less than a dollar, when no reasonal^le 

 sum could buy the said breeding queen. 

 Twenty dollars, in many instances, would 

 not buy the best qicen that some queeu 

 breeders have, while for from 50 to 75 

 cents he would sell a selected virgin daiKjh- 

 ter from said queen and guarantee sate ar- 

 rival, that would, although mated to a 

 common Italian drone in the purchaser's 

 apiary, produce very nearly, and in some 

 instances better drones than would tlie 

 mother queeu of the virgin queeu that 

 Could not be bought. 



So the apiarist would, for a mere 

 nominal sum, have secured the better half 

 in value, than he could have done had he 

 bought the mother queen of the virgin, 

 even admitting that she was a fine breed- 

 ing queen for queens and drones alike — 

 which is seldom apt to be the case, for 

 usually the best queens for breeding queens 

 of, are not the best drone producing queens. 



The next object of the apiarist then 

 should be to get of another breeder, vir- 

 gin queois of his best selected breeding 

 queen, and get them mated to drones from 

 the queens of those procured of WiQ first 

 breeder. "When he has done this, he has se- 

 cured a most perfect cross of two or more 

 strains of bees, that should give him 

 breeding queens lully equal to the mothers 

 of either lot of the virgin queens pro- 

 cured, admitting that both are of the best 

 stocks attainable in America — and we 

 have in America, unquestionably, some of 

 the best strains of bees to be found any- 

 where in the world that has ever yet con- 

 tributed any of its stock to the bees of the 

 United States ; as many of the best apiarists 

 who have among them, tested all that 

 have been introduced here, are ready to 

 attest the fact. 



Goldsboro', N. C.,Dec. 5, 1887. 



I iiAVK planted and tried very hard to 

 raise something for my becjs, so that in 

 a dearth of nectar from native sources I 

 should iiave something to fall back upon. 

 So far, my every elfort has been futile. 

 I have in a small way ti ied the large Rus- 

 sian sunflower, two varieties of buck- 

 wheat, and red, white and alsike clover. 

 So much faith had I in inelilot or sweet 

 clover, that at four diflerent times, both 

 in the spring and fall, I have plauted it, 

 yet at this writing I haven't a single plant 

 of it on my place. Several years ago, I 

 spent twenty dollars for lucerne or Cali- 

 fornia clover seed, and having it put in 

 the ground. It came up as nice as could 

 be. I Iiad a beautiful stand. I was de- 

 lighted with the prospect. Thought I was 

 all right now on the pasturage question, 

 when, lo ! the drought set in and it was 

 only about eight inches high when it 

 stopped growing and finally died. I have 

 not a single stalk of it now. I'll tell what 

 I have succeeded with after all my failures, 

 and that is Johnson grass. Not lor the 

 bees but for my horse and cattle. It has 

 been worth at a low estimate, this dry 

 year, at least $25.00 per acre. I have 

 about come to the conclusion not to plant 

 anything for my bees unless I try pleurisy 

 root. Our land here is, I think, too sub- 

 ject to droujiht to be successful in raising 

 nectar-producing plants. We shall have to 

 try and be satisfied with natural resources 

 from which to obtain our honey. Most of 

 the black or native bees have died through 

 last winter and the past unprecedented 

 dry summer. Bees will be scarce in this 

 part of Texas another year. The weather 

 has been quite cool for several days past 

 so that the bees were confined to their 

 hives for some time. This morning the 

 sun shone quite warm for several hours. 

 The bees took advantage of it and had 

 quite a time house or hive cleaning. There 

 was an unusual amount of dead bees at 

 the entrance of quite a number of my 

 hives. There was an old gentleman came 

 in the midst of their flight; conversation 

 soon turned on the subject of bees. He 

 said if they did'nt have plenty to eat that 

 I could feed them by baking sally ash- 

 cakes and putting them under the "gums" 

 as he called them. He also said that if I 

 would move each "gum" just a few inches 

 once a week that the moth would not 

 trouble my i)ees. He h)oked around at 

 my bees in astonishment and said that in 

 a good year I surely ought to get two or 

 three hundred pounds of honey. I said, 



