50 



THE AMERICAN APICULTUEIST. 



for several years together, which 

 would spring the price of honey tem- 

 porarily but not permanently. 



The facts are before us and to 

 ■sit down and whine, or to get up and 

 organize syndicates or any other sort 

 of societies, having for its purpose 

 the forcing of high prices for honey, 

 will and ought to be a failure. What 

 is the remedy then? My remedy is 

 to produce honey cheaply by means 

 of better constructed hives and im- 

 plements, and by cheaper methods 

 of handling the bees and the honey 

 crops and by curtailing expenses in 

 every way that economy dictates. 

 "Patent hives" are a luxury that may 

 be dispensed with ; good plain hives 

 capable of enlargement and contrac- 

 tion, under proper management, will 

 give as much surplus honey as any 

 patent hive will give, and by the 

 "close process" advocated by J. E. 

 Pond, jr., any and everything that can 

 be done with any of the complicated 

 patent hives can be done with a plain 

 Langstroth or American hive. Let 

 us quit feeding sugar to our bees, 

 thereby enlarging the honey crop, 

 and above all we must develop the 

 honey market, pushing our trade to 

 every nook and corner of the land. 



Christiansbin-g, Ky. 



For the American ApicuUitrist. 



Q UEEN-REARING. 



O. O. PoPrLETOX. 



I was much interested in your crit- 

 icism on Dr. Miller's "A Year among 

 the Bees," on page 25, of the Jan. 

 No. of the "Api" and want to in- 

 dulge in not exactly a criticism, but 

 a discussion of your remarks. 



Some time ago, after having used 

 your system of rearing queens for 

 two or three seasons, I wrote out 

 what might be called a review of the 

 "Handy Book," calling attention to 

 several of what I thought were strona: 



points, and also to several details 

 which I had found could be changed 

 with profit. This article was acci- 

 dentally lost, and I never took the 

 trouble to reproduce it, but among 

 the other points noticed was this one 

 of leaving every third egg removed 

 instead of each alternate one. I 

 have not seen Dr. Miller's book, so 

 do not know what were his reasons 

 for this change from your instruc- 

 tions, but mine was briefly this : 

 When each alternate egg was left, 

 the cells would be built so closely 

 together that it was usually quite dif- 

 ficult to separate the cells from each 

 other, without injuring their occu- 

 pants, if not entirely impossible at 

 times. Leaving every third egg only 

 makes this operation much easier and 

 pleasanter to do. 



Now, if the objection you raise 

 against leaving only each third &gg 

 should prove true in only a small 

 minority of cases even, it would be 

 conclusive and a settler, but it has 

 not been true in my experience, and 

 1 judge not in Dr. Miller's either, 

 else he would not advise it. Just 

 why so many similar diff'erences, as 

 this one is (of facts, not theories), 

 should be continually arising among 

 beekeepers, is puzzling many of us, 

 but is difficult of explanation. This 

 point of difference in quality of 

 queens is one which I observed very 

 closely, as it is at the very foundation 

 of our business, and I couldn't de- 

 tect any difference whatever in the 

 quality of the queens raised by the 

 two methods. I can think of, or 

 imagine, but one reason which may 

 account for our different experiences, 

 and that is that while you, as a breed- 

 er and seller of queens, are forced to 

 raise many of them out of a honey 

 flow, I, who only rear queens for 

 my own use, always rear them dur- 

 ing a honey flow. This may or may 

 not account for the different results. 



COMPARATIVE CROSSNESS OF THE ITAL- 

 IAN AND GERMAN BEES. 



On page 11, Jan. No. of the "Api" 



