1872.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



207 



asserts? Is sli« dead, as he alleges? The re- 

 peated mistatemeiits of that bee bungler give us 

 the right of doubting these allegations. 



I never refused to replace her ; but I did re- 

 fuse to sell a second queen to Mr. Price, for he 

 had made too much unwarranted fuss about the 

 first. 



Mr. Price can, if he chooses, send my letter 

 of refusal to the editor, whom I authorize to 

 publish it, and to treat me as a falsifier if the 

 facts are not as 1 represent them. 



Proposing a theory before having sufficiently 

 tested it, sustaining his ideas by false allega- 

 tions, and then calumniating his opponent, are 

 means ill calculated to entitle any one to a claim 

 to be considered a true gentleman. 



What think you of it, friend beekeepers ? 



Ch. Dadant. 



November 3d, 1871. 



P. S. — As many beekeepers may not know 

 what I mean by the "pinching of bees during 

 the swarming fever," I wish to give my experi- 

 ence in explanation. 



Two years ago, while experimenting with the 

 Quinby queen yard to prevent swarming, the 

 bees of one hive under experiment tried to 

 swarm. The queen, which had her wings cut, 

 could not follow and was kept a prisoner in the 

 queen yard. While the bees were on the wing, 

 I opened the hive and cut out every queen cell. 

 A few days after the bees swarmed anew, and I 

 saw them pinching and biting the poor queen, 

 to force her to follow the swarm. I opened the 

 hive again, and destroyed all the incipient queen 

 cells. The bees swarmed a third time, and I had 

 the greatest difficulty to rescue the queen, and 

 the next night she was killed and cast out of the 

 hive. 



During all that swarming fever, the queen, 

 worried by the bees, had deposited very few 

 eggs ; and the bees remained idle in the hive. I 

 did not get an ounce of surplus honey from that 

 stock. 



I do not present this experiment to help my 

 cause. The editor can read an account of it in 

 the French "Journal des Fermes" for July, 

 1870, page y07, where I related it. 



Similar pinchings were, without doubt, brought 

 to bear against my queen ; for she was introduced 

 in a hive during the swarming impulse. In one 

 of the letters which I send to the Editor, Mr. 

 Price says that she was put in a colony he was 

 experimenting with raising queen cells. 1 beg the 

 reader to remark how discordant that word 

 '■^experimenting,'''' is with his method tested ^^ five 

 years. ' ' 



Another proof that my queen endured the 

 pinchings of the bees, is, that she led out a 

 fewarm four days before any queen cells were 

 capped over. And Mr, Price wonders at the 

 occurrence ! 



After having swarmed, my queen was not pro- 

 tected against the hardships inflicted on her by 

 her new possessor. He writes, in one of the 

 letters I .send to the Editor, that every morning 

 and every evening, for weeks, he removed every 

 comb containing brood or eggs, and replaced 

 them with frames of empty comb — even remov- 



ing such as she had commenced to lay in. He 

 adds — " At no time did she lay during any twelve 

 hours more than a two or three inch circle 

 could cover. A circle of two or three inches, in 

 diameter, gives nearly three hundred eggs for 

 twelve hours, or six hundred in twenty-four 

 hours, or nine thousand bees in fifteen days. 

 This was in the last fortnight of July, a time of 

 the greatest drought. 



A man who wishes to kill his dog gives him a 

 bad name ; but the laying of the queen wa.s 

 somewhat better than represented by Mr, P., 

 who had every interest to find my queen less 

 prolific than his ; for she was an artificial queen, 

 and he had already proclaimed his theory. 



Besides, in the American Bee Journal for 

 January, 1871, Mr, P, says that — "About the 

 first of September she commenced to do a little 

 better," We thus find that that poor queen, 

 so much traduced in words and abused in acts, 

 was not, to sum up all, near so bad as she was 

 proclaimed to be. 



I have seen queens, very prolific in April and 

 May, deposit fewer eggs in July, August, and 

 September, than the queen in question. I guess 

 the Editor would be a competent judge in that 

 matter, and likely to think that changing combs 

 every twelve hours, would interfere with the lay- 

 ing while the queen was recounoitering the 

 newly introduced combs. 



I have one remark more to add, and I am 

 done. In his letter, Mr. J. M. Price says that 

 he obtained seven queens ^^all goocC and prolific, 

 and in the American Bee Journal he says, that 

 one of the seven was '■'■ wingless.'''' Which of 

 these is the true statement? 



In all my discussions with Mr. Price, T wrote 

 with proofs in hand. If he does not show Ms 

 pi-oofs against me, I will hold him a calumnia- 

 tor, 



C, D, 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



A Little Plain Talk. 



Mr, Editok: — Do let me hit Novice just a 

 little, for I want to know what eft'ect it will 

 have. On page 27 of the August number he 

 says : ^'■Many are working and thinking of a hive 

 with the proper nuviber of frames spread out hori- 

 zontally, .vo that no upper story trill he in the toay,'''' 

 and then he mentions me as of that number. 

 When I got up my hive, I sent a description of 

 it to some twenty individuals, whom I knew were 

 using my style of frame, and requested tliem to 

 try it ; and among the rest I sent a very private 

 description to Novice. Well, I received a very 

 short reply, stating that he did not think it 

 would work, the arrangement was too cold, &c., 

 &c. We were perfectly satisfied then, that he 

 had not paid attention enough to our descrip- 

 tion to understand it ; and on reading his ar- 

 rangement of his eight American hive (which 

 he calls more compact than Gallup'si we felt 

 very much as though we ought to have sent a 

 description of our hive by telegraph to the North 

 Pole (suppose they have a telegraph attached to 



