102 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



[Nov., 



for nuclei! ; my hive has of course not had any 

 influence on them, for good or evil. But my 

 twenty young natural queens, raised by my 

 method, ai"e without exception hardy, prolific, 

 and have every promise of being long-lived. Had 

 they been forced queens two-thirds of them 

 would liave been played out before this time. 

 They are as prolific as any of my old " natural " 

 queens which I bought of those who i^ractice 

 natural swarmin_r only. My R. R. D. C. S. B. 

 Hive has a good effect on the life of natural 

 queens ; and as Mr. Dadant says his bees in my 

 hive have done better than in any other, and he 

 has of several patents, and as he says he has 

 only raised forced queens, my R. R. D. C. S. Bee- 

 hive most probably saved him. 



Secondly, after reading all his conditions of 

 age, Aveather, season, stock, nuclei, tinre, and 

 Qg?^, that have to be consulted to insure a good 

 queen by the forcing process, I have an idea that 

 his queens are natural ones. Do you not bring 

 your bees up to swai-ming and then secure their 

 cells Gallup fashion? Galluj) calls such natural 

 queens. I should. Otherwise why not have 

 good queens from March to October? 



Thirdly, Mr. Davis says that "if Mr. Price or 

 any other man will, upon examination, decide 

 correctly, by size or fertility (amount of brood), 

 wliich are of the former and which are of the 

 latter class, he may pick out ten as large and 

 yellow queens as he ever saio, and I will make 

 him a present of the same." 



Answer. I have only one artificial queen lay- 

 ing, my- pure prolific Italian. I will guarantee 

 any of my black, "young or old," or other 

 natural queens, to fill five frames with brood 

 quicker tlian she can fill one ; and if you, or 

 "any other man," cannot see any difference 

 between my forced queensf and my natural ones, 

 you must be deficient in the organs of size and 

 wei<iht, and would not be able to tell a Shetland 

 pony from an elephant. 



John M. Pkice. 



Buffalo Grove, loioa. 



[For the American Bee Jourual.] 



Introducing Queens. 



Dr. H. C. Barnard in the June number of tlie 

 A. B. Journal, gave directions for introducing 

 queens by fumigating with tobacco smoke. I 

 had introduced tliein by means of the queen 

 cage, and sprinkling them with SAveetened water 

 scented with the essence of i^eppermint. But 

 as this seemed to be a better phin, I thought I 

 Avould try it. I caged the queen to be introduced, 

 and followed his directions to the letter, but 

 what do you thinlt I had ? A laying queen iji 

 twelve hours ? Nay, verily, but a dead queen, 

 and half the bees dead and driven from the hive. 

 Now, Mr. Editor, I think a great deal of my 

 bees, and wlien, in opening a hive, I careles.sly 

 kill one, I am always sorry ; but then to see them 



slaughtered by wholesale, was very cruel to say 

 the least. All the next day, whenever I passed 

 that way, the well bees were driving off those 

 that were crippled or had lost the use of their 

 legs or wings. Besides this, while they were in 

 no condition to repel an attack, the robber bees 

 came in for a share, and I came very near losing 

 them. They were not so drunk but tliat most 

 of them could ci-awl round, and only a few of 

 them fell to the bottom of the hive. — Dr. Barnard 

 said, "if they all fell to the bottom it would do 

 no harm." Now what was the cause of this 

 faihire? I could not have smoked them too 

 much, according to his instructions, for nearly 

 all of them could crawl I'ound, when I first 

 opened the hive to let the smoke out ; yet it 

 destroyed fully half of them. I do not write this 

 by way of fault-finding, but so that nobody as 

 green as I was, should undertake the same i)ro- 

 cess, and have a like failure. 



G. M. DOOLITTLE. 



Borodino, N. T., Sept. 1870. 



t Oranges, bananas, pineapples, and other tropical fruits 

 are forced in hot-houses ; but they never reach the size, 

 flavor, or perfection of nature. 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



The Looking-Glass Once More. 



Mr. Editor : — I cannot think, as Mr. Nesbit 

 does on pages 80, 81 of tlie last number of the 

 Journal, that either one of his suppositions in 

 regard to the old woman's bees, would do to 

 rely upon. It is not at all likely that a queen 

 so defective as to be unable to fly a distance of 

 two hundred and fifty yards, would ever have 

 been found where this one was. — And as to there 

 being two or more young queens with the swarm, 

 that may be true ; but tliat they went with that 

 swarm in sufficient numbers to divide tliem on 

 the apple tree, is positively an erroneous idea. 

 Tlie swarm was followed from the apple tree on 

 which a portion of them was first discovered, to 

 the one on which they clustered last, and they 

 did not seek a place so hidden from view as to 

 make it difficult even for me to see that they 

 selected a hare limb on which to settle. They 

 were hived without difficulty, but proved to be 

 bent on pitching their tent in some other section, 

 by leaving the old box hive unobserved the next 

 day. 



As to the "knot" theory, I have nothing 

 moi'e to say — than that, if tried right, it will 

 prove equally true with the inverted glass theory. 

 But as to the looking-glass having nothing to do 

 with stopping a decamping swarm of bees, it is 

 a grand mistake. In conclusion, I api)end a 

 portion of two letters wliich are before me, shoW; 

 ing tliat I am not the only man that places some 

 confidence in a good thing. 



" Bellefontaine, OJiio, June 25. 



"At the time of swarming. In ever allow noise 

 of any kind, and have never had a swarm that 

 did not settle. If the apiarian sees his bees rise 

 high and act as though they were going to leave, 

 the reflection of a mirror thrown in among them, 

 is the most efficient means that I know of to 

 make them alight." 



