THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



55 



his timo in exporiiiuMitiiiff. Iloliad receiv- 

 ed blaek bees to exi)eriiiient on tiie ])iitiien- 

 ogeneis, and these stocks, or tiieir otl'sprinj;, 

 were tliose that .Mr. Kinusaw at liis apiary. 

 ]>ut why is it tliat ,>Ir. Iving does not think 

 best to inention tlie inanie of llruska'.' Aye! 

 liiere's tlu' rnb. A lew months after "his 

 return from Italy. Mr. Kins received IS 

 stocks of bees froin the same Maj. llruska, 

 and advertised tlieni in ins iiaper for $^0 

 apiece, as ittt(p(csti<in<(bUj pxirr. — See tlie 

 Bcc-Kccpcrs' .U(((/(/;./(ic and N<(ti(ni(!l ^{(j- 

 riculturist, of Dee., ISTl, p. 92, 1st columii. 

 Thus tlie words, burniuLf sliame. and other 

 tlourislies, wliich seasoned tlie speech of 

 Mr. II. A. King, against imported bees, fall 

 on his own head. 



Now I will pay to :Mr. King $9J)0 for the 

 name of a bee-keeper in Italy having hj'- 

 brid bees in his ai)iary, unless they were 

 inii)orted there from outside of Italy. We 

 will appoint the president, cashier, and sec- 

 retary of the Central .Society of Bee-Kee]iers 

 of Italy, all three men of honor and reliable, 

 to ascertain the fact. And if the assertion 

 of Mr. King proves true I will pay all the 

 charges of ascertaining the fact. If the as- 

 sertion is pi'oved untrue, Mr. King will pay 

 the charges, but these charges only. 



I know in advance that my offer will re- 

 main a dead letter, as did the offer of Mr. 

 Furman about the fertilizing of queens in 

 confinement ; but it will end the accusation 

 of impurity of bees in Italy. 



Let nie" say that 1 know the motives of 

 these attacks against the importation of 

 bees and that I will disclose them iu the 

 JouitNAL if my opponents desire it. 



Had not my name been mentioned by Mr. 

 Bingham, in the IMichigan Bee-Keepers' 

 Convention, I woukl have let pass unnotic- 

 ed what he said about imported bees. But he 

 said, "if Dadant could get a queen good for 

 four years, he could stock the whole country 

 with queens." How does Mr. Bingham 

 know if my imported queens are long or short 

 lived? lie has never received one from 

 me ; besides I dare him to name some bee- 

 keepers complaining of having received 

 short-lived queens from niy importations. I 

 suppose that before complaining to Mr. 

 Bingham, these bee-keepers would have 

 complaineil to me first, and I have as yet 

 received but one comi)laiiit. Tl^e Italian 

 bees are as long lived as the black, the only 

 difference is that as soon as tlii' Italian bee 

 begins to show signs of proliticness, she is 

 replaced by her bees. While the black bees 

 preserve tlieir queens even until she be- 

 comes drone laying by old age, and that dif- 

 ference is to the advantage of the Italian 

 bees and their owner. But Mr. Bingham 

 has never had confidence in the Italian bees, 

 and I remember having seen .some articles 

 by him against them, a few years ago. It 

 is therefore little to be wondered at, if he 

 was opposed to the importation of (pieens 

 in a paper which condeiiiued, in em|)hatic 

 terms, the promiscuous iuiportation of Ital- 

 ian bees. As I am tlie only regular importer 

 of Italian bees. I su]ii)ose it is my importa- 

 tions that Mr. J5iiiglia}n aimed "at, and I 

 want to answer, wheii 'the American bee- 

 keepers were receiving (lueens from Ger- 

 many, Tyrol, Switzerland and Italy, the 

 term promiscuous was a])plicable. But I 

 receive my (lUeens from one of the best bee 

 districts of Italy. The man who sends 

 these bees is reliable and honest ; he owns 

 300 stocks of bees and I pay 30 per cent. 



more per queen than their value in Italy, to 

 get only young and prolific (lUeens, tested 

 from chosen stocks. Is that what is com- 

 monly called pi-omiscnousness ? 



Mr. Bingham adds : '"In carrying queens 

 from aiiiaries altccted with foul brood, it 

 will communicate the disease; hence the 

 great danger of iiiqiorting bees." Now if 

 Mr. Bingham can point me to a bee-keeper 

 able to read the Italian language I will send 

 him the full collection of the Italian bee 

 pajjcr Uuipicdllore, and I will give Mr. 

 IJingham ten stocks of bees if this man can 

 find in the whole seven years, a sole com- 

 plaint of foul brood by an Italian bee- 

 keeper. Foul brood has never existed in 

 Italy. If foul brooil could be imiKuted 

 with queens, I should be the first victim, as 

 every queen, as soon as rec»'ived is intro- 

 duced into a colony of our apiary till she is 

 rested and has comnience<l to lay. But I 

 am less fortunate than ]Mr. Binghan, I know 

 the foul brood only by books and hearsay, 

 for I have never seen that malady iu our 

 apiarv, nor in our neighborhood. 



Itliink that Mr. Hester will find in this 

 article an ample answer to his article on the 

 purity of the Italian bees in Italy. If he 

 could come here in the beginning of April, 

 I would visit with him sixty stocks of bees 

 with imported mothers, and to show him 

 that he was too hasty in judging imported 

 bees from the bogus" imported (pieens that 

 he had received. Ch. Dadaxt. 



Hamliton, III. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Shallow or Tall Frames. 



I have just been reading in the Feb. num- 

 ber of the Journal, wliich came promptly 

 as usual, the report of the Michigan Bee- 

 Keepers' Association at Kalamazoo ; and as 

 a whole I regard the meeting as a very use- 

 ful one ; antl the report contains many good 

 things and useful suggestions. But then 

 there are one or two things I notice that 

 seem very strange. P'or instance, Mr. Bing- 

 ham gives us some of the "tallest" special 

 pleading in favor of shallow frames, that I 

 ever read. 



Now, Mr. Bingham is no doubt a success- 

 full bee-keeper ; but his reasons (?) for tlie 

 use of the shallow frame (exce])t that of fa- 

 cility of handling) are, it seems to me, as 

 shallow— begging his pardon— as the frames 

 themselves. He says : " Small shallow 

 combs give more brood early in the season. 

 Ileat ascends sooner than it radiates; hence 

 in tall hives it is lost." I can't see how 

 Prof. Cook coidd listen to such assertions as 

 these. Now let us see what these reasons 

 amount to. 



1st. Heat or heated air ascends. True, — 

 but wherefore lost '.' Can yon tell us, Mr. 

 B.? 



Now, I am only an amateur and conse- 

 quently not " set in my way" about any 

 particular form of hive ; but what little ex- 

 perience I have had goes to jirove the oppo- 

 site of the pro))ositioii. and in favor of the 

 deep frame, ami I think 1 can tell why. 

 And, first, the air of a iiive may be likened 

 to strata lying horizontally ujion one anoth- 

 er, and minibered for convenience, say from 

 1 to 5 from bottom to top, and growing 

 warm as you go from one to five. Sijcondly, 

 bees cluster either outside or inside a hive 



