1894 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



183 



room enough for the other bees to get to the 

 candy. 



In one case I tried the sponge method of ship- 

 ping. Tiiis was the way used some years ago. 

 It was usually successful in the days of yore; 

 why should it not be so now? Theoldwaywas 

 to put a piece of sponge In one of the holes of 

 the cage, and saturate it well with honey. 

 Most breeders used a thick quality of honey. 

 I thought it better to try honey that was con- 

 siderably thinned by diluting it with water. It 

 worked well, but I preferred candy in a cage 

 that was provisioned with a reservoir for wa- 

 ter. I think, though, if I could get a cage that 

 was suitably constructed I should prefer the 

 diluted honey and sponge method. There is no 

 doubt in my mind that honey is the proper food 

 for bees at all times, especially when being ship- 

 ped in the malls. 



I am firmly of the belief that no queen should 

 be placed immediately in the mailing-cage and 

 sent right off to the person ordering her. It 

 would be well to keep her over night in some 

 suitable cage, or, if more convenient, the ship- 

 ping-cage will do. This will give her a chance 

 to lay a large portion of the eggs that she is 

 charged with. She will then be in better con- 

 dition to make the trip. 



In your editorial you " suggest that the 

 Atchleys commence experiments, not only for 

 their own personal advantage, but for the bene- 

 fit of the brotherhood of queen -breeders and 

 their customers." In this I had more than an- 

 ticipated you, Mr. Editor. It was after getting 

 a couple of dead queens from Mrs. Atchley that 

 I suggested that we conduct a series of experi- 

 ments to find out if we could not hit upon some 

 better way of sending queens safely to this 

 coast. We used all the cheap though healthy 

 queens we could spare for this purpose. Queens 

 were sent back and forth between us for some 

 months. Sometimes they would reach their 

 destination all right; at other times they and 

 all the bees accompanying the queen would be 

 dead. When a queen would come to hand safe- 

 ly she would be reshipped, so as to cover as 

 many miles as she could before the supply of 

 provisions gave out. Mrs. Atchley's best suc- 

 cess in sending queens to me was when she had 

 them mailed in double cages, or what she terms 

 "import" cages. These are the ordinary two- 

 ounce cages— two of them being nailed togeth- 

 er face to face. I am of the opinion that it 

 would be impossible to ever lose a queen in one 

 of these cages when the candy is just light and 

 the ventilation ample during the hot spell. 



I believe that many shippers do not pay 

 enough attention to the importance of ventilat- 

 ing their cages that are sent out in midsummer. 

 Sometimes a large lot of workers are sent with 

 the queen; these bees have a tendency to raise 

 the temperature of the cage, even above what 

 it is without the car, which may at the time be 

 going through the hottest portion of the coun- 



try. I have received cages overloaded with 

 bees, at the height of the hot spell, and no more 

 ventilation was provided than that made by 

 the manufacturer of the cage. The makers of 

 shipping-cages do not put in any more veiitilat- 

 ing-holes in the cage than are required for the 

 coolest part of the year; they could not very 

 well do otherwise, for the reason that, if there 

 were more holes, it would be harder to stop them 

 up when they were not wanted than it would 

 be to make additional holes when they were re- 

 quired. Perhaps the proper way to overcome 

 this feature would be for the user of shipping- 

 cages to call for two kinds of cages— one kind 

 to have no more ventilating apertures than 

 necessary, while the other should have ample 

 for the warmest portion of the year. 



I consider this matter a very important one, 

 and hope that our queen-breeders will give it 

 as much attention in the way of experiments 

 the coming season as they possibly can. Al- 

 ready, from what I learned the past year, I feel 

 that I can ship queens to any part of the Union 

 and seldom lose a queen. So confident have I 

 become in this matter that I have about con- 

 cluded to make queen-rearing (as a business) a 

 part of the work in my apiary the coming sea- 

 son, and I expect to send some queens to the 

 farthermost parts of the cntintry. My location 

 being one of the finest in the United States for 

 shipping, especially to the islands of the Pacif- 

 ic and to the Orient, I hope to do enough in the 

 queen-rearing line to pay me for the trouble at- 

 tendant in conducting such a branch of the 

 apiary. I am located directly opposite the 

 Golden Gate, and snugly ensconced in the Con- 

 tra Costa foot-hills. The ride to San Francisco 

 by rail and ferry is 45 minutes, which places me 

 in quick communication with the Pacific me- 

 tropolis. Then Oakland, which is only four 

 miles away, and which place is the terminus of 

 all the railroads coming into California, will 

 give me a chance to get my queens into the 

 mails and off to the various points to which 

 they may have to go, without any loss of time. 



Since I wrote article for the American Dee 

 Journal, several breeders In the East have sent 

 me the style of cage they use. Of the several 

 that I received, that of VV. C. Frazier, of Iowa, 

 seems to be the most practical. He claims that 

 he has had excellent success in sending queens 

 in his cages to distant points. I shall give it a 

 trial with different kinds of candy. It seems 

 to me that his cage is the best to use where the 

 shipper uses a very soft candy. There will be 

 none of that clogging that I have referred to in 

 the fore part of this letter, as there are so many 

 places for the bees to get at the food. 



On page 80 of Gleanings, Dr. Miller suggests 

 the making of a candy that is hard on the out- 

 side and soft in the middle, after the fashion 

 followed by confectioners in making a certain 

 kind of toothsome candy. This may not be a 

 bad idea. I do not know how it would work. I 



