1886 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



11 



IN MEMORIAM-\VM. W. GARY. 



FROM OUH OLD FRIEND MR. L,ANGSTROTH. 



SE was born in Coleraine, Mass., Feb. 34, 1815, 

 and died Dec. 0, lS8t. 

 It affords me a melaneholy satisfaction to 

 review my long acquaintance with tiie late 

 Mr. Wm. W. Cary, and to set out more fully 

 than has yet been attempted, some of the important 

 services which he rendered to bee keeping-. To do 

 this seems to me the more obligatory, as he so sel- 

 dom used his pen for the press that these services 

 might fail to be put on record. 



After testing quite largely my movable - comb 

 frames in West Philadelphia, in the bee-season of 

 1852, in the fall of that year I went to Greenfleld, 

 Mass., to inti'oduce my hive were I was best known 

 as a bee-keeper. Mr. Cary kept some bees in the 

 adjoining town of Coleraine, and was among the 

 hrst to take an interest in my invention. He was 

 very fond of bees, and more than usually familiar 

 with their habits— and as soon as he saw the work- 

 ing of the hive, he believed that it would make a 

 revolution in bee-keeping. For the si.Y years that 

 I remained in Greenfleld, we were in such frequent 

 communication that, in furthering my expeiiments, 

 his apiary was almost as much at ray service as my 

 own. 



WILLIAM W. CARY. 



In the spring of 1860 I was invited by Mr. S. 



B. 



Parsons, of Flushing, L. I., to advise him how best 

 to bi-eed and disseminate the Italian (Ligurian) bees 

 which he had recently imported. Finding that the 

 person who came in charge of most^of these bees 

 could not do the woi'k that was expected of him, I 

 advised Mr. Parsons to secure the services of Mr. 

 Cary. To great energy of character, and good bus- 

 iness habits, he united long experience in the man- 

 agement of movable-frame hives, with an enthusi- 

 astic desire to see the introduction of these foreign 

 bees made a success. From my intimate acquain- 

 tance with him I ooiUd further assure Mr. Parsons 

 that, with all these ira-jiiuisites for the position, he 

 possessed in as ilaiige ;6- degree as any one I had 

 ever known, t)!ft«t *' higiV^est fidelity " which Columel- 

 la, nearly 2880 years ag^, declared to be an essential 

 <lualiflcalAj>p for the s^^rintendence of an apiary 



—and which he thought was very rarely to be met 

 with. Is it much easier to find that now than it 

 was then? 



Mr. Gary's work in Mr. Parsons' apiary fully jus- 

 tified his selection. While the foreigner, in a sey)- 

 arate apiary established by Mr. Parsons, and fur- 

 nished with just the same facilities for breeding 

 queens, failed to rear enough even to pay for the 

 black bees and feed he used in his operations, Mr. 

 Cary supplied all the queens needed in Mr. Parsons' 

 apiary, and flllu I all his numerous orders. 



No better proof could i^ossibly be given of the ex- 

 tent and thoroughness of his work, than the fact 

 that ir? queens bred by him that season were so 

 carefully prepared for shipment, under the joint 

 supervision of himself and Mr. A. G. Biglow. that 

 all except two of them were safely carried by Mr. 

 Biglow from New York to San Francisco! Mr. B. 

 had stopped over one steamer on the Isthmus of 

 Panama to give his bees a cleansing flight, and one 

 queen entering the nucleus of another, both were 

 killed. The colonies to which they belonged, when 

 examined on their arrival at California, were each 

 found to have reared another queen. 



To appreciate fully the extraordinary success of 

 Mr. Cary as a breeder and shipper of Italian 

 queens, it needs but to be stated that during this 

 very year but few queens came alive, out of the 

 many sent from Europe, and that, for years after, 

 a large part of our imported queens either died on 

 the way, or arrived in such poor condition as to be 

 of little or no value. It will be remembered by 

 some of theold readers of the Amerimn BeeJinirnal, 

 that Mr. Cary was the first person to send a queen 

 across the ocean, in a single-comb nucleus, with a 

 few workers. She was consigned to my lamented 

 friend, Mr. Woodbury, of Exeter, England, and 

 reached him in excellent condition. Those who 

 now receive the queens which are sent by mail 

 from Europe, and even from Syria, should bear in 

 mind that only after many and costly experiments 

 has such admirable success been secured. 



After his splendid achievements in Mr. Parsons' 

 service, Mr. Cary greatly enlarged his own apiary, 

 and placed himself in the front rank of reliable 

 breeders of Italian queens. 



When Dr. E. Parmly, of New York, imported a 

 number of Egyptian queens, ho entrusted them to 

 Mr. Cary, having, as I know, as strong confidence 

 as myself in his sagacity and fidelity. Mr. Cary 

 first called my attention, in his own apiary, to the 

 inferior appearance of the comb honey of those 

 bees. It was capped in such a way as to look like 

 honey damaged by " sweating "— so called — after 

 being kept in too damp a place. He was also the 

 first to notice that Egyptian bees, in extending their 

 combs, built their lower edges almost perfectly 

 square throughout their whole length — in marked 

 contrast to the way in which black bees build them 

 — and improving in this respect even upon the 

 Italians. Although I imported the first Egyptian 

 queen, Mr. Cary had the largest experience with 

 this variety, and after a fair trial we both discarded 

 them as very much inferior to the Italians. 



While Mr. Cary was a great enthusiast in bee 

 culture, and always ready to accept every dis- 

 covery and improvement, he was not carried away 

 by plausible novelties or conceits. Whennear him, 

 I always took peculiar pleasure in communicating 

 to him all matters that from time to time were en- 

 gaging my attention, and our occasional, raeetinga 



