1884 



GLEANIKGS IN BEE CULTUllK. 



G-5U 



MAILING QUEENS ACROSS THE 

 OCEAN. 



ALSO SOMETHING ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BE- 

 TWEEN THE TERMS PALESTINE, HOLY- 

 LAND, AND SYRIAN. 



MR. A. I. ROOT:— Five parties sent me queens, 

 of these but one, Mr. F. W. Burg-ess, suc- 

 ceeded in getting- me the required number 

 of queens alive and in fair order (see 

 Gleanings for Jan., 1884. pag-es 18 and 10), 

 and he has received his prize queen — a six-dollar 

 Carniolan (see Gleanings for July 15, page 477). 

 One other party only, Mr. C. Weckesser, of Marshall- 

 ville, Wayne Co., Ohio, succeeded in getting me a 

 live queen —one out of three sent by him (one came 

 dead, and one failed to reach me). As the one 

 queen he got through alive was in good order, I 

 have concluded to award him a discretionary prize 

 out of the fund, though, of course, he has failed ac- 

 cording to the strict construction to be put upon 

 the offers published In Gleanings of last fall. But 

 I have credited him with half the price of an im- 

 ported Italian or an imported Carniolan. 



As I have now made a complete success of send- 

 ing queens by mail from here to America, and that 

 without having received a single available hint 

 through the shipments made to my address, I see 

 no reason why the offers of queens free to those 

 who can mail queens to me alive should longer re- 

 main open. But there are still a number of queens 

 due to make out the !?25.00, accepted on condition I 

 could send out the amount in queens, and these I 

 conceive should be sent to you. 



I do not know what sort of queens, i. e., what races 

 you might prefer: you seem to be well supplied 

 with Italians; Carniolans, which, for my part, I 

 consider far preferable to Italians, seem to be held 

 as unworthy any mention in Gleanings; Cyprians 

 have received faint praise in the same publication, 

 and I find the terms Syrian, " Holy-Land," and Pal- 

 estine all used by Gleanings as though they meant 

 one and the same race of bees — a race which the 

 said journal seems to regard as worthy of fui-ther 

 propagation, so I have ventured to mail you a queen 

 raised at Jerusalem (actually on Mt. Zion), Pales- 

 tine— a queen which I call a Palestine queen — 

 which might be called a " Holy-Land " queen if that 

 term were to be used in its strict sense, but a queen 

 which belongs to a very different race of bees from 

 the Syrian race found on Mt. Lebanon, Syria. If 

 this " Holy-Land " queen doesn't produce the sort 

 of Eastern bees you prefer, then, to avoid getting 

 another such queen. Gleanings will have to see 

 that there is a clear distinction in its columns be- 

 tween real "Holy-Land" (Palestine) bees and Syri- 

 ans (the bees of the Lebanon in Syria). With me 

 there will be next year just exactly this distinction: 

 I shall sell queen-bees imported from Palestine at 

 just three-fourths the price asked for Syrians im- 

 ported from Mt. Lebanon. Note that: Palestines 

 (true "Holy-Lands") at 35 per cent less than Syri- 

 ans. When I make this offer I think I know what 

 the American (and, for that matter, the European) 

 bee-keeping public want, and I hate no fears that 

 queen-purchasers will make their orders read "Holy- 

 Land" or Palestine for the sake of 25 per cent lower 

 price. No, they will put the word SYRIAN in plain 

 capitals, and there will be no palming-off a Pales- 

 tine on them, as I am now doi no on you, under the 

 fine-suunding name " Holy-Land," which, as hereto- 



fore used, has seemed to mean Palestine or Syrian, 

 as happened to suit the convenience of writers, 

 readers, queen-purchasers, or queen-sellers. But I 

 must say, I think the writers and the queen-sellers 

 have had the best of the bargain, the readers ha\'ing 

 been left by the writers in a lamentable muddle re- 

 garding Eastern races, and the sellers have con- 

 trived to keep the poor purchasers buying "Holy- 

 Lands" until they (the unfortunate purchasers) 

 could hit upon the "right strain" (doubtless the 

 true Syrians — from Mt. Lebanon). 



Thus, friend Root, when this queen reaches you 

 She will have traveled the whole distance from the 

 city of Jerusalem to Medina, O., by mail in a Benton 

 mailing-cage— almost half way round the world. I 

 have mailed many queens this year from Munich to 

 various parts of Europe and America, and every 

 one of the former have arrived in prime condition, 

 while but two have thus far been reported dead, 

 and but two others not in splendid order upon arriv- 

 al in America. One of the two which arrived dead 

 was delayed a week on the way, through having 

 been addressed to Ohio instead of Indiana, and the 

 other dead one got chilled accidentally before leav- 

 ing Europe. Most of the reports from queens sent 

 to America have been: "No dead bees, and queen 

 in first-class order," or "Two dead workers, or 

 three, or four, dead workers; rest bright and live- 

 ly." The shipments have been 14 to 24 days on the 

 way. Mr. AVm. Little, of Marissa, 111., reports that 

 two Italians sent him took wing immediately upon 

 opening the boxes, wliich had been 24 days on the way 

 from Munich to his place. There were four dead 

 workers in one box, eight in the other, rest in prime 

 order. One of these queens was laying within 12 

 hours after her arrival, the other aftef three days. 

 As I have not found (jueens that were in flrst-class 

 order after their journey by mail, were impaired in 

 their usefulness in the hive, I do not hesitate to say 

 I have made 



a COMPLETE SUCCESS 



of mailing queens to America, and I shall be ready 

 in 1886 to send them by mail to any post-oflBce in the 

 world which can be reached M'ithin 25 days, and up 

 to 21 days I will guarantee safe arrival. 



Some of the parties who have received these 

 queens have spoken of my "good luck" in getting 

 them through in fine order. But, there's no such 

 thing as "luck" about it. More than ten years ago 

 I mailed queens on long journeys within the United 

 States, and I haven't ceased to think about the mat- 

 ter ever since then. Of late years, " the gude wife " 

 has helped me in my experiments, and, though I 

 have thought hard and long over the matter, she 

 surely deserves a share of the credit for this final 

 success. Very truly yours, Frank Benton. 



Munich, Germany, Aug. 30, 1884. 



Thanks, friend B.; but it tloes not seem 

 even yet that it is worth wliile to make a 

 distinction between Syrian and Holy-Land 

 bees. The queens sent by friend lloward 

 were sent from Palestine. In regard to the 

 Carniolan bees, I thought 1 would hold on a 

 little before I decided to perplex our readers, 

 especially the A B C class, by stiJl another 

 kind of bees ; and although I have ordered 

 three queens, 1 confess I feel as if I wanted 

 to give them a pretty good test in our own 

 apiaries before I recommend them as pos- 

 sessing superior qualities. Very likely 1 am 

 slow in taking up new things ; but the fact 



