750 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Oct. 



ing- hor off, caused her to be unproliflc ever after- 

 ward, and that, to remedy this, they caged sucli 

 queens a day or so before they send them off, 

 which allowed them to rid themselv-es of their eggs 

 before they were subject to the rough usage they 

 must be subjected to in the mails. I maj' not have 

 quoted this just right, but have given the impres- 

 sion it left on my mind at that time. Soon after 

 this I saw where another of our brethren recom- 

 mended the taking of queens out of full colonies, 

 which were to be sent off', and leaving them in a 

 nucleus a week before they were shipped, for in 

 this way they became like a queen which had just 

 got to laying in a nucleus, and such queens were 

 scarcely ever injured by shipment. Putting the 

 whole together 1 believed that the trouble lay in 

 the sudden and unnatural stopping of a prolific 

 queen from laying, so I went about experimenting 

 to see if I were right. I caught two of my most 

 prolific queens and caged them the same as I would 

 do for shipment, giving them the usual number of 

 bees for an escort, placing them in my shop, where 

 I would occasionally handle them and give them 

 about the usage I thought they must receive where 

 g'oing by mail or express. Others were caught and 

 handled as carefully as possible, all being kept 

 from the hive from one to two weeks, some even 

 having the workers renewed on account of the first 

 set dying from confinement, and upon returning' 

 them as heads of colonies again, at least one-third 

 of them proved of little value after that, none of 

 them coming up to their former proliflcness after- 

 ward while they lived. Having solved the matter 

 to my satisfaction, that queens were injured by 

 suddenly stopping them from prolific egg-laying, 

 and not by the usage they received in the mails, 

 I next went about finding out if this unpro- 

 liflcness had any effect on daughters from these 

 once prolific queens, but now almost valueless 

 mothers, and am pleased to be able to go on record 

 as saying that, so far as I can see, such injured 

 queens give just as prolific daughters after their 

 confinement as they did before. Since then my ad- 

 vice has always been, where I have had occasion to 

 say any thing about it, that the receiver of a queen 

 which he has bought for breeding purposes, go 

 about rearing queens from her immediately, as 

 soon as any of her brood is old enough to use for 

 that purpose. In this way the buj-er gets a fair re- 

 turn for his money, even if his queen does not turn 

 out all that he would have her be, as has been the 

 case with many I have purchased. 



G. M. DOOLITTI.E. 



Borodino, N. Y., Sept. 17, 1888. 



Friend I)., the quotation you inalie was 

 from some of Ernest's replies. Very likely 

 he put it too strongly, for we state in the 

 ABC book, and I have frequently stated 

 through Glkanixgs, that occasionally a 

 queen will never lav at all after a trip 

 through the mails. This matter has come 

 up because of uncharitable conclusions that 

 have been drawn in regard to some of our 

 queen-breeders. As an illustration : Some 

 one who does not cultivate the spirit that 

 " thinketh no evil," sends for a choice 

 queen. She lays very little after being re- 

 ceived, or never lays at all. He feels indig- 

 nant, and sets the man down as a swindler, 

 saying he did not believe the queen ever 

 was a good layer. I should say, that per- 



haps one queen in a thousand of those we 

 send out by mail fails to lay after being re- 

 ceived ; and since you speak of it, I do re- 

 member that such reports seem to have 

 come from the very best layers. Now, al- 

 though this sudden stoppage of egg-laying 

 may result in damage, 1 would under no cir- 

 cumstances want a queen kept three or four 

 days out of the hive, before being mailed to 

 riw. Queens suddenly removed from the 

 hive do not always stop laying eggs at once. 

 I have many times seen them drop their eggs 

 on the wires of their cage, and I have seen 

 the accompanying workers greedily devour 

 them as fast as they were laid. I think we 

 have had reports of queens depositing eggs 

 while in a wire cage, over the frames in a 

 hive, and that the workers in the same hive 

 placed them in cells from which to raise 

 queens. Now, to carry the matter so far as 

 to say th at ere)-?/ queen carried by mail or ex- 

 press is injured, is, I think, going to the 

 otiier extreme. As good layers as we ever 

 had in our apiary were among the imported 

 queens that crossed the ocean ; and queens 

 received every spring from the remote 

 South have given as good results as any 

 among those that were never removed from 

 the hives at all. I should say, that certain- 

 ly not one queen in ten suffers any injury 

 whatever after she fully recovers from her 

 trip through the mails. We should be very 

 glad indeed to hear from those who have 

 purchased queens largely. Are those that 

 have taken a trip through the mails less 

 prolific than those that have never been 

 moved from their hives V — Your concluding 

 point is a good one, and I would advise 

 every one who purchases a high-priced queen 

 to set about rearing stock from her as speed- 

 ily as possible— not only on account of her 

 passage through the mails, but because any 

 queen is liable at any day to die or to stop 

 laying. Just so with a valuable strawberry- 

 plant. I would make it put out runners, 

 and get some younger plants the very first 

 thing I did; then, if you choose, make the 

 parent plant bear fruit, to see what it is like. 

 Tiie only queen I ever owned, that lived to 

 be four years old, was an imported one, and 

 she was fairly prolific during the fourth 

 season. 



HONEY AND ITS ANALYSES. 



SOME ADDITIONAL SUGGESTIONS FROM FRIEND 

 STACHELHAUSEN. 



fHE question has come up, "Is it possible by 

 chemistry to tell whether honey is adulterate 

 ed or not? " I fully agree with the article of 

 Prof. Cook, in Gleanings, page 640; but we 

 know of some ways to detect certain adulter- 

 ations. 



To make it sure, the first question is, "What is 

 honey?" This is not quite easy to answer, for the 

 chemist. We know that honey of different flowers 

 has quite different composition. Dr. Sieben analys- 

 ed 60 different samples of surely pure honey, and 

 found from 68 to 79% of dextrose and levulose— an 

 average of 74 ^G. Of dextrose there was 36;,', and 

 levulose 39%. Sometimes the quantity of both 

 kinds of sugar is exactly the same; this was found 

 in 11 samples. In 13 samples, more dextrose was 



