1900 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



721 



graphical sketch. The statement that he pre- 

 pared was written so modestlj' and so well I 

 can not do better than to present it just as he 

 wrote it. 



Mr. Pridgen gives full credit to all the breed- 

 ers who have contributed toward success of 

 the modern methods now in vogue among the 

 principal queen-breeders. But the foundation, 

 as I take it, of his plan, is the Doolittle. This 

 he has modified somewhat by the methods in 



the cocoon, larva, and the food enveloping it, 

 and inserts it all at one operation into one of 

 his prepared cups, or goblets. Still more, as 

 if the wholesale idea had not been carried far 

 enough, he and Doolittle have conceived the 

 idea of dispensing with cell-cups altogether by 

 getting the bees to build cells in holes in a 

 stick ; but more anon on this. I suspect that, 

 if one gets thoroughly used to Mr. Pridgen's 

 method, he will find it more rapid than any 



THE tANGSTROTH MONUM tCNT, PURCHASED BY BEE-KEEPERS OF THIS AND OTHER LANDS. 



use by the Atchleys, and then improved on so 

 that he has at last developed a system that is 

 as practical as it is unique. It is the most 

 wholesale of any of them. Instead of mak- 

 ing artificial cell-cups one by one he practical- 

 ly makes them by the hundred. Instead of 

 attaching these cups to the cell bars one at a 

 time, he secures them in lots of a dozen or 

 more. He does away with melted wax, does 

 away with grafting by means of a toothpick, 

 and in a wholesale short-cut manner takes out 



that has ever before been suggested. But at 

 present our Mr. Wardell prefers, as I said in 

 our last issue, the Doolittle method of grafting 

 a larva and royal jelly by means of toothpicks. 

 But this reminds me that another queen- 

 breeder, who has been almost thirty years be- 

 fore the bee-keeping public, after having tried 

 all the plans, I take it, agrees with Mr. War- 

 dell in that he prefers drone-comb cell-cups ; 

 but, unlike Mr. Wardell, and like Mr. Pridgen, 

 he prefers to dispense with royal jelly, believ- 



