178 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



his locality ?" His own sentences 

 condemn him. Read tlie following. 

 He says : "■These bees seem to 

 think that a large flow of honey 

 should mean lots of brood, so at 

 brood-rearing they go." (That's 

 just what I want them to do when- 

 ever the weather will permit.) 

 Then follows the statement that, 

 "when fall arrives, we have a hive 

 overflowing with bees," (That's 

 what I want and can have, not in 

 the fall alone, but from spring 

 until fall with these bees.) Far- 

 ther on he says : "All are aware 

 of my views regarding the secret 

 of honey producing, lying in, get- 

 ting the bees just in the right time 

 for the honey harvest (neither too 

 early nor too late), that being of 

 more moment than any other thing 

 pertaining to honey producing." 

 Admitted. But our friend gets his 

 bees "when fall arrives !" Oh, well, 

 the next sentence sets that all 

 right ( ?) "That the Syrian bees 

 cannot be thus managed in this 

 locality is the reason of my saying 

 they are practically'' good for noth- 

 ing." Passing by for the moment 

 the fact that Mr. Doolittle starts 

 out with "Holy Land" bees and 

 concludes with a very diff'erent 

 race, the Syrian bee, I would point 

 out here that Mr. Doolittle, after 

 having admitted that these East- 

 ern bees are especially inclined to 

 rear brood whenever food is com- 

 ing in, then says he fails to get liis 

 hive filled with bees until fall, and 

 follows by saying that he cannot 

 manage these bees so as to get the 

 workers ready for the harvest. 

 And this a simple confession on the 



part of Mr. Doolittle that he can- 

 not accomplish what, to use his 

 own words, "is of more moment 

 than any one other thing pertain- 

 ing to honey gathering." How 

 does this agree with his reported 

 success in raising comb honey ? 

 Why, if I should take an appren- 

 tice in bee-culture, this would be 

 one o^ the first things I would teach 

 him ! and witii no bees could it 

 be more easily accomplished than 

 with Eastern bees. 



Mr. Doolittle further says : 

 "They have another exceedingly 

 bad feature, which is, that before 

 the young queens are fertilized in 

 the parent hive which has cast a 

 swarm, fertile workers spring up, 

 and the result is a queenless col- 

 ony." Not at all. If left to them- 

 selves, the young queens of Eastern 

 races are just as sure as those of 

 any other race to become fertile 

 and commence laying, and if fer- 

 tile workers have commenced lay- 

 ing in the hives they will almost 

 invariably disappear without occas- 

 ioning the least trouble. Eastern 

 bees are more liable than any other 

 races to have fertile workers, Pal- 

 estine ("Holy Land") bees more 

 so than Syrians. But this "bad 

 feature" is by no means such a diffi- 

 cult thing to cure with them as 

 with other bees. I usually give 

 little heed to it, introduce queens, 

 even virgin queens, put in queen 

 cells or give them brood and let 

 them rear a queen. This they 

 rarely fail to do, but carries with 

 it the objectionable feature of 

 allowing the fertile workers time 

 to 2:et worker combs filled with 



