THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



L. I., to advise him how best to breed 

 and disseminate the Itahan (Ligurian) 

 bees which he had recently imported. 

 Finding that the person who came in 

 charge of most of these bees could 

 not do the work that was expected of 

 him, I advised Mr. Parsons to secure 

 the services of Mr. Gary. With great 

 energy of character and good business 

 habits, he united long experience in 

 the management of movable frame 

 hives with an enthusiastic desire to 

 see the introduction of these foreign 

 bees made a success. From my in- 

 timate acquaintance with him, I 

 could further assure Mr. Parsons that 

 with all these requisites for the posi- 

 tion, he possessed in as large a degree 

 as any one I had ever known, that 

 "highest fidelity" which Columella, 

 nearly 2,000 years ago, declared to be 

 an essential qualification for tlie 

 superintendence 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 justified his selection, 

 while the foreigner, in a separate 

 apiary established by Mr. Parsons, 

 and furnished with just the same fa- 

 cilities for breeding queens, failed to 

 rear enough even to pay for the black 

 bees and food that he used in his 

 operations. Mr. Gary supplied all 

 the queens needed in Mr. Parson's 

 apiary and filled all his numerous 

 orders. 



No better proof could possibly be 

 given of the extent and thoroughness 

 of his work, than the fact that 113 

 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 Pan- 

 ama 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 

 Galifornia, were each found to have 

 reared another queen. 



To appreciate fully the extraordi- 

 nary success of Mr. Gary 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 the old readers of the 

 American Bee Journal, that Mr. 

 Gary 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 excel- 

 lent 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. Gary greatly 

 enlarged his own apiary, and placed 

 himself in the front rank of reliable 

 breeders of Italian queens. 



When Dr. D. E. Parmly, of New 



