208 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



in the queen, as we readily discov- 

 ered as soon as we changed the 

 queen-mother. We know how to 

 sympathize with any one when in 

 such trouble as our friend seems to 

 be. 



SYRIAN BEES. 



We have reared only about fifty 

 S3'rian queens this year, and those 

 Avere reared late in the season to 

 fill some orders received last fall 

 by S. M. Locke & Co. We do 

 not intend to rear another Syrian, 

 Cyprian or Albino queen, for we 

 find the greater demand is for Ital- 

 ians as they give the best satis- 

 faction. Then again, we do not 

 have the time to run half a dozen 

 queen-rearing apiaries. In a few 

 years all of the new races of bees, 

 except the Italians, will be counted 

 as things of the past. It was all 

 well enough to pass resolutions 

 thanking the man who introduced 

 the new races to this country, but 

 who is ready now to offer a vote of 

 thanks to him " who did so much 

 (?) for us?" 



INTRODUCING VIRGIN QUEENS. 



We have 250 nuclei or fertil- 

 izing hives in working order. One 

 would suppose that we would have 

 no queens to introduce, but plenty 

 queen cells nearly matured to trans- 

 fer. There are of course hun- 

 dreds of cells we might insert, but 

 few are inserted as we choose to 

 introduce the virgin queens, for 

 we then know what a hive con- 

 tains that has a queen, while if a 

 cell is inserted it might not hatch ; 

 or, if a queen does emerge she 

 might be inferior or worthless from 

 some cause or other. The time 

 thus lost is of some account to us 

 as a hive j'ou know must remain 

 queenless three days before an- 

 other virgin queen can be safely 

 introduced. Although some 900 

 virgin queens have been intro- 



duced, not two per cent have been 

 lost, and not half a minute's time 

 was spent in introducing any 

 queen. Our method is to keep 

 about 150 queens in the nurseries 

 at all times. If fifty fertile queens 

 are sent off, fifty virgin queens 

 are introduced in just seventy-two 

 hours later. Thus you see every- 

 thing goes like clock-work here 

 and we are able to fill orders 

 promptly. 



PRICES OF QUEENS. 



By consulting our price list you 

 will notice that we advertise queens 

 by the dozen for $10.00. We have 

 not sold over seventy-five queens 

 at these rates. Nearly every cus- 

 tomer wants the queens we adver- 

 tise for $1.50 each. 



We have a few dark queens 

 reared from some we were testing 

 that have been offered for 75 cents 

 each or $6.00 per dozen. These 

 were such large and prolific queens 

 ttiat it seemed to us a pity to kill 

 them, and so they were offered for 

 sale at a low figure. 



By looking over the columns of 

 some of the bee journals it will 

 be seen that parties are offering 

 queens at $6.00 per dozen. This 

 one fact indicates that business is 

 quite dull with some dealers. By 

 and by, we expect these same peo- 

 ple will give queens away for the 

 sake of doing business. We ad- 

 vise such parties to rear better 

 queens, sell for a better price and 

 to rear and sell fewer queens any 

 way. There ought not to be a 

 beekeeper in the country who is 

 not willing to pay one dollar for a 

 good queen ; we know that a large 

 majority are willing and ready to 

 pay a good price when they need 

 queens. 



