THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



25 



the experienced beekeeper may know 

 concerning the bees he rears and sends 

 out to his customers, and there are otlier 

 things tliat he cannot know in advance. 

 He is supposed to know from what stock 

 he breeds and if he is observing and 

 careful as all honest queen breeders 

 are, he knows if his queens are well de- 

 veloped, for on this depends tlieir use- 

 fulness in way of prolificness and lon- 

 gevity. But he cannot know what may 

 conspire to injure the queens in the 

 mail bags and destroy their prolificness. 

 There is nothing in the form of freight 

 handled by "common carriers" that re- 

 ceives the rough usage that the mail 

 bags do. The other day I saw a '-mail 

 boy" throw a mail l)ag at a negro man ; 

 it struck the darkie about the shoulders 

 and bounded off on lo the stone plat- 

 form with a thump sufficient to jar the 

 life out of queens and bees, however 

 well put up. 



The thing that has surprised me most 

 is the fact tiiat so few queens are in- 

 jured when shipping them. In my ex- 

 perience as a queen breeder, I have 

 been much gratified to know that nearly 

 all the queens I have sent out have 

 given good satisfaction. The so-called 

 "cheap queens" from my breeding yard 

 are simply young queens just beginning 

 to lay eggs. They are from selected 

 stock and are only sold cheap because 

 they are taken immediately after they 

 are mated, thus giving room for other 

 young queens. 



I have had as much to do with queen 

 breeders as most beekeepers and I know 

 of no class of men who try harder to 

 please and do justice to all. 



SWARMING, IS IT ABNORMAL? 



Rev. W. F. Clark of Canada is nearly 

 ready to affirm that swarming is an ab- 

 normal condition. In my opinion, 

 abnormality is more likely to get into 

 the mind of the bee philosopher than 

 into the economy of the bees. There 

 is certainly no such thing as normality 

 when applied to bees in the sense of 

 fixedness of condition. The economy 

 of life in the bee-hive consists of a va- 



riety of conditions. A colony of bees 

 with queen and brood in the breeding 

 season is in normal condition. The 

 same in the winter season without brood 

 is also normal. \ swarm, with queen 

 just hived without combs and brood, is 

 in normal condition, and a colony that 

 has cast a swarm, having brood and 

 queen cell, is in normal condition. All 

 these conditions are natural to bees, and 

 therefore "normal." 



Swarming is nature's method of not 

 merely propagating the race, but scat- 

 tering the race and disbursing it through- 

 out the land, and what is natural is 

 norinal. If the times and seasons are 

 propitious, there is no way to sup- 

 press swarming without changing the 

 condition of the bees. This I do by 

 ray new manipulation without effecting 

 the normality of the colony. Just be- 

 fore swarming time I transfer the combs 

 of brood above the zinc queen-excluder, 

 giving the queen a new brood nest be- 

 low the excluder. Thus the condition 

 is changed without effecting the strength 

 of the colony or throwing them out of 

 normal conilition. The only objection 

 that has been raised against my plan 

 of preventing increase by preventing 

 swarming, is the much room it takes, 

 and that it crosses the dwarfing contrac- 

 tion system. I hold that a hive can 

 never give too much room as long as it 

 is filled with bees to the crowding point. 

 The greatest difficulty I have to over- 

 come is an empf}' brood-chamber at the 

 close of the honey season, the surplus 

 cases having caught all the honey. There 

 is want of information in the minds of 

 those persons who imagine that the 

 queen is "crowded out," during a good 

 honey flow. An admirable exhibition 

 of nature's economy is displayed in 

 connection with a profuse honey flow. 

 It is seen in the removing of all hin- 

 drance to the special work of gathering 

 in the flowing nectar. The queen is not 

 "crowded ;" she voluntarily checks her 

 activity in the brood-nest that nothing 

 hinders the harvesting. 



I have had ample opportunity to ob- 

 serve these matters during many great 



