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AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



queen and her bees to them, so they 

 were all young bees. Imagine my sur- 

 prise on finding my Mississippi queen in 

 the box, but nothing resembling "Gold- 

 dust." I at once opened the hive along- 

 side from which the first nuclus was 

 made, and, as I anticipated, found 

 about 20 queen-cells nearly ready to 

 cap over. 



I took a frame of these and gave to 

 the nucleus I had made in the morning, 

 so they might have a mother-bee that 

 was a daughter of my beloved Southern 

 beauty ; at the same time much regret- 

 ting the loss of the longed-for "Gold- 

 dust." I then took the first nucleus and 

 queen, and put them back in their origi- 

 nal hive without destroying the cells in 

 it, believing that they would do that for 

 me, and accept their mother. I waited 

 five days, and looked in to see the 

 queen-cells still there, and no eggs in 

 the two frames I picked up, and thought 

 I had now lost two queens instead of one. 



To-day (June 14:th) I examined the 

 nucleus I had given the frame contain- 

 ing queen-cells, and found a fine young 

 queen just hatched, and exactly resemb- 

 ling her mother. Then I went to the 

 colony Mr. Campbell had used, to see if 

 I could find a new queen there, but, be- 

 hold ! eggs and larvae in all stages, and 

 the same old Mississippi queen, or her 

 exact counterpart. 



Now, Mr. C. contends, and proves by 

 witnesses, that he found the queen before 

 making the nucleus, and carried her on 

 the frame down the hill to show off her 

 beauty to a friend, and after making 

 the nucleus in a hurry — for a storm was 

 coming — he positively put her back into 

 the hive. Query : Where was the false 

 manipulation ? Is the queen I got from 

 Mr. Kretchmer an exact counterpart of 

 my Mississippi queen, and that the lat- 

 ter was dropped in the grass from the 

 frame in the haste ? Or, as I think, is 

 Mr. C. not mistaken about where he put 

 the old queen, and got her into the 

 nucleus-box, and she destroyed the caged 

 one? I found what I took to be the 

 dead body of the Iowa queen in front of 

 the nucleus box the day I discovered my 

 disaster. 



Can any one throw any light on this 

 case, and show Mr. C. his error? We 

 learn more by our mistakes, anyway, 

 than our successes. 



Bees here are just beginning to get a 

 little surplus, but many colonies have 

 perished recently (while the owner's 

 were watching for them to swarm) from 

 starvation alone. In this particular the 

 experience here agrees with that of the 



Omaha correspondent on page 746. I 

 have watched my 15 colonies closely, 

 and fed them just in the nick of time, 

 and have not lost any. 



Basswood promises a big crop now, 

 and is only two weeks away. After we 

 get it, I may write again. 



Weeping Water, Nebr. 



A Visit to the Apiary of llr. G. 

 W. Demaree. 



Written for the Americaii Bee Journal 



BT J. M. PRATT. 



Early in the morning of June 29th, I 

 hitched up ray old horse, that can travel 

 something less than a mile in three min- 

 utes (and his fastest speed was when he 

 got into a bumble-bees' nest some years 

 ago), and off I struck for G. W. Dem- 

 aree's place, at Christiansburg, a dis- 

 tance of a little over 18 miles by our 

 county-make turnpike, all the way from 

 my yard gate to his, through a beautiful 

 farming country. 



At 8:45 a.m. I rang the door-bell, and 

 Mrs. Demaree came to the door. I asked 

 for her husband, and she told me he was 

 out in the apiary. So I told her that 

 was where I wished to find him, also 

 told who I was, and where I was from, 

 and then I proceeded to find Mr. D. 

 After a few words of introduction (and 

 let me say right here that thousands of 

 the readers of the Bee Journal know 

 him as well as I did before I went to see 

 him), I told him that I came to spend a 

 a portion of the day with him and his 

 bees. He gave me a cordial welcome, 

 and a shake of the hand, took my horse 

 and put it away with abundant feed. 

 Then we went to his honey-house, with 

 its extractor, three large honey-tanks, 

 honey in sections, honey in samples for 

 many years back, a large book-case of 

 law books and bee-literature, etc. 



Then we went out to the bee-yard — 

 all out in the sun, without any shade 

 trees, but a shade cover made of wood. 

 At one glance every hive could be seen. 

 While I was looking around, Mr. Dem- 

 aree lit up the smoker, and we began 

 looking into hives of Italians, Carniolans 

 and Funics. We found lots of honey 

 ready to come off, in both frames and 

 sections. I saw a colony that looked 

 very weak ; I was told they were the 

 Funics, and had swarmed themselves to 

 death. Well, we opened the hive — they 

 were not dead, for in less than a minute 

 they were boiling all over the top of the 

 hive, like a kettle of hot water, and like 



