THE AMERICAiV BEE JOURNAL. 



773 



A Charge to the Bees. 



EDITH M. TUOMAS. 



Go forth, O beea, at blush of prime. 

 Go forth, O bees, and waste no time : 

 Into the jeweled chalice climb 

 Of every bloom that opens fresh this hour : 

 And be ye sure ye flod the clover flower. 



Oh, Blight the violet, if ye will. 

 And slight tlie ereen Kold daffodil. 

 And hyacinth, made sweeter still 



By soft caressings of the midnight shower ; 



lint see ye pass not by the clover flower. 



I could forgive ye, that ye missed 



The lilac tuhes of amethyst. 



Lillies, that heaven's breath has kissed. 

 And all the sweets in wildwood Flora's bower ; 

 But see ye pass not by the clover flower. 



O bees, though ye were now released 



To search the gardens of the Kast, 

 I'll call ye htime amidst your feast ; 

 I charge you bring me honey for my dower. 

 Bring me the honey of the clover flower. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



The "Coining Bee," for Business. 



JAMES UEDDON. 



Oil pnges 742 and 74.3 of the Weekly 

 Bee Journal we lind two articles 

 upon the above subject. The object 

 sought is a giaiitl one, and one to 

 wliich no man can talte any exception. 



I wish, however, to discuss the 

 methods persued. Mr. Briggs has not 

 enlarged enough upon tlie jilan he op- 

 erated upon last season, to convince 

 me that it amounted to much. I feel 

 quite confident that the best queen 

 breeders of the country will not re- 

 spond to his call. If a popular vote 

 could now be taken as to who our best 

 queen breeders are, I would be willing 

 to wager a prize on the best judgment, 

 that not one of such breeders would 

 send a queen. I fancy that I can see 

 good reasons for not doing so, I be- 

 lieve those judicious enough to pro- 

 duce the best strains, would not be in- 

 judicious enough to send Mr. B. tlieir 

 choicest queens for $2..50, with one 

 chance in 5, 10, or 20 of drawing a prize 

 of S2o. Many are averse to lotteries, 

 and many know that a verdict of any 

 one man. or committee of men, re- 

 garding the best out of 5, 10, or 20 

 queens never seen before, would de- 

 cide about as meritoriously as the 

 decision obtained by the casting of 

 dice. They know that after all, the 

 future use of the bees reared from 

 these queens, their use by the honey 

 producers of the country at large will 

 be the tinal and only satisfactory test, 

 and almost surely reverse the decision 

 of the most worthy committee that 

 could be selected. 



Queen breeders, knowing that they 

 have a valuable strain of bees, will 

 not be very fast to deliver the best of 

 it over into the hands of another breed- 

 er. My own opinion is, that, down in 



the bottom of their understanding, 

 most of the queen breeders feel that, 

 as I have just said, the selection of 

 prize queens will he a "happen-so" 

 affair, and should it turn against them, 

 {and chance will leave them out as 

 many times to one as there are queens 

 en tered,)some novice purcliaserswould 

 turn their patronage from them. 



Fine wool sheep, Jersey cattle, or 

 any fixed type of best stock, might be 

 thus judged upon with some degree of 

 accuracy, but as we have no fixed type 

 of the "coming," or "best bees for 

 business," no such course of action 

 will prove any thing, or get any nearer 

 to the best be'es than we now are. 



If Mr. Briggs could by this unprece- 

 dented method call out the best queens 

 from the best strains now extant, he 

 would then have a good groundwork 

 upon which to commence breeding up 

 a strain worthy to compete for the 

 title of Api.'^ Amencanri, or "best 

 bee," and when he had devoted five 

 years more to the pruning and testing 

 of this strain, I would like a queen 

 from his apiary. But as no queen 

 breeder can progress with his work 

 toward the " best bee," and send out 

 his choicest from his selected queens, 

 Mr. B. cannot expect to commence 

 where the prize breeder leaves off. 

 Speaking for myself I now have a few 

 queens in my apiary that $27.50 each, 

 could not buy. I feel thus sure of the 

 cause of what success I do meet with. 

 To sell them at that price would be a 

 loss in dollars and cents, to say noth- 

 ing of discomfiture. 



1 think Mr. Briggs, like Mr. Shuck, 

 as stated on the same page, is breed- 

 ing for too many points at the same 

 time. All he wiints is the most honey 

 with the least capital, labor, and dis- 

 comfiture. It is my opinion that he 

 who leaves out the brown bee, thus 

 breeding for yellow bands, will get 

 away benind in the race. Read the fol- 

 lowing points of excellence given the 

 German bees over the Italians, by L. 

 L. Langstroth : " They commence to 

 breed earlier in the season, build the 

 straightest and most worker comb, 

 work more readily in surplus boxes; 

 they make the whitest comb honey, 

 less inclined to swarm, more sensibly 

 affected by loss of queen." 



Prof. Cook credits them with being 

 more liardy and likely to survive our 

 most trying winters. 



I wish to add that these black or 

 (Jerman bees being so different in 

 their nature and disposition from the 

 Italians, have many other minor points 

 of advantage to the master, which, 

 though small, all play a large part in 

 tlie success and comfort of a season's 

 experience. I will mention a few : 

 they alight sooner when swarming, 

 which often saves a mixing of swarms 

 and its consequent troubles ; they also 

 liive more readily, each one seeming 

 to be determined to get in first ; they 

 drive up into the forcing box in less 

 than half the time (queen and all), 

 wlien making swarms artificially ; they 

 mind the admonitions of the smoker 

 mucli more readily than do the Ital- 

 ians, etc. 



Now I am not pleading for Germans 

 I'.s. Italians, but I do insist on retain- 

 ing some of their valuable superiori- 



ties, possessed also by the brown 

 Gerinau bee, by adding this cross to 

 the "Goming Bee." 



Mr. Shuck's tabulated report, proves 

 beyond a doubt, a good season. What- 

 ever there may be of good bees, good 

 management, or good anything else, 

 we know there was a good season. 

 Now, as there is no comparison made 

 between Mr. Shuck's strain and any 

 other, we have no evidence that the 

 large yield of honey reported, is at all 

 due to his strain of bees. If such 

 is a fair iiileieuce, then their " pitia- 

 ble honeyU'ss" condition about June 

 first, is the same evidence of a worth- 

 less strain. 



Mr. Shuck says, "Mr. Ileddon and 

 Mr. Doolittle both claim to have supe- 

 rior strains of bees, yet they both 

 complain more or'less of the frequent 

 occurrence of inferior queens. 



Then he goes on with a report of his 

 honey shower. Now, are we to infer 

 that Mr. Shuck never finds any infe- 

 rior queens 'f I can not speak for Mr. 

 Doolittle's ; all I can say is that if I 

 found " fifty or sixty inferior queens;" 

 judged by a reasonable standard of 

 superiority, I should think that some- 

 thing unusual had happened to my 

 bees. But, passing through the cruci- 

 ble of my standard, I find from none . 

 to 3 or 5 worthless queens each spring, 

 and I supersede many more, not 

 " worthless," but from various ways 

 not coming up to a certain standard 

 of excellence that I have fixed in ray 

 mind and in the better part of my 

 apiary. Of course, this standard 

 moves as fast as the improvement of 

 my apiary moves forward and upward. 



If Mr. Shuck has a strain of bees so 

 nearly perfect, that they have no in- 

 ferior queens, a supersedure of which 

 is not labor well spent, then he is 

 ahead of my imagination. I never ex- 

 pect to reach such a point of excellence. 

 I know what these honey showers are. 

 I have had a larger yield, the apiary 

 through, than that reported by Mr. 

 Shuck. I had one colony, that same 

 season, which gave more than twice 

 the surplus obtained by his best colo- 

 ny, and atthe same time my bees were 

 nearly all of the German variety. I 

 never expect to realize as great a dif- 

 ference in results from different colo- 

 nies, different management, different 

 strains or races of bees, as from differ- 

 ent seasons. 



In my next I will have something to 

 say about some of the methods and 

 implements used in breeding for 

 better bees. 



Dowagiac, Mich., Nov. 26, 1882. 



For the American Bee Journal- 



Comb vs. Extracted Honey. 



W. H. BUSSEY. 



I have been much interested in the 

 discussions at the different conven- 

 tions this fall, reports of which have 

 been given in the Bek Jouunal. 

 There seems to be no definite conclu- 

 si<in as to the exact comparative cost 

 of the production of comb and ex- 

 tracted honey, and if, by means of 

 these few lines. I can get it definitely 

 settled, I shall feel well repaid. 



