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THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



shoulders. — Mr. Doolittle says that he has 

 secured, on an average, §500 per year in rear- 

 ing and selling queens: and, while he does not 

 say whether he would have made more 

 money had he devoted his whole time to 

 honey production, he does say, in substance, 

 that the iiueen biisiness is too fascinating to 

 be abandoned. We know exactly how he 

 feels. — He places great stress upon the im- 

 portance of the queen, and expatiates upon 

 the bountiful yields resulting, largely, from 

 the possession of extra, double-superfine 

 XXX queens. Others have done the same. 

 We expect it will be called heresy, but, many 

 times, when reading extravagant expressions 

 about "the whole of bee-keeping centering 

 upon the queen." etc,, we have felt like ex- 

 claiming : "Other things being equal, one 

 queen is as good as another I " This may be 

 putting it stronger than the case will bear; 

 besides, it does not e.ractly express our 

 views. Perhaps we cannot make our mean- 

 ing clear, but we will try. It is not so much 

 what a queen is herself, as it is what her an- 

 cestors were; or rather what her bees are. 

 That is, she may be an insignificaut looking 

 specimen, may have been reared in a man- 

 ner wholly at variance with the established 

 principles of queen rearing, may be one of 

 those short-lived affairs whose days are soon 

 numbered, yet, if she comes from the right 

 stock, her bees, whatever may be the number 

 of which she becomes the mother, are junt as 

 good bees as ca II be prod need. Do not mis- 

 understand us. To be sure, we must have 

 queens that are sufficiently prolific to keep 

 the brood-nests full of brood at a time of 

 the year when this is desirable : and possess- 

 ed of a longevity that will enable them to 

 perform this feat two or more seasons ; hav- 

 ing this, what more is needed? As a rule, the 

 honey producer need trouble his head very 

 little about the rearing of queens : the bees 

 will attend to that, and furnish just as good 

 queens as are needed. If his queens don't 

 fill the brood-nests in the proper season, 

 how much more practical to simply reduce 

 the size of the brood-nests until the queens 

 do till them, instead of ransacking the earth 

 for more prolific queens, or else by twisting, 

 turning, and shifting about of combs, en- 

 deavor to make one queen lay an increased 

 number of eggs. Mr. Doolittle cites cases 

 of enormous yields from single colonies, and 

 gives the credit, largely, to the queen. No 

 bee-keeper would be so fooUsh as to pur- 

 chase the queens of these colonies, expecting 



that, in the future, he would secure such 

 wonderful yields. But, friends, trying to 

 secure the greatest possible yield from the 

 bees of one queen, is not practical bee-keep- 

 ing. Dollar and cent bee-keeping works for 

 the greatest profit, and cares not whether 

 one queen lays all the eggs, or if it's the 

 work of a dozen. This whole subject is too 

 large to do it justice in the brief space allot- 

 ted to this review ; it needs to be made the 

 special topic of a whole number ; and, if 

 queen breeders and others show sufficient 

 interest in the matter, we will devote some 

 future number to its discussion. — Mr. Doo- 

 little still pleads for the necessity of "fol- 

 lowing Nature." While we are confident 

 that the methods employed and advocated 

 by our friend are such as will result in good 

 queens, we cannot repress a smile, as the 

 perusal of chapter after chapter shows how 

 completely he has, by artificial means, 

 taken matters into his own luotds. It is not 

 a question of whether or not we shall inter- 

 fere with the plans of Nature, but, will this 

 interference bring about desirable resultsf 

 Thousands of instances might be mentioned 

 where, guided by his reason, man's disturb- 

 ing hand has so turned the course of Na- 

 ture's steps that her bountiful treasurers 

 were unloaded within easy reach ; when, had 

 her path been undisturbed, no treasures 

 would have been yielded up. — No coloi-y, 

 says Mr. DooUittle, ininiediatelu begins the 

 construction of queen cells upon the remo- 

 val of the queen ; hence it is better to allow 

 a colony to remain queenless about three 

 days, then remove all the brood, and give 

 the colony eggs or larvte from which to rear 

 queens. A colony from which all the brood 

 has been removed should not be allowed to 

 build more than one batch of cells, as the 

 nurses become too old. — A larva in a worker 

 cell has all its wants supplied for the first 

 day and a half, and is developed towards a 

 queen just as fast, up to this time, as it 

 would have been in a queen cell : in fact, 

 Mr. Doolittle says that a larva 'M hours old 

 can, by being transferred to an embryo queen 

 cell, be changed into a queen that will be in- 

 ferior to none. — Mr. Doolittle makes what 

 might be called "dipped " queer cells. He 

 dips thfe end of a rake tooth in melted wax, 

 lets it cool a little, dips again not (luite so 

 deep, then again not quite so deep as the last 

 time, continuing this until an embryo, cup- 

 shaped, queen cell is formed. As he can 

 make 200 an hour, this is not so big a job as 



