THE AUSTRALIAN BEEKEEPERS’ JOURNAL. 
113 
using Nature as a sort of motive power only- 
in gaining our own end*. Does not the word 
“artificial," made u»e of by Mr. Abram to 
denote certain kinds of swarms, indicate that 
they are not natural f Look at the result of 
select breeding in all our domestic animals, 
and say whether we hare laboured to assist 
Nature or to assist ourselves ? Most decidedly 
the latter, and in doing so we have had to 
fight hard agninst Nature, ever looking for- 
ward to some ideal standard as our goal. 
I hardly know what Mr. Abram mean, 
when he says: “If anyone wants to rear 
pure queens of a certain race of bees, and 
kills the hybridised queens to rear others 
again in the hope to be morcsuccersful at the 
next attempt, does he kill them and rear 
othcrs in order to work against the natural 
habits of the race of bees, or is it the nature 
of the bees to hybridise? Certainly not. 
The queen breeder only assists them in keeping 
the race pure." If he means that cross- 
breeding between queens and drones of 
different varieties is unnatural, I would ask 
him how it is that it comes about in a natural 
way ? The words hybrid and hybridise are 
here used out of place. A hybrid is the pro- 
duction of two species — a mongrel. There 
are many varieties of the true honey-bee, but 
only one species— Apis Mellifica. It is per- 
fectly natural for the different varieties to 
cross breed, and any steps the queen breeder 
mav take to prevent cross-breeding is fore- 
stalling or working against Nature, and is 
done with the view.of benefiting himself, not 
to assist the bees. What care they whether 
they cross breed or not? Most certninly it 
is unnatural to kill queens simply because 
they have not mated us we wished, but it i» 
profitable, and wo do it without any other 
thought. 
In the fourth paragraph Mr. A. begins by- 
saying that “the long shallow frame is an 
absolute necessity for a hivo that opens at the 
top only,” which tends to show that he ha* 
either written this sentence without a thought, 
or that he knows little or nothing about this 
kind of hive. What is to hinder anyone, if 
he so wished, using a tali narrow hive opening 
at the top? Nothing. Why, three of the 
principal hive* that were used before ths 
Ling. noth took their places, were of this 
description. The “ American " took a frame 
12-in. by 12-in. t the “Gallup" one, U^-in. 
by Hi in. | and the "Adair," 13|-in. by 
1 1 i-in. The long shallow frame has been now 
generally adopted in America and other places 
simply because it was found to be an 
improvement on the other*. Mr. A. speaks of 
risk of injury to bees, ffco. Is there not more 
or less risk when handling the frames in any 
hive ? Certainly, and the risk is much greater 
where you can only see one side of the 
frame and comb as you take it from or re- 
place it in the hive. Again he falls into an 
error by assuming that I only k<tp “black and 
hybrid becs," and argues from that standpoint 
against the size of the I.ang. troth and in 
favour of the Berlepsch brood chamber. I can 
inform Mr. A. that I have worked pure 
Italians for the past five and a-half years, 
many of the queens coming direct from Italy. 
Yet again in error, when he says that two 
storeys (supers) of the Langstroth hive give 
room for nearly 1501'os. of noney. Now the 
utmost that can he crowdtd into one full 
storey is 56lbs. of comb honey and about 
ttOlbs. of extracting, which gives 112 and 
120lbs. respectively for two storeys. Mr A 
asks why two or three storeys are riquired? 
I must refer him to some modem work on bee 
culture for an answer to this question, as my 
letter has now reached a U ngth considerably 
beyond what I anticipated. At the conclusion 
of the paragraph he says : “ l’ew are the ob- 
jections ‘Apis’ has raised against the ller- 
lepsch hive which I have felt it my duty to reply 
to.” This is self-evident, for l.e has not re- 
lied to a single material objection raised 
y me, so where is the use of his letter? It 
is simply a reiteration of what he said in his 
article. 
Mr. A. appears to have a very special strain 
of Italian queens, such as I have never heard 
of before, that “ breed fust in spring," when 
but a limited amount of hotter is to be had, 
and “decrease breeding" ns soon as plenty 
can be gathered. They certainly must be ex- 
traordinary queens, for the general rule is in 
the opposite direction ; but as four or five 
frames, full of honey from top to bottom, can 
be taken occasionally fr< in the brood chamber 
of his hive, as Mr. A. tells us, there seems to 
be no mistake about it. 1 hare always been 
under the imprtssion that otic of the distinct 
advantages in the cultivation of Italian bees is 
the extra prolifiento* of the queens compared 
with those of the black variety, and 1 have 
found it so, but Mr. A. mu»t n member that 
we are not all in po*>e»sion of such queen*, 
and therefore we n quire n different hive to 
the one he is u.ing. Now, let us sec win. I 
amount of breeding space is left in the It< r • 
lepsch hive after five cotub* in the bro-sl 
chamber arc filled with honey. Each bred 
fmme contains 121 square inches, which, mul- 
tiplied by 50, the nuiul* r of worker cells to 
an inch on both sides of the comb, give* 
0050 cells. This again multiplied by five, 
the number of flames left for breeding in, 
gives '10,230 worker cells. 
This is the full number that can be built 
within five Herlepsch frames, but there are 
usually odd corners in all frames that are not 
