Novice.
Mr. Editor:—Sometime ago, in one of our articles, we mentioned that we considered the “Apiary” department in the “Rural New Yorker” of more real worth than some of the periodicals specially devoted to bees.
We had then seen about half a dozen of the “Rurals” that contained some very good articles, from the pens of intelligent bee-keepers who were well up to the times. Since then, however, we have seen so much else there so greatly behind the times, that we must think our decision then a little hasty. For instance last week a bee-keeper takes the trouble to inform the public that “hives should be moved in the night when the bees are all in, for he had just moved some in the day time and a large number that were out, never found their hive on their return. So take notice everybody, always move your bees at night!” As this was given as a piece of valuable information, we looked in vain for some note from the editors, cautioning their readers against falling into the same error, and pointing it out. And then we wondered if the editors knew any better, or anything about bees at all, for many of their articles seem to imply that they are uninformed and publish anything they come across, indiscriminately, truth and error, without note or comment.
The editor of the Apiculturist thought it the height of absurdity because we seemed to consider him in any way responsible for what his correspondent wrote. We certainly were so innocent as to suppose that an editor knew what he was going to publish, and that should a correspondent send him an article containing a very gross error, calculated to lead beginners astray, he would tell such correspondent his mistake, without using his article; or if it contained something else good and valuable, and he decided to publish it, he would kindly mention the mistake or error, in a little note somewhere, and give his readers confidence by letting them know that some one was “running the machine” “somewhere.”
There are a large number of good farmers who refuse to read agricultural papers, because they say, and with considerable reason, that more than half that is written is “impracticable nonsense.” We believe the American Agriculturist and the American Bee Journal are at least two noble exceptions. None of their readers can fail to know that each of those papers is edited by some one who is fully posted, and is at home too every time.
The Apiculturist intimates that we think no one else has a right to start a bee journal. So far from that we would be glad to subscribe this minute for half a dozen more; if they were in charge of competent men and had the broad platform before them that our own Journal has—namely, the advancement of bee culture for the nation at large.
We should have replied to the Apiculturist before, but he “called names,” and when we were a small boy we used to make it a principle that when our comrades called us names, we “wouldn’t play any more,” and we feel just so still.
We, too, Mr. Editor, noticed the mention in the “Scientific American,” of the chicken roost bee arrangement to stop moths, and felt pained to think that anything, so far behind the times, should be found in that paper. Then, again, we noticed shortly after where they advised a correspondent to chop up his combs and strain the honey out, and mentioned too that it was said that the outside combs contained the nicest honey! Have Munn & Co., too, been sleeping in Rip Van Winkle style, or do they think us Bee Journal people not to be depended on?
We have had many letters from highly intelligent people, even professors in colleges, asking about the melextractor and inquiring whether there was no serious objection to such unnatural treatment of bees?
“Unnatural treatment,” indeed! About the 25th of last June, a farmer called on us to know where he could sell his honey best. On asking him how he had got it so early, he coolly informed us that he had taken it up, as it seemed full! But how about the brood? He didn’t know what we meant by brood, but had thrown away the young bees and did not think that they were of any use! Murdered thousands of young innocents before the end of June! Of course such treatment is perfectly natural and right. He didn’t get much for his honey.
Mr. Editor, we are getting hoarse in trying to explain, and all we tell inquirers now is to get the “American Bee Journal.” Yet many, many times they can’t afford it, and many more times don’t get time to read it. Yet the same persons will say—“Why, Novice, your forty-six hives of bees have been worth more to you than any hundred acre farm in Medina county,” and go home quite excited.
We have had a few weeks’ drouth, the first this season, and it soon stopped the honey from autumnal wild flowers.
Since Mr. Tillinghast suggested our being called “Expert” (or some such foolishness), we think we could hardly be honest without confessing some of our work this fall. For instance, we removed queen from No. 23, August 9th, and ten days after cut out thirty-two (32) queen cells. We have mentioned before that we tried hatching some of them in cages, and the rest were put in hives from which we had removed hybrid queens. We were such an expert at the business that we hatched about one-half the thirty-two, and after they were hatched, we bungled the life out of every one—some by artificial fertilization experiments; and the rest wouldn’t lay and finally died their “own selves.”
Well, (we have considerable patience,) we tried again; removed queen from No. 16, August 28, and cut out twenty-one (21) cells ten days after. Of these we did raise five laying queens; and most of the other cells were destroyed by laying them on the top of the frames when the weather was too cool. In fact we have had more cells destroyed this fall than ever before, and only saved five by inserting them carefully in place of one cut out. Now, Mr. Editor, we should have felt somewhat better at this result, had we not discovered that the original queen removed from No. 16 had been killed, and only a miserable, small, black queen reared in her place. She was put in a hive in which we had a caged, unfertile queen, and we neglected to look whether they had raised any more. Inexcusable carelessness, we call it.
To shorten the matter, we sent Mr. Grimm fifty dollars on Monday morning, and received twenty-five nice queens (or a part of them at least) on Saturday afternoon. Is not that pretty prompt?
Now, Mr. Editor, we are going to take this queen raising business up next spring just where we left off; and if we can’t do better, and at least raise enough for our own apiary, we shall call ourself something worse than
Novice.
October 10, 1870.
[For the American Bee Journal.]
Natural, prolific, and hardy Queens.
Part 3.
Answer to Charles Dadant and Willard J. Davis, in September number of the American Bee Journal, pages 60 and 61.
To commence with Mr. Dadant. He says, first, that “we are all disposed to regard our own ideas as indisputable.”
Answer. Prove all things; then hold fast to the true. Do not condemn before trial. I have been several years experimenting and am satisfied with my method, as a means of procuring natural, prolific, hardy and long-lived queens—far, far ahead of any yet given to the public. It having relieved me from the disappointment and losses heretofore experienced in artificial swarming, with forced or artificial queens, I have freely given my mode to the public, for adoption or rejection, as they see fit. Those who are set in their way, are under no obligation to either adopt or even try my mode; but there are those who are not satisfied with their present light, and who will be benefited by the knowledge of an improved process, and to them my communications are addressed.
He says, second, that I “condemn all artificially raised queens.”
Answer. I do: as against nature, reason, and common sense. I see a difference in a provision of nature, by means of which a swarm, accidentally deprived of its queen, can temporarily replace her, till one can be raised in a more natural way, and the way men in their wisdom are running the race out. You yourself prove my position by almost every line of your article, if you would only place your trials, troubles, vexations, and losses to their right account—forced or artificially raised queens. New brood may seemingly save you for a time; but when all breeders have the cholorosis stamped on the product of their apiaries, like will beget like.
He says, in the third place—“why does friend Price imagine that artificial queens are not as good as natural ones?”
Answer. Because convinced by years of experiment and careful comparison (not hard to see, I assure you) of natural with forced queens raised by the means you have mentioned in your article, and by others not mentioned. Even now I am trying the experiment of raising forced queens from the brood of a pure Italian queen received last spring from a celebrated breeder. But so far I have only succeeded in raising cripples, drone layers, and non-egg-hatching queens. Most of them play out before commencing to lay; yet I have raised them from the egg—not one of them hatching before the sixteenth day.
He says, fourth, after giving away or getting queens from the egg, “I guess this method is as good as, and more simple than, that of friend Price.”
Answer. You would go through every motion that I do, and get two or three queens, worthless in comparison with natural ones; while I would secure from ten to sixty natural ones. If you followed your own method, you would have to divide almost every hive in your apiary, if you got through swarming in any season; while by my method[1] one hive would furnish all the natural queen cells that would be wanted in the largest apiary in the time of natural swarming.
He says, fifth, “a queen hatched from grubs three or four days old is just as good as any.”
Answer. To sell!
Sixth, he says, “many bee-keepers find the half-blood Italian bees are better than pure ones”—his reason being that in and in breeding is broken up.
Answer. Those that receive them, let them swarm naturally; thus the forcing is at an end, and nature again asserts her superiority.
He says, seventh, “In good seasons the queens raised in small nuclei are as good as those raised in full stocks.”
Answer. He admits that they cannot at all times raise good ones. He had better have attributed it to the lack of a natural instinct to raise good ones. A swarm on the eve of swarming, broken up into nuclei, would probably raise pretty fair queens—say half as good as natural ones. As well might you hire a rough wood chopper or ditcher to make a watch, as to set a nucleus of bees not having the swarming instinct, to raise a first rate chronometer balanced queen.
Mr. W. J. Davis says that he does not know what effect my Revolvable, Reversible, Double-cased, Sectional Bee-hive may have had on the tender life of a young queen, forced or artificial.
As I have only used my old Langstroth hives for nuclei; my hive has of course not had any influence on them, for good or evil. But my twenty young natural queens, raised by my method, are without exception hardy, prolific, and have every promise of being long-lived. Had they been forced queens two-thirds of them would have been played out before this time. They are as prolific as any of my old “natural” queens which I bought of those who practice natural swarming only. My R. R. D. C. S. B. Hive has a good effect on the life of natural queens; and as Mr. Dadant says his bees in my hive have done better than in any other, and he has of several patents, and as he says he has only raised forced queens, my R. R. D. C. S. Bee-hive most probably saved him.
Secondly, after reading all his conditions of age, weather, season, stock, nuclei, time, and egg, that have to be consulted to insure a good queen by the forcing process, I have an idea that his queens are natural ones. Do you not bring your bees up to swarming and then secure their cells Gallup fashion? Gallup calls such natural queens. I should. Otherwise why not have good queens from March to October?
Thirdly, Mr. Davis says that “if Mr. Price or any other man will, upon examination, decide correctly, by size or fertility (amount of brood), which are of the former and which are of the latter class, he may pick out ten as large and yellow queens as he ever saw, and I will make him a present of the same.”
Answer. I have only one artificial queen laying, my pure prolific Italian. I will guarantee any of my black, “young or old,” or other natural queens, to fill five frames with brood quicker than she can fill one; and if you, or “any other man,” cannot see any difference between my forced queens[2] and my natural ones, you must be deficient in the organs of size and weight, and would not be able to tell a Shetland pony from an elephant.
John M. Price.
Buffalo Grove, Iowa.
[For the American Bee Journal.]