Volume 6 / Part 3 — 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 method1 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 queens2 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.]