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.