The Brownsville daily herald. [volume] (Brownsville, Tex.) 1897-1910, 1906-11-06
HER MAJESTY,
THE QUEEN BEE.
She Is the Only Living Thing That
May Go Through the Mails.
Shipped to All Sections. Leads
World in Bee Industry.

The queen bee is the only living
creature that enjoys the privilege
of travelling through the mails. Her
Journeys are made in little parlor
icar constructed out of a block OF
wood, in which three connecting
holes are bored with an auger.
! Over the top of the holes a wire
screen is securely nailed. She is
accompanied by retinue of worker
attendants, regulated in number by
the distance she is to travel. In this
little receptacle queens are sent
around the world with perfect
safety.
The honor thus bestowed upon
the queen bee by the postal authori-
! ties of all countries indicates the
importance of the industry of breed
ing queen bees.
AMERICA SUPPLIES THE WORLD.
It is literally true that America
supplies the world with queen bees.
The Italian bee has been the arts
tocrat of agriculture ever since Virgil
and Horace sung its praises in the
Augustan age. Yet all the leading
honey producers of Italy send to
Ohio or Pennsylvania for the finest
strain of Italian" queens. New
Zealand, Australia, England,
France, Germany, Austria, Russia,
South America, China aud Japan
all recognize the sovereignty of this
American queen and pay tribute in
cold cash.
The great difficulty about breed
ing queen bees in other days was
that the bees in other days would
permit only one in a hive. But the
bee breeder of America has beaten
nature at her own game and he
breeds almost as many queen bees
as he cares to. 1t is done by what
iscalled the feeding of artificial
nuclei"
There are three kinds of bees in
every hive-workers, drones and
the queen. These are produced
from two kinds of eggs-fertilized
and unfertilized. The unfertilized
egg will produce nothing but a
drone; but the fertilized will prod
uce either a queen or worker
absolutely on whether
the larvae is fed upon the royal
jelly reserved for queens or upon
the plebeian breakfast food of the
working class. The kind of food
the workers supply to the larvae is
determined by the kind of a cell
they are occupying. If the larva
is in a queen cell it is given royal
jelly and no questions asked. And
here is the opportunity OF a queen
breeder to work a goldbrick game
on the denizens of the hive and
deceive them into rearing hundreds
of queens that they have no pos
sible use for.
HOW THE BREEDER CHEATS NATURE
The breeder makes a supply of
queen cells, either of wood or of
wax. These resemble acorns, but
must be made with the greatest
care in order to deceive the workers
the hive. Into each of these arti-
fetal cells the breeder places a larva.
When the workers come along and
see the queen cell occupied by an
embryo bee they take it for granted
that it is future queen and pro-
coed to feed it on the food reserved /
for royalty. When six days old
the young princess refuses to eat
any more food and the cell is cap
ped over.
The breeder may thus start a
score of a hundred queens on the
way to development; but if he
them to be Matched there
in the ordinary course of nature
there would be hot times III the
hive when they all emerged from