The cost of rearing queens will decide their price, for of course they will not be sold at prices which do not pay for rearing and a reasonable profit besides. If buyers insist on having cheap queens, they will get them, but their value will be found to correspond with their price. The one-price rule, which is applied to queens throughout the country, has the effect of causing many poor ones to be sold at fair prices, which really should be killed. It has the tendency to discourage the rearing of very superior ones, for as a rule, a thing is no better than its price. When they are all sold at a uniform price it is to be expected they will be nearly alike in merit, as there is no special inducement for the breeder to improve his stock. The uniformity of price probably originated in the supposition that all queens are equally good, whereas experience proves the opposite to be true. A queen that lays even a few more eggs daily than another is much more valuable, for the extra number of eggs will be multiplied by the number of days that she is kept. This difference alone, so often repeated, will in time amount to more than the price of the queen. A poor queen is kept at a corresponding loss, although both may have sold at the same price. There are such things as plus and minus outside of algebra. The buying of queens at present has some resemblance to a lottery. They should be graded—at least so far as this is possible—and priced accordingly.
Combinations for the maintenance of artificial prices are impracticable and undesirable. I would only submit that prices be based upon cost of production and a _reasonable_ profit.
Already the reports of fearful losses are coming in thick and fast. Every severe winter the story is the same. Now the question arises, are these losses of bees inevitable every cold winter? If so then our business as bee-keepers is still a mere matter of luck.
During the last few years of mild winters the out-door wintering men have had things about their own way in our bee-papers. Now, are these papers not a little to blame for admitting articles to their columns giving bad advice to the inexperienced? Many have advocated the wintering on summer stands without protection or care, and persistently claim to be masters in bee-keeping. I am perfectly willing to admit that bees can be wintered very nicely on summer stands in a mild winter, also that they are wintered successfully if well packed in chaff in a cold winter; but I claim that the labor of preparing them is more than double that of cellar wintering.