_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.