ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION". 69 



The Secretary. — No, I watch that they do not start any queen 

 cells on their own combs, let them rear on just the frame that I put 

 in from the best hive and do it in about the time, saj^ 10 days will 

 possibly be time enough, so your hives will be ready to put the queen 

 cell in. 



Mr. Seastream. — A queen-breeder would simply go to work and 

 take the eggs from the hives. That is all he would do. 



Mr. Bishop. — I beheve that, in doing that, you put the bees to 

 a whole lot of work, perhaps in drawing cells on their own brood. If 

 I were going to do it I would switch the whole set of frames, then the 

 work would not have to be thrown away. I would not take one frame, 

 I would switch the set of frames and then let the queenless colony 

 go ahead. If I were going to re-queen all my colonies from this one 

 queen, I would go to work and raise a batch of queens after the Dooiittle 

 plan. You can rear a batch of queens above the colony with the same 

 queen in it. Then you can go to work and put your cells in there 

 that you have prepared after the Dooiittle plan. This way you can 

 get all the queens that you want. If there is not any honey coming in, 

 stimulate them a little bit. It is no trouble then to get a batch of 

 queens big enough to re-queen the whole apiary. . 



Mr. Dadant. — When would you introduce the queen cells? 



Mr. Bishop. — I would not introduce the cells, I would introduce 

 the queens. I would introduce the virgin queens. I would go to work 

 just the day before they hatch and put those cells all down and cage 

 them. Put a screen over the top of a good strong colony, a frame with 

 a screen of fly netting, put that right over the top of the brood nest and 

 lay on those caged cells. I would put in about 12 to 15 young bees that 

 were just hatched out in the cage, lay them right down on this screen. 

 Of course you put the food in there and the candy, lay that on- top 

 of this screen and cover with burlap. When those are hatched out, 

 take the old queens out and put the new queens in. 



The Secretary. — It is as easy to re-queen with queen cells as 

 with queens. 



Mr. Dadant. — How successful are you? 



Mr. Bishop. — From those I reared myself in the past few years 

 I would get almost every one. 



Mr. Dadant. — At what age? 



Mr. Bishop. — Oh, from 24 to 48 hours old and some of them 

 really younger than that and they are the better just shortly after 

 they emerge. 



The Secretary. — Mr. Bishop, if you do lose the use of a colony 

 one year, if they are rearing queen cells, they could not do a better 

 thing, saving all the other colonies from rearing them. 



Mr. Bishop. — Yes, that is true. 



The President. — What is your objection to introducing the 

 queen cells, removing the queen and putting in the cell next day? 



Mr. Kildow. — I like that the best. 



The President. — ^I wanted Mr. Bishop to bring out the point. 

 I want to know why he introduced the virgin queen and not the cell. 



Mr. Bishop. — ^I have tried the cells quite a good bit, but j'^ou have 

 to leave a space between the combs, you have to lay the cell on top of 



