1882 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



25 



ought to have taken No. 10 for mj- quecn-mothcr. 1 

 gave No. 10 an empty comb, and closed up No. 3 as it 

 was. 



April 1st I examined them again. The comb 

 given to 10 was filled out to the wood on every side; 

 the hive literally full of brood; l>ut it didn't seem to 

 me there were bees enough for the amount of brood 

 that had been hatched, while No. 3 was running 

 over with bees, and at no time had more than two- 

 thirds the amount of brood. Here, then, was a 

 study; could No. 10 be more industrious, and have 

 more workers in the field? I will wateh this thing a 

 little closer. 



I find this entry in my diary, April 12th: "No. 3 

 hanging out as large as my head; no sign of crowd- 

 ing in No. 10; No. 10 still ahead in amount of brood." 

 There seemed to be more dead bees in front of 10 

 than there were around No. 3. The thought struck 

 me, that perhaps the bees in No. 10 were less hardy 

 than those of No. 3, and the cold showers and winds 

 were killing them oil as fast as they were hatched; 

 I'll give them a trial, and see which will stand con- 

 finement the longer. I took two .")X5 section boxes, 

 cut some old tough comb from a frame filled with 

 honey and pollen, and filled my boxes, leaving a 

 half-inch space at the bottom for the bees to pass 

 around the comb. It was arranged the same as 

 your section-box shipping-cage, only a tin door on 

 one corner to put in my bees and rake out dead ones. 

 1 now caught 50 young bees from each hive, put 

 them into the cages, and placed them on a table in 

 the honey-house, a foot or so from the window, and 

 waited results. The 4th morning I raked out 3 dead 

 bees from No. 10; the 8th morning there were 13 

 dead from No. 10, while No. 3 had lost none yet. 

 The lOth day I raked out the last bee in No. 10. No. 

 3 had lost but 11 bees; the remainder were as livelj', 

 and, to all appearance, as fresh as ever. I turned 

 them loose, and think niost of them made their way 

 into some of the hives. 



Here, then, was the trouble; the bees in No, 10 

 were less hardy, and died with old age about as fast 

 as the young bees hatched out to take their place; 

 no wonder that they were not as strong in numbers 

 as No. 3. I now took No. 3 for a standard, and tried 

 the bees from 4 other colonies the same way, and in- 

 variably found that the colonies that gave the best 

 results in honey produced workers that were the 

 longest-lived. Perhaps you will ask. What does all 

 this amount toV It amounts to this much, anyway: 

 It's not always from the most prolific queen that you 

 get the best results in honey. H. A. March. 



Fldalgo, Whatcom Co., Wash. Ter., Nov. 2, 1881. 



We are very much obliged to you, friend 

 M., for the details of your experiment, al- 

 though 1 am a little inclined to think No. 10 

 had a touch of the modern spring dwindling; 

 for where bees are affected with this, it is 

 very hard indeed to make them stand con- 

 finement any length of time. We have tried 

 this in shipping bees in the spring, which 

 had Avintered over, and even the young bees 

 hatched in affected colonies. Be it as it may, 

 it is an important point ; and if the bees 

 from a certain queen will stand continement 

 better than otliers, it is exactly these bees 

 we want to send out with queens. AVe once 

 had a hive of gentle Italians that could be 

 put into a cage with any strange queen, and 

 they would never molest her. Now, if we 

 had a strain of bees that were so tenacious 



of life they would hold on to it, as a queen 

 does, for instance, together with this other 

 quality, do you not see whata grand thing it 

 would beV 



^ !■■ ^ 



WHAT I DIDN'T DO. 



-VND THE UNREAT^IZED POSSIBILITIES. 



f DIDN'T make fo-ty colonies out of one this sea- 

 son; no, sir, I didn't. I got my mouth ma^o up 

 ' for just that; and why I didn't succeed, I'll 

 presently tell you. I wanted more bees " awfully," 

 and was too spunky to buy 'em — if not too hard up 

 — and having left one colony of those on Gallup 

 frames that were in fair condition, and withal uf a 

 very prolific strain of bees, I resolved to take some 

 risks in pushing them to the very utmost. If I can 

 make ten good strong nuclei of them by the last of 

 June, thought I, why, then I can rise to twenty by 

 the last of July, and double again and reach forty 

 during August. During September I wish to build 

 them up to proper strength to winter — feeding i hem 

 lots of honey, and keeping it out of the way of the 

 queens with the extractor, if such means should be 

 necessary to prevent bnjod-rearing from coming to 

 a halt. As I just remarked, the thing didn't go 

 through according to programme. I got the ten col- 

 onies in June very nicely, and also the twenty in 

 July; but at about that point the wheels kind o' got 

 fast in the mud: too many colonies would spend a 

 whole month getting a laying queen. Early in Aug- 

 ust a long pull of sickness, preventing me from 

 making any more divisions, brought the scheme to a 

 final stop. Had it not been for this I most likely 

 would have made the forty nuclei. In spite of the 

 queen-rearing mishaps, but would have had to unite 

 some of them again probably. Some more might 

 have been made well enough, as some of the colonies 

 stored a little section honey, 17 lbs. in all. Also three 

 colonies of queen-killers and cell-tearers that went 

 to ruin while I was sick might have been saved. 

 The highest point I reached was 21 colonies; have 

 now 18 of them packed for winter; but one of theSe 

 is in a ruinous condition from a drone-laying queen. 

 I gave no brood or laying queens to this stock of 

 which I demanded such large increase. A few queen- 

 cells and virgin queens from outside stocks were 

 given when more convenient, this being considered 

 a trivial matter; in fact, I think that hardly any of 

 these were used except in the contrary colonies that 

 destroyed them. On three occasions I took brood 

 from them to help outside stocks in need, but paid 

 them for it again afterward. Empty combs and 

 combs of honey were given without stint, as the col- 

 onies that died last winti r left me more than I knew 

 what to do with of the latter. 



Now, dear Novice, I want to pile upon your broad 

 shoulders a good share of the blame of this failure, 

 claiming that It was largely owing to 



HERESY IN OUR BEE-BIBLE. 



I want the sam expurgated, expunged, and ex- 

 kioked-out right away. On page 26 of A B C (Arti- 

 ficial Swarming) you teach us to have queen-cells 

 built at stands where the queen and part of the bees 

 have been carried away. If I mistake not, the same 

 idea is encouraged in other places in A B C. By sttd 

 experience I find that at such stands the unsealed 

 queen-cells get notches torn out of them, and tho 

 sealed ones get holes torn in them. Why, the bees 

 which were carried away keep coming back dally for 



