244 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUEE. 



J^IAY 



REARING ITALIAN QUEENS IN HIVES CONTAINING 

 OLD BLACK QUEENS. 



Last July I placed a queen-cell in a hive in which 

 there was a laj'iug queen that was old. The young 

 queen came out all right, and superseded the old 

 one. The cell was placed in the corner of a frame 

 outside of the brood-nest, and the bees were gather- 

 ing a surplus at the time. The same experiment 

 was tried on another hive in September, witba like 

 result. The old queens were blacks, and the young 

 ones Italians. J. M. Beattv. 



Shaw's Landing, Pa., April U, 1883. 



Why, friend B., I feel ashamed of myself 

 to think I have never thought of what you 

 suggest before. We liave, for some time 

 back, been learning that hives often contain 

 an old queen and a young one at the same 

 time, and I have, too, mentioned cases where 

 queen-cells had been given nuclei, supposing 

 their queen was lost, and it transpired that 

 both were in the hive when the first queen 

 began to lay. Now you have gone and 

 capped the climax, by showing us how we 

 can Italianize without having a hive queen- 

 less a single day, and without even being 

 obliged to hunt up the old (pieen. The great 

 drawback is, that we don't always know 

 how old our black queens are, and that, un- 

 less they are old, the been would probably 

 destroy the queen-cell, or tlie young queen 

 after she is hatched. You may remember I 

 have mentioned letting queens from the 

 lamp nursery into hives containing queens. 

 Sometimes they tolerated them several days, 

 but I always took the old queen out after 

 they were well received. Such experiments 

 succeed better with either pure blacks or 

 Italians. Hybrids are not much given to 

 accepting strange queens or queen-cells. 



DRONE BROOD RESULTING FROM INJURY TO THE 

 QUEEN. 



Last fall I bought of a neighbor a Cyprian queen, 

 which had mated with an Italian drone, and she pi'o- 

 duced some large, fine, marked bees. When I looked 

 at them in March, there was some worker brood 

 capped over, with some four or five drones, in work- 

 er cells, raised and capped. After that, all of her 

 progeny were drones. On examination, I found the 

 second ring of the abdomen, on the left, indented. 

 Could that have been the cause of her producing 

 nothing but drones? It was a mystery to me until I 

 saw the secret which I believe to be the cause of it. 

 But, why should it cause her to lay all drone and no 

 worker eggs? Would it keep the sperm from com- 

 ing in contact with the egg as it passes out? If so, 

 then all eggs must be drone eggs until they come in 

 contact with the sperm. I leave it with scientists to 

 solve, if there is any mystery about it. 



Bees are in good condition, and breeding up nice- 

 ly. Fruit-trees are in full bloom, and bees arc busy 

 gathering the nectar. Geo. W. Forman. 



lliplcy. Brown Co., O., April 6, 1883. 



You are probably correct in your deduc- 

 tions, friend F.; for, if I remember rightly, 

 we have several cases on record where 

 queens laid only drone eggs after injury 

 from careless caging, or something of tliat 

 sort. It seems a little dlHicult to account 

 for the injury you mention, unless it was 

 done by careless handling of the combs, and 

 you speak as if it happened in the winter, 



when the hive was not opened. All eggs 

 are drone eggs, I believe, until the queen 

 has been fertilized. 



are FREQUENI importations NEEDED? 



I am satisfied, from what experience I have had 

 with bees, that, if we wish to keep up our stock to a 

 proper standard, we must keep adding pure blood. 

 They will do very well to about the tlyrd generation, 

 and then we had better stop and ge<ra pure import- 

 ed queen. We will get more or less black blood, and 

 whenever we begin to cross these hybrids with each 

 other we have the most worthless set of bees that 

 can be gotten up. Cross pure drones with pure 

 black queens, for one cross seems to improve them ; 

 but mate a black drone with a pure Italian queen, 

 and we make them worse at the start ; and the longer 

 they are crossed, the worse they get. M. Young. 



Loveland,0., April, 1882. 



Although there may be truth in what you 

 say. friend Y., I can "not help thinking you 

 piit it almost too strongly. I would advise 

 having an imported queen to rear from, 

 about once in four or five years, and I have 

 never been able to see any difference in the 

 working qualities of hybrids produced by 

 either of the methods you mention. 



starting with one colony. 



Bees have wintered splendidly here this winter. 

 Mine have not consumed over 10 lbs. of honey per 

 colony. I commenced the. ^ring of 1881 with one 

 very weak colony of bees; increased to three strong 

 ones, and got but very little surplus honey, on ac- 

 count of dry weather in the fall. I bought three 

 colonies of blacks this spring, so I will commence 

 the season with 6 good colonies— 3 Italians and 3 

 blacks. I shall Italianize the blacks, and run three 

 for comb hon^y, and three for increase. I forgot to 

 say, those dollar queens I got from you proved pure- 

 ly mated; one of them (the first I got the 14th of 

 May, 1S81) produces the nicest yellow three-banded 

 bees I have seen anywhere. John B. Crooks. 



Keith's, O., April 1, 1883. 



The winter of 1880-'81 was a most disastrous one 

 for bees in this section of country. I think the loss 

 must have been fully 80 ppr cent. "Very many lost 

 all of their bees. I was one of the lucky ones. I 

 went into winter quarters in October, 1880, with 11 

 colonies — 9 blacks, 1 Italian, and 1 weak hybrid. To 

 prepare them for winter, I went through each hive, 

 weighed the frames, and cut winter pass ages through 

 the combs. I then packed them on their summer 

 stands with oat chaff between the frames and body 

 of the hive (I use the closed-end Quinby frame), 

 put a thin cloth over the frames, and put on a chaff 

 cushion about 5 inches thick. My bees came through 

 all right, excepting the hybrid; that died In February. 

 I had fed them unsealed honey in the fall, and think 

 it caused their death. The honey season of 1880 was 

 very poor here, my 11 colonies giving me but about 

 50 lbs. surplus. I never saw bees buildup so rapidly 

 as they did last spring. Long before T expected it 

 they were storing honey very fast. But, from what 

 I afterward learned, I suspect they did not get it 

 all honestly. Several of my neighbors, who had lost 

 their bees, neglected to secure what honey the bees 

 left in the hives, and before they were aware of it 

 their honey was gone, and very likely my bees and 

 my neighbors' bees made use of it. I commenced 



