AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



281 



I Questions and Answers. | 



CONDUCTE 



DR. O. O. MII.I^Eie, Alareago, 111, 



. tThe Questions may be mailed to the Bee Journal office, or to Dr. Miller 



direct, when he will answer them here. Please do not ask the 



Doctor to send answers by mail.— Editor.] 



Italianizing— Transferring-^Painting Hives. 



1. I have six colonies of black bees that did not swarm 

 last season, but stored a little surplus honej', and have win- 

 tered in fair shape. Would it be gfood business to requeen 

 them with untested Italian queens ? If so, at what time in 

 the season should it be done ? I do not wish to prevent 

 them from swarming'. 



2. I have four colonies that are on frames that have 

 thin top-bars that sag- with the weight of the combs, and 

 some of the combs are not built straight so they can be 

 handled easily. Would it pay to transfer them to Hoffman 

 frames with full sheets of foundation ? If so, at what time 

 in the season should it be done ? There have been bees in 

 the combs for 10 or 12 years. I wish to secure comb honey 

 altogether. 



3. Would it do any harm to paint hives with the bees in 

 them ? Ohio. 



Answers. — 1. Almost certainly it would be a decided 

 advantage to trake the change. The only reason for put- 

 ting in that " almost " is that it is a bare possibility that 

 you have black bees that are unusually good, and that you 

 would get Italians that are unusually bad. But that is very 

 unlikely to be the case. The new queens can be given at 

 any time when it best suits your convenience. 



2. Most likely it would pay well to transfer to more 

 satisfactory frames, whether Hoffman or something else is a 

 question. If propolis is as plenty with you as with me, you 

 will hardly want Hoffmans, but you can have frames that 

 are self-spacing like the Hoffman without so much surface 

 for propolis. But instead of changing the combs for foun- 

 dation, why not transfer the combs into better frames? 

 The age of the combs is nothing against them. The straight 

 combs would be transferred very easily — do it in fruit-bloom 

 — and it is possible that at least some of the crooked ones 

 could be straigtened, or put in piece-meal. 



3. No. it will be all right, providing you make an ar- 

 rangement with the bees that they will not sting the painter. 



Clipping Queens— Other Management. 



I expect to have about 40 queens to clip this spring. 

 They are mostly in standard hives, but there was no brood 

 foundation used, and I expect the combs are not in very 

 good shape to hunt for queens. 



1. How would it work, to place a hive filled with foun- 

 dation in frames under a colony of bees (or perhaps have 

 one frame of brood and a queen), place a bee-escape be- 

 tween the two hives, and belo%v the escape have a cage of 

 perforated zinc ? Would the bees go down and accept the 

 lower queen, and the upper queen attempt to go down and 

 get caught in the cage ? 



2. Would there be danger of draining the upper hive so 

 thoroly that the brood would be left to chill ? 



3. If this plan would work, how long do you think it 

 would take to trap the queen from the time the escape was 

 placed, in warm weather ? Iowa. 



Answers. — Instead of answering your questions in 

 ordpr, please allow me to bunch them. In the first place, 

 unless you have queens " to burn," you may as well dismiss 

 the idea of having a queen below. Your idea, no doubt, is 

 to have the frame of brood and the queen there as a sort of 

 attraction. Altho the brood would be to some extent an 

 attraction, a strange queen would not. The probability, if 

 not the certainty, is that she would be promptly balled and 

 killed. Even if the bees should be friendly to the queen 

 below, she would do no good. When there is a general 

 stampede, and the bees leave the hive en iitasse, the queen 

 goes with them. But in your scheme there is nothing of 

 the kind. A bee leaves the hive in the regular course of its 

 duties, and in doing so passes down thru the escape, and is 

 unable to return. There is nothing about that to make the 



queen want to go down. Neither is there when two bees or 

 several thousand have gone down. All that she knows is 

 that there seems to be getting to be a scarcity of bees, and 

 that's no reason why she should desert her post in the 

 brood-nest. So you may about as well give up the scheme 

 as impracticable. 



You do not say whether your object is merely to clip the 

 queen, or to get the bees to move their brood-nest below. In 

 either case, you can drum or smoke out the bees, hunt out 

 the queen and clip her, then return. If you want the brood- 

 nest to be moved below, put the queen in the lower story, 

 with an excluder on it, then place over it the old hive. In 

 three weeks time the worker-brood will be all hatcht out 

 above, and you can do what you please with the upper 

 story. If you do not want to drum out the bees, you might 

 proceed another way : Put under the hive a story filled 

 with foundation (all the better if you can give it a frame of 

 brood), with no excluder between the two stories, and allow 

 the bees to work down of their own accord. As soon as the 

 queen becomes crowded for room above, she will move 

 downstairs, and when you find eggs there you may look for 

 her. Possibly you may not find her, for until about all the 

 space upstairs is filled with honey she will keep going from 

 one hive to the other. But your chances of finding her be- 

 low will be constantly on the increase, and after you do find 

 her, if you want the brood-nest to be below, you must use 

 an excluder. 



Before doing anything else, it will be well to make a 

 thoro investigation in each case, and see if you can not find 

 one, two, or three frames that can be taken out, and then 

 the rest might be cut out and transferred correctly into the 

 frames. 



\ ^ The Afterthought, "i" | 



The "Old Reliable" seen thru New and Unreliable Glasses. 

 By E. E. HASTY, Sta. B Rural, Toledo, O. 



MATING OF QUEENS IS CONFINEMENT. 



The front picture on No. 12 resuscitates an old enthusi- 

 asm, or fad, or " image of something in heaven above," at the 

 shrine of which we all did vainly worship in time past — until 

 the missionaries of common sense gently led us away. Possi- 

 bly they were misguided in doing so. "Go in," Mr. Hutchin- 

 son ! go in everybody who can't be entirely " asy " in mind 

 about our present breeding 1 I feel quite strongly that the 

 power to mate the individual drone to one individual queen 

 would do us more harm than good ; but the present scheme 

 does not contemplate that exactly. It contemplates mating 

 an individual queen to a nature-selected drone of a man- 

 selected colony. More good than harm would come of that I 

 think, providing success could be had. As Mr. Hutchinsoa 

 suggests, success must be theoretically possible, providing 

 some one is willing to spend effort enough, and cash enough,, 

 in building big enough. But let me also revive a related idea. 

 Those who live near great plains on which there is no tree or 

 hollow crevice, and no bees, can perhaps have the same thing 

 cheaper. Take your wagon and drive out a few miles upon 

 the plain, carrying your drone colony and your nuclei with 

 virgins. Little islands are apt to be abnormally cool just 

 when you want them to be hot ; and at such stations queens 

 drown : but plains incline to be hot at 2 p.m. 



Possibly I can suggest some improvements on the tent 

 shown in the picture. Suppose we abandon the gasometer 

 shape, and let the starting model of shape be that of a race- 

 track rooft in — track only, center circle not occupied. Then 

 flying around and around insects can go as many miles as they 

 wish in a course that will not require any halting and turning 

 back. Suppose we abandon the netting and use cheap cotton 

 cloth. Abundance of light will come thru it : and it removes 

 most of the temptation to butt in the effort to get out. 

 Cheaper, much stronger, makes no on the sewing-machine 

 more kindly, holes which may develop will be visible instead 

 of invisible— better every way (except perhaps the deadly 

 didn't think-of-it one), and excepting the obvious objection 

 that it will take more wind, and need to be more strongly sup- 

 ported, lint with cloth cover and race-track shape I don't 

 believe it will need to be more than 1 H feet high. Presum- 

 ably it will be possible to fly young queens and drones in 

 such a course in ignorance of the fact that there is any 



