41st YEAR. 



CHICAGO, ILL, JUNE 6, 1901, 



No, 23, 



i ^ Editorial. ^ f 



Renewing Queens. — Bee-keepers differ 

 IQ opinion and practice as to the matter of 

 renewing queens. Some say it is best to 

 leave the matter entirely to the bees. In a 

 state of nature they always renew their 

 queens when they have attained an age of 

 perhaps not more than three years, in rare 

 cases allowing them to become four or live 

 years old. Others saj- it is best to have only 

 young and vigorous queens, never tolerating 

 a queen more than two years old, while still 

 others put the age limit lower yel. They say, 

 " Breed only from your best, and never allow 

 a queen to reach an age of two years, and 

 your stock will be constantly improving." 



All agree that it is right to breed from the 

 best, but it is not always easy to tell which is 

 best if an age of less than two j-ears dooms a 

 queen to death. A queen would hardly be 

 replaced earlier than some time in June, and 

 the harvest of that year would be largely the 

 work of the progeny of her predecessor. So 

 that leaves only the harvest of one year to 

 judge from, and that is not so good as more, 

 for accidental causes sometimes come in the 

 way of deciding that would not occur a sec- 

 ond year. 



The matter of wintering is to be considered. 

 There is no doubt a difference in colonies in 

 this respect, and a queen whose bees should 

 winter well for three or four winters in suc- 

 cession, other things being equal, should 

 have the preference. 



It is possible that longevity should be con- 

 sidered. It is well known that sometimes a 

 colony exceeds the average in storing, while 

 at the same time its queen has not reared as 

 many young as the average, and some think 

 this is because of a difference in longevity, a 

 worker living a week longer than the aver- 

 age being able to store a fourth more than 

 the average, for a bee is not expected to do 

 more than four weeks of field-work, usually. 

 Itisalso true that some queens live longer 

 than others under the same conditions, some 

 queens doing as good work in the third year 

 as the first. It is not unreasonable to sup- 

 pose that if a queen is longer-lived than the 

 average that her workers will share in that 

 characteristic. !So it might be safer to breed 

 from a queen that had done good work for 

 three years, and such queens would not be 

 known unless superseding were left to the 

 bees. 



Still another point in favor of leaving the 

 matter of supersedure to the bees is that it 



interferes the least with the work of the 

 bees. When a new queen is given by the 

 bee-keeper, it may \>e so introduced that there 

 will be very little interruption in the laying, 

 but there will be alriiostcertainly some degree 

 of interruption, and it may be serious; 

 whereas, in the case of supersedure by the 

 bees there need be, and generally is, no inter- 

 ruption, mother and daughter often laying 

 for a time side by side. 



Along with all this is the fact that it is a 

 good deal easier for the bee-keeper to leave 

 such matters to the bees, and so it is no great 

 wonder that many of the most experienced 

 say that supersedure is a matter that right- 

 fully belongs to the bees. 



Scientific Breeding. — Arthur C. Miller, 

 in Gleanings in Bee-Culture, broadly hints 

 that editors of bee-papers and authors of 

 bee-books are ignorant upon the subject of 

 heredity and scientitic breeding — a charge 

 which he is probably pretty safe in making ; 

 but the reading of his article does not add much 

 to the reader's stock of knowledge upon the 

 subject. About the only paragraph that 

 gives any instruction up the subject is the 

 following: 



'•'Thoroughbred' is not 'crossbred,' as 

 any high-class stock-raiser will testify. Thor- 

 ough breeding is cautious, careful, scientific 

 in-breeding (do not confound this with in- 

 and-in breeding) ; and when alien blood is 

 introduced the result can never be foretold 

 with certainty, the chances being toward 

 atavism, the reverting to a previous type." 



Even that does not explain the difference 

 between in-breeding and in-and-in breeding — 

 merely says they must not be confounded. 

 The seeker after the difference who goes to 

 the dictionary will not be helped much, for 

 he will And one of the definitions of " in- 

 breed" to be "breed in-and-in." But Mr. 

 Miller's object is probably merely to call 

 attention to the prevailing ignorance, and in 

 that view of the case his article is timely. 

 Never, probably, was attention so much 

 drawn to breeding for improvement of stock, 

 and Mr. Miller is quite right in saying, " It is 

 high time we began to be scientific in our 

 work. The haphazard, guess-at-it-rule-o'- 

 thumb ways have prevailed altogether too 



long." 



■♦ 



Introducing Airgin Queens. — George 

 Vt, Commins says in the Australasian Bee- 

 Keeper, " A virgin queen can be introduced 

 if there are queen-ccUs in the hive, by just 

 running her in." Editor Pender replies in a 

 foot-note : 



"Virgin queens can not be introduced with 

 any certainty of sui-ccss when more than an 

 hour or two old. Any colony, having queen- 



cells started several days, will receive a virgin 

 queen that has just emerged, and often such 

 queens will be accepted by bees if allowed to 

 run into the hive immediately the laying 

 queen is removed, but there is so much un- 

 certainty the practice is not usually adopted. 

 Try a virgin say 12 hours old and I think you 

 will fail every time." 



It may be remarked that on this side the 

 globe there is good authority for saying that 

 a virgin queen just from the cell (not one 

 that has been held in the cell by the bees) 

 will be kindly accepted in any colony, 

 whether queen-cells are present or not, even 

 in a colony with an active laying queen. 

 That is meant in the broadest sense, that 

 such a queen will not be disturbed in any col- 

 ony whatever, and yet such a statement with- 

 out any additional word would be very mis- 

 leading. Put such a virgin in a hive with a 

 laying queen, and although she may be re- 

 ceived ever so kindly, you may find her miss- 

 ing a day or two later. It looks as if the bees 

 did not recognize any royalty about her till 

 she attains a few hours of age, after which 

 she will not be tolerated. If, however, it is 

 late in the season, when supersedures are 

 likely to take place at the close of the harvest, 

 then the bees ma,v take the new-comer and 

 allow her to dethrone the old queen. 



Securing Control of a Territory is 



sometimes an easy matter, and sometimes not 

 so easy. In making plans for extending by 

 way of out-apiaries, Harry Lathrop says in 

 the Bee-Keepers' Review that his first step 

 would be to secure a suitable location where 

 he would lease a small piece of ground in a 

 sheltered nook, and then says : 



" Having secured the land for a term of 

 years, I will erect a small, cheap building 

 that will serve as a shop, extracting, and 

 bunk room. A cellar will be dug, in sloping 

 ground, of suliicient size to winter 150 colo- 

 nies, which would be the maximum number 

 that I would expect to keep in that yard. I 

 would fence and clean up the ground and 

 make it as neat and handy as I could at a 

 small expense. Then I would l)uy up all the 

 bees that were for sale on the field, and begin 



to form my ajjiary One can usually buy 



at a fair price what few bees the farmers have 

 on such a field.'" 



Perhaps ; and yet in many cases the very 

 fact that farmers knew a man was engaged in 

 establishing an apiary of considerable size 

 would arouse in theiu the thought that more 

 was in bee-keeping in that locality than they 

 had supposed, resulting in an immediate rise 

 in price. Inileed, it has very frequently been 

 the case that the establishment of a prosper- 

 ous apiary bus induced others to go into the 

 business to a considerable extent who never 

 thought of such a thing until they saw the 

 establishment of that prosperous apiary. 



