THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



145 



move a colony or colonies a few miles 

 from home, and, after a few days, cage 

 the queen and form nuclei of the bees and 

 brood. Bees will usually stay in nuclei 

 quite well if they are shut in for twenty- 

 four or thirty-six hours, then well smoked 

 and drummed before they are released, 

 and a board leaned against the entrance 

 for a day or so for the bees to fly against 

 when they come out. Each nucleus 

 should contain one or more frames for 

 brood, a pint to a qiiart at least of bees, 

 and should always be supplied with young 

 brood. 



A few good queens may be reared for 

 home use by grafting brood from our 

 choice queen into natural queen-cells 

 where bees are preparing to swarm. Mark 

 the cells by pushing wire brads through 

 comb near them; watch closely, keep a 

 record, and use the cells at the right time. 

 South H.wen, Mich., .\pril 17, 1900. 



^ P>^ HE BES"^ SIZE OF FRAME 

 FOR QUEEN REARING. 

 BY W. H. LAWS. 



The greatest expense in the 

 rearing of queens is that of bees for the 

 forming of nuclei. If it were possible to 

 mate our virgin queens without placing 

 them in nuclei, or hives of bees, we 

 would accomplish that which would 

 cheapen prices and revolutionize the 

 queen trade. This, however, will prob- 

 ably never be done; and so long as the 

 world stands, queen bees will be success- 

 fully mated only by flying from a hive of 

 bees. So we queen breeders, of a neces- 

 sity, have to face this evil of tearing up 

 our good strong colonies of bees and 

 forming them into nuclei from which to 

 mate our queens. To make a number of 

 nuclei, from the L size of frame, sufTicient 

 for the average queen breeder, entails the 

 almost total destruction of a large apiary; 

 and thereby relieves us from all further 

 anxiety and trouble concerning the har- 

 vesting of a crop of honey that season. 



Then it occurs to us that if those col- 

 onies had remained intact, possibly the 

 crop of honey when sold might have 

 equaled the amount received from sale 

 of queens; to .say nothing of the skill and 

 labor necessary to successful queen rear- 

 ing. To overcome this difficulty, queen 

 breeders have sought to use a smaller 

 frame, but pretty generally, after a dis- 

 gusting trial, fall back to the standard 

 frame; having to learn by experience 

 that nuclei cannot be maintained without 

 full colonies on the same size of frame 

 from which to back them up with honey 

 or brood as they may need. The writer, 

 having tested every size of frame, from the 

 pound section up, feels free to speak. 

 The smaller the frame the less satisfac- 

 tory the results; but much better results 

 can be secured with a smaller frame than 

 one of the L size. As an experiment, a 

 number of bees from box hives were 

 transferred into little frames, three of 

 which just fitted snugly into an L frame 

 and occupied the standard hive until 

 time for nuclei making. Two hundred 

 and fifty nuclei were formed from these 

 little frames, but, as they had clo.sed ends, 

 they did not work well in full colonies, 

 and at the end of the second season were 

 abandoned. 



As a final effort, another plan was tried 

 which worked so well that its use has 

 been permanently adopted in my queen 

 rearing and mating yards. A square 

 frame for nuclei is by all odds the best. 

 A long, shallow frame, such as the L 

 size is out of proportion; and soon only 

 one end or the other will be occupied by 

 the bees. After seeing so many of this 

 size in use, where the bees with brood 

 are in one end of the frame, and perhaps 

 honey in the other, it seemed a pity that 

 those combs could not be hinged, or cut 

 in two, which would allow us to swing 

 the honey end around against the brood. 

 .Acting on this idea, in the year 1S93, 

 forty colonies in two-story L hives, on 16 

 frames, were brought in from an out- 

 yard, the upper stories being preity well 

 filled with honey. The intention was 



