182 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



ir.}- investigation. I went running to the 

 house, and while my mother was wrap- 

 ping up the painful and swollen finger. 

 I cautioned her to never get behind a 

 bumb!e bee. 



ARTIFICIALLY REARED QUEENS THE BEST. 



Some think that artificially reared 

 queens are not as good as queens reared 

 at swarming time ; but my experience is 

 that they average better. (Of course 

 there is no such thing as artificially 

 reared queens — we only assist nature.) 

 At swarming time nearly every cell is 

 started on the bottom and end bars next 

 to the cold bottom and sides of the hive, 

 and cells in such remote places do not 

 receive the warmth and care they 

 should. Now then, on the other hand, 

 grafted cell cups are attached to a cell 

 bar and hung right in the center or 

 heart of a powerful colony, and left 

 there until the last day or a few hours 

 before the queens are ready to hatch, 

 hence are never chilled on a cool day 

 or night. 



A WARM ROOM FOR TRANSFERRING. 



AH queen rearing work, such as trans- 

 ferring larvae, etc., should be done in 

 a warm room at a temperature of about 

 98 degrees, as the temperature of a clus- 

 ter of bees is about that. Bees never 

 expose their larvae to a cool atmo- 

 sphere, and how can we expect to get 

 good, long-lived, prolific queens from 

 larvae that have been chilled? 



There should be a large lump of 

 royal jelly left in each cell after the 

 queens have emerged, as it shows that 

 they have been well nourished, but you 

 can rest assured that if you give a 

 powerful colony that has been made 

 queenless and broodless, no more than 

 twelve or sixteen grafted cells, that 

 the embryo queens will be well fed. 



SUGAR SYRUP REARS POOR QUEENS. 



Queens can be reared in a queen 

 right or queenless colony. While I rear 

 queens both ways I much prefer a 



powerful colony which has been made 

 queenless and broodless, and if there is 

 not a good honey flow, the colony 

 should be fed honey diluted with water 

 to about the same consistency as freshly 

 gathered nectar. Under no circum- 

 stances feed sugar syrup, as honey is 

 their natural food which has never been 

 perverted by fire. Furthermore, I do 

 not believe good, long-lived, prolific 

 queens can be reared on sugar syrup. 

 It may not make much difference the 

 first generation, but if continued the 

 queens would no doubt become short 

 lived and unprolific. 



LINE BREEDING ADVOCATED. 



I believe in line breeding, as it is the 

 only way we can ever expect to reach 

 perfection, or have stock that will re- 

 produce itself. Possibly there are a 

 few who do not know what line breed- 

 ing is, therefore I will explain. Line 

 breeding is scientific in-breeding. We 

 introduce new blood every few years, 

 either on the drone or queen side, but 

 not direct, as it might undo a good 

 many points that we have spent years 

 to establish or make perfect. 



By careful line breeding and selection 

 we can produce a strain very nearly 

 non-swarming, then by giving plenty of 

 super room and ventilation, we can re- 

 duce swarming to a minimum, and any 

 one knows if we can keep bees from 

 swarming we would thereby get almost 

 double the amount of surplus honey. 

 Of course, most any strain of bees sup- 

 plied with combs already built, will 

 gather and store honey in large quan- 

 tities, but to determine which are the 

 most energetic workers as well as non- 

 swarmers, it is necessary to run our 

 colonies for comb honey. To show you 

 what can be accomplished by careful 

 line breeding and selection I wish to 

 state that for the last three or four 

 years I have had no more than three 

 swarms a year, and this year was a 

 year of excessive swarming. 



