February, 1908. 



American Hee Journal 



still less liable to "melt in the stom- 

 ach." The reader will readily com- 

 prehend that it is safer to go to the 

 books than to thus hurriedly - written 

 contributions for our information, es- 

 pecially on the subject of "queens, 

 which has been the most important m 

 the natural history of the honey-bee. 



Looking through different leading 

 works on bees of modern times, in dif- 

 ferent countries, we find the following 

 opinions on the age and supersedure 

 of queens: 



Germ.\n.— Dzierzon says: The queen 

 lives on an average 4 years. I once 

 had a queen 5 years old which was still 

 remarkably vigorous." 



English.— Cowan: "The queen may 

 lay for 4 or S years, but her fertihty de- 

 creases in proportion to the number of 

 eggs she lays. ... Her fertility de- 

 creases after the second year. 



Cheshire: "The queen may attain the 

 ripe old age of 4 or 5 years." 



Italian.— Doctor Dubini: The case 

 is not rare of bees substituting spon- 

 taneously a young queen for an old or 

 imperfect queen, rearing the new one 

 from eggs laid by the old one. Neither 

 do they kill her. Either she dies be- 

 fore the young one is reared, or contin- 

 ues to live side by side with the other. 

 French— DeLayens and Bonnier: 

 "Queens may live up to 4 and 5 years. 

 A queen will live longer in a small hive 

 where her laying capacity is limited. 

 When her fecundity decreases 

 the bees usually replace her by rearing 

 queen-cells. The old queen is thus su- 

 perseded by a younger one." 



American.— Langstroth : "The queen 

 usually dies in her fourth year, though 

 she has been known to live longer 

 . Queens sometimes die of 

 disease or old age when there is no 

 brood to supply their loss. Few, how- 

 ever, perish under such circumstances, 

 for 'either the bees build royal cells, 

 aware of their approaching end, or they 

 die so suddenly as to leave young brood 

 behind." ,,^ , 



Quinby and L. C. Root : "Do not keep 

 a queen longer than 3 years. Ever 

 have an eye to the queen, and if she 

 becomes deficient in any way, kt her 

 place be supplied by a new one." 



A. J. Cook: "It is not uncommon for 

 her to attain the age of 3 years in the 

 full possession of her powers; while 

 queens have been known to do good 

 work for S years. The workers us- 

 ually supersede her." 



Doolittle speaks of the superseding 

 of queens as "one of Nature's plans, 

 and, speaking of a queen reared by the 

 bees to replace her mother, says: "Had 

 I not opened this hive for a month at 

 this time, I would never have known 

 that a change had taken place, as re- 

 gards the queen." 



C. C. Miller in "A Year Among the 

 Bees" : "Some queens do excellent work 

 in their third year, and in rare cases 

 in their fourth. If quite old they will 

 be pretty surely superseded by the bees 

 about the close of the harvest. . . 

 Many more queens are superseded after 

 a good harvest." 



The same writer, in "Forty Years 

 Among the Bees," published 17 years 

 later, says: "I have had good queens 

 3 and 4 years old, but as a rule I sus- 



pect better results might be had not to 

 keep them so long." 



Root, in the "A B C of Bee-Culture" : 

 "Some queens die, seemingly of old age, 

 the second season, but generally they 

 live through the second or third, and 

 we had them lay very well even during 

 the fourth year. They are seldom prof- 

 itable after the third year, and the 

 Italians will sometimes have a young 

 queen, 'helping her mother' in her egg- 

 laying duties before she becomes un- 

 profitable." 



Summing up all these opinions, we 

 find that queens are, as a rule, good 

 for at least 2 years; that the greater 

 or shorter duration of their fertility 

 depends in part on the capacity of the 

 hive and the number of eggs which 

 the}' may be induced to lay by encour- 

 aging circumstances ; and, lastly, that 

 in most cases they are superseded by 

 the bees before their fertility is ended. 

 From this we will deduce readily, and 

 without much fear of controversy, that 

 the idea of replacing queens every year 

 is preposterous; that they should be al- 

 lowed at least 2 full seasons, before be- 

 ing replaced. But what about replacing 

 them later? 



But here is another question : Queens 

 are like hens and other animals or other 

 insects, they are more or less prolific, 

 and some prove much better than others. 

 It is very probable that there are differ- 

 ences in the contents of the ovaries or 

 of the spermatheca, as well as in their 

 ability to mature eggs and lay them 

 promptly. Every queen-breeder has no- 

 ticed how quickly some young queens 

 will fill every available space with eggs, 

 keeping their workers on a constant 

 strain to supply the brood with the nec- 

 essary food, while other queens, reared 

 at the same time, in the same manner, 

 and even sometimes from the same 

 mother, will drag along slowly and never 

 fill as many cells with brood as their 

 retinue would easily nourish. There is a 

 very plain difference in fertility. It is 

 obvious that a queen whose fertility is 

 below average will keep the colony un- 

 der average for strength, and the proba- 

 bilities are that there will be but little 

 surplus honey harvested in the colony 

 of which she is the mother. Such a 

 queen should be superseded just as soon 

 as we find out her inferiority. But we 

 must be sure that she is below average, 

 for what would be the use of supersed- 

 ing her, if we could not give the bees a 

 better one? 



According to several of the writers 

 named above — namely, Cowan, DeLay- 

 ens and Miller— that queen lives longer 

 which lays less. Miller does not say it 

 in so many words, but he says that 

 there are more queens superseded after 

 good seasons. As queens lay more eggs 

 in good seasons than in bad ones, it is 

 safe to assume that, in his opinion, 

 the superseding of queens after a good 

 season is due to their having been ex- 

 hausted by increased egg-laying. From 

 this we would conclude that the long- 

 lived queens are the poorest layers. 

 I acknowledge that it would be impos- 

 sible for me to assert this from per- 

 sonal experience, for I have never had 

 the patience to keep an unprolific queen 

 to see how long she would live. But 

 I did, in a number of instances, pre- 



serve queens of very extraordinary pro- 

 lificness, just as long as they would 

 last, and I can remember at least two 

 cases where the prolificness lasted fully 

 four years, and when I began to think 

 of replacing the queen by a young one, 

 I found, as Doolittle reports, that the 

 bees had been doing it themselves. The 

 men who, like C. C- Miller, clip the 

 wings of their queens, have a very good 

 chance to ascertain when the queen has 

 been changed, and if a closer inspec- 

 tion of the hive was kept, in general, 

 than the average bee-keeper follows, 

 many more cases of natural superse- 

 dure would be reported. 



I do not believe that there is any doubt 

 about the much greater fertility of some 

 queens than the average. It is very 

 probable that these queens have a great- 

 er number of egg-germs in their ova- 

 ries, and that these germs are also more 

 enlarged and matured by the agencies 

 of warmth and food than in the case 

 of inferior queens. This brings us to 

 the most important point. Is it not 

 better to keep your most prolific queens 

 as long as they show no signs of fail- 

 ing, and to breed your young queens 

 from such long-lived, prolific queens, 

 rather than requeen, every one, two, or 

 three years, indiscriminately? When you 

 have a queen under average, is it not 

 best to replace her at once and take 

 your chances on the young queen which 

 will very probably prove at least up to 

 average? 



If we could, in every instance, or even 

 in a majority of instances, replace our 

 old queens by new ones of whose pro- 

 lificness we were absolutely sure, there 

 would need be no hesitancy about super- 

 seding queens as often as we thought 

 best. But a queen, to be tested for pro- 

 lificness, must be located in a full col- 

 ony. If we buy queens, the breeder who 

 furnishes them cannot vouch for their 

 prolificness unles he has so tested them, 

 and they are then valuable to him, 

 and if he understands his business, he 

 will charge you a good price for such 

 queens. 



To sum up, I will say that my method 

 has always been to replace inferior 

 queens as soon as I make sure of their 

 inferiority, but in the case of good, 

 average or very prolific queens, I aim to 

 retain them as long as their fertility 

 does not decrease, meanwhile trusting 

 the bees with the task of superseding 

 such queens by some of their own stock 

 if they should notice the decrease of 

 their powers before I do. After all, 

 Doolittle is undoubtedly right when he 

 says that natural supersedure is "one 

 of Nature's plans." 



Hamilton, 111. 



Strong Colonies Desirable as 

 Well as Profitable 



BY J. E. HAND. 



We often hear of colonies of bees 

 becoming too strong in the spring prior 

 to the honev harvest, and it is claimed 

 by some of our best bee-keepers that 

 siich colonies do not, as a rule, do as 

 satisfactory work at storing surplus 

 as a medium colony, some even going 



