(Entered as second-class matter July 30, 19lJ7, at the Post-Offife at CbU^agn, ill., under Act of March ", 1879.) 

 Published Monthly at 50 cents a Year, by George W. York & C«»., 118 West Jackson Boulevard. 



GKOKGE W. YORK, Editor 



CHICAGO, ILL,, JULY, 1908 



Vol, XLVIII— No, 7 



editorial ^oCes 

 and Commenfs 



To Avoid Swarming as Much as Pos- 

 sible 



Run for extracted honey, not comb. 



Use large hives, giving room, both in 

 brood-chamber and in supers. 



Give abundant ventilation. This by 

 having a large entrance, and also venti- 

 lation at each story by shoving it back- 

 ward or forward so as to make a space 

 of 54 inch for ventilation. 



Locate hives where they will have the 

 full benefit of every passing breeze. 



Shade the hives. 



Breed from stock showing least in- 

 clination to swarm. 



These are some of the things that will 

 help to minimize swarming. 



introducing Queens 



One of the troubles, at the same time 

 one of the charms of bee-keeping, is 

 that varying circumstances keep one on 

 the alert to meet them with varying 

 practises, hence varying views that keep 

 interest constantly alive. Some would 

 prefer to have set rules by which one 

 could always be governed, but many 

 would not like such dead-level mon- 

 otony. One of the things that does not 

 seem to be settling rapidly into dead- 

 level monotony is the introduction of 

 queens. For one thing, there seems to 

 be a decided difference of opinion as to 

 the best time for the removal of the old 

 queen. Replying to a question, the Brit- 

 ish Bee Journal says : 



"It was a mistake on your part to put 

 the caged Italian queen beneath the quilt 

 of a strong colony of bees and leave her 

 there from Wednesday to Friday. The 

 very fact of a laying queen being at 

 work below would so irritate the bees 

 against the stranger as to cause her re- 

 jection. Had the laying queen been re- 



moved, and the colony rendered queen- 

 less before introducing the Italian, the 

 chance of her being accepted would have 

 been far greater." 



In this case, leaving the old queen un- 

 disturbed in the hive for 2 days after 

 the caged new queen was put in is con- 

 demned as wrong practise. And yet that 

 is the very thing that E. T. Abbott, on 

 this side, has so strenuously urged, and 

 there seems a growing inclination to ac- 

 cept the Abbott plan. 



The introduction of virgins is well 

 known to be more difficult than the in- 

 troduction of laying queens, yet what is 

 called the dual introduction of virgins 

 in fertilizing-hives seems to be very 

 successful. A caged virgin is put in 

 while a previous queen is still there, re- 

 maining a prisoner until the first queen 

 is laying and removed, when the work- 

 ers are allowed to get at the candy and 

 release the prisoner, perhaps at the same 

 operation another virgin being impris- 

 oned. In this way each virgin in her 

 turn may be imprisoned a day, a week, 

 or more, but always is put into the hive 

 while her predecessor is still there. In 

 this plan the virgin always takes the 

 place of the laying queen, and one would 

 think a laying queen would be more 

 readily accepted than the virgin. Yet 

 what one would think does not always 

 turn out to be the correct thing. 



In the case of our British friends, 

 nothing is said about what was done 

 when the old queen was removed, 

 whether the new queen was at once 

 released upon the combs or the bees al- 

 lowed to release her in the usual way by 

 eating out the candy. Mr. Abbott says 

 the queen may be let loose on the combs 

 a very few hours after the removal of 

 the old queen ; but the general practise 

 probably is to allow the bees to free the 



queen by eating out the candy, just e.\- 

 actly the same as if the old queen had 

 l.ieen removed before putting in the new 

 one. 



Virgin Swarms 



These are very common, so it is not 

 strange that sometimes there is con- 

 fusion as to what is meant by a virgin 

 swarm. Not unnaturally, the beginner 

 is likely to think that a virgin swarm 

 is one that has a virgin queen. Second, 

 third, and indeed all afterswarms have 

 virgin queens, but an afterswarm is not 

 a virgin swarm. It sometimes happens 

 that a prime swarm, especially one com- 

 ing early in the season, itself sends forth 

 a swarm the same season, and such a 

 swarm is a virgin swarm. As the old 

 queen issues with a prime swarm, it 

 naturally follows that a virgin swarm 

 does not have a virgin, but an old 

 queen. 



Requeening by Unqueening 



It has been held by some that when a 

 queen is removed from a colon}', the 

 bees are in such haste to rear a suc- 

 cessor that they select for royalty lar- 

 vae too old for best results. For 25 

 years S. D. Chapman has been re-queen- 

 ing his colonies annually by merely re- 

 moving the old queen a week before the 

 close of the honey harvest, leaving to 

 the bees entirely the task of rearing a 

 successor, and the question being raised 

 as to whether by this means his bees 

 have not deteriorated, he answers, in the 

 Bee-keepers' Review, "No, certainly not ; 

 why should they? 



"If we condemn the cells started by 

 my plan, we must condemn every cell 

 that is started by those colonies that'are 

 superseding their queens — they are alike 

 in every respect. The desire to swarm 

 is absent in either case, and we do not 

 want it present. 



"In requeening a whole yard, my plan 

 has this advantage that all queens are 

 reared in heavy colonies ; and when we 

 take away the queen from a colony, the 

 bees start less than one-third the num- 

 ber of cells they do in the colony that 

 swarms ; that is, where we do not take 

 away the queens till the latter part of 

 the honey flow." 



Those who charge the bees with such 

 poor judgment as to select too-old larvae 



