58 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Jan. 15 



ang from all my colonies, twelve in number. 

 In the summer, in December, last year, when 

 the honey-flow ceased I was disappointed in 

 the Italian bees casting out all their drones 

 so that I had to abandon all hope of rearing 

 any purely mated queens, not having time 

 to rear drones artificially. This year I hope 

 to continue my experiments, and, if success- 

 ful, I may afterward be able to judge which 

 bee is the better, and whether the Italian is 

 likely soon to acclimatize and acquire, 

 through experience and inheritance, those 

 qualities that are essential in our country. 

 If she behaves in the same way in her native 

 land as ske has done here this first year, 

 then she has, besides her gentle nature, only 

 one quality better than our bee — namely, of 

 putting on a tremendous spurt to bring in 

 the last drop of an ebbing honey-flow. 



Langstrotn made mention, in his book, of 

 this quality of the Italian bee of filling the 

 brood-chamber with honey, but did not state 

 wheMier or how this drawback was over- 

 come. I should be very much pleased to 

 learn from the editor, or somebody else, 

 what those men experienced who first intro- 

 duced the Italian bee into other countries, 

 and how they succeeded in educating it up 

 to the customs of the adopted country. 



We have no foul brood in South Africa. 

 As the disease is, according to most books, in 

 the honey-sac, the starvation cure being the 

 most effective remedy there seems to me no 

 danger of importing queens in traveling- 

 boxes, as I have received mine, in the ac- 

 companiment of about 25 bees, provided ev- 

 ery thing but the queen is immediately de- 

 stroyed on arrival. Or do you agree with 

 those who advise us not to import foreign 

 bees? 



Likewise, I should be very glad to be in- 

 formed whether the governments of other 

 countries appoint bee-experts who go about 

 lecturing on bees, giving demonstration les- 

 sons, and generally teaching people how to 

 work with bees. Such encouragement from 

 the government would certainly tend to pro- 

 mote bee-keeping; but has it any drawbacks? 



Harmony, Pretoria, Transvaal, South 

 Africa, July, 1909. 



[It is probably true that Italians are more 

 inclined to congest the brood-nest with hon- 

 ey than blacks. While for the production of 

 comb honey this is a slight disadvantage, yet 

 for the future prosperity of the colony it is 

 an advantage. If, however, the modern 

 methods of comb-honey production are fol- 

 lowed there will be no great difficulty in 

 getting Italians into the supers. 



We do not believe that foul brood can be 

 carried in the ordinary mailing-cage provid- 

 ing the precaution is taken to transfer the 

 queen from the cage in which she is received 

 to an entirely different cage for introducing. 

 The only way of carrying infection would be 

 through the honey used in making bee- 

 candy. Reputable queen-breeders in this 

 country, so far as we know, make it a prac- 

 tice to sterilize the honey which they use for 

 making queen-cage candy. If the party at 



the other end of the line who receives the 

 queen transfers her to an entirely different 

 cage we do not see how the disease could be 

 transmitted. Of course, as a further precau- 

 tion the mailing-cage should be burned. 



England sends out bee-experts to lecture 

 on bees in different sections of the country. 

 Just how much of the territory they cover 

 we do not know. Something oi this kind is 

 done in other European countries. So far 

 the United States has done nothing of this 

 sort except that its experts in the Bureau of 

 Entomology, Washington, D. C, sometimes 

 go out to attend bee conventions, where, of 

 course, they are called on to read papers. 

 Some States of the Union send out foul- 

 brood inspectors who not only give direc- 

 tions on how to cure bee diseases but furnish 

 valuable information on the general hand- 

 ling of bees.— Ed.] 



QUEENS HATCHED ABOVE AN EXCLU- 

 DER. 



A Good Plan for Keeping Surplus Queens. 



BY A. J. BURNS. 



Last fall I put some thirty or forty ripe 

 queen- cells in as many upper stories, pro- 

 vided with an upper entrance with a divi- 

 sion-board between made of very thin boards 

 with a three-inch hole bored through on 

 each side of the center about midway be- 

 tween the ends, and covered with excluder 

 zinc. Of the whole lot I got only three 

 queens fertile; the rest disappeared, or I 

 found them dead on the division-board. A 

 number of others disappeared similarly. I 

 then began to watch for the cause. I saw 

 nearly all the young queens just after emerg- 

 ing, so I know they had a fair start. One 

 day I saw a young queen crossing one of 

 these openings when a worker came up 

 from below and seized her and almost in- 

 stantly stung her. A few spasmodic quivers 

 and she was dead. The queen below was 

 less than a year old. In the light of Mr. 

 Beuhne's experience, page 1062, Sept., 1908, 

 perhaps if the queen below had been three 

 years old or over it would have been differ- 

 ent; but I do not often have queens as old as 

 that. I then tacked a piece of wire screen 

 on the under side of the opening, and near- 

 ly all were fertilized; however, by this time 

 I did not have many queen-cells left, and it 

 was too late to start more. 



I found these queens to come in most op- 

 portunely later. Half a dozen or more colo- 

 nies became queenless through various 

 causes. I took one of these stories, bees 

 and all, where there were two queens and 

 changed places with one of the stories of 

 the queenless colony, taking the story with 

 the most or least honey, or most or fewest 

 bees, as seemed advisable under the circum- 

 stances; placed a sheet of paper between 

 the strange bees so they would mingle grad- 

 ually, and all went well. 



San Diego, Cal., Nov. 30. 



