1910 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



211 



CONVERSATIONS WITH 

 DOOLITTLE 



AT Borodino, New York. 



WHAT CONSTITUTES A GOOD QUEEN? 



' ' I have read your Conversation, October 

 15, and I want to know how you raise good 

 queens so late in the season." 



"How do you raise good queens at any 

 time of the year, Mr. Van Deman, or in mid- 

 summer, when a good yield of nectar is on?" 

 "That is very simple. I let the bees do it." 

 "Sure. And the bees do it in the fall. It 

 is just as simple the first half of September, 

 with feed and a little manipulation, as it is 

 the first half of June, in this locality. In 

 fact, the conditions during the former are 

 equally propitious with the latter, for the 

 first half of June gives us a dearth of nectar 

 and more fluctuating weather than does Sep- 

 tember. But in either case, by feeding and 

 stirring the bees up they are brought into as 

 nearly the same condition at these times as 

 are your bees in mid- summer when you just 

 let the bees raise the queens themselves. 

 In June the bees are more active than they 

 are in September, when, as a rule, the ex- 

 citement brought about by feeding is all that 

 is necessary to put them in the same condi- 

 tion they are when a good flow of nectar is 

 on. But in September the bees are not so 

 active; and to bring them into the condition 

 to raise good queens, after feeding for two 

 days the queea is taken away from this col- 

 ony (which should always be the strongest 

 in the apiary) , and the next day the bees are 

 caused to fill themselves with honey by 

 drumming on the hive, when four-fifths of 

 them are shaken into an empty hive or box, 

 the sides of which are covered with wire 

 cloth. They are kept in this box from 9 A.M. 

 to 2 P.M. Then all but the sealed brood 

 which the colony contained is taken away, a 

 frame of prepared cell cups given, and the 

 bees returned from the box. During this 

 five hours of being boxed, both the few bees 

 left in the hive, and especially those in the 

 box, come to realize fully that they need a 

 queen, and need it fully as bad as in natural- 

 swarming time, which works them up to as 

 much activity as is possible at any time of 

 the year. This, with the continued feeding, 

 brings out an extra-fine batch of queen cells 

 from which emerge as fine queens as you 

 ever set eyes on. However, with the excep- 

 tion of early spring and in the fall, our 

 queens are reared in upper stories over a 

 queen - excluder. See 'Scientific Queen- 

 rearing.' " 



"Now how about the drones? " 

 ' ' Near the close of the drone-brood sea- 

 son, all the brood of that persuasion is taken 

 from the three or four colonies having the 

 best drone mothers at their head, and this 

 brood massed in a strong queenless colony 

 which is kept very strong by giving it, an 

 upper story, into which frames of emerging 

 brood are inserted as often as is necessary 

 to keep up the required strength. When 



our September-reared queens are ready to 

 mate this hive is looked over, and all the un- 

 der-sized drones, and those apparently de- 

 fective as to wing power, shape, or other- 

 wise not what we would hke, are killed off, 

 when this colony is regularly fed between 

 12 and 1 o'clock each day, which causes an 

 activity of these drones much above normal. 

 In this way we get queens equal to those 

 reared at any time, and, as all other drones, 

 or at least the most of them, are now killed 

 off, we get all of these queens mated to what 

 has been termed 'hand-picked' stock." 



"Do you select your breeders from these?" 



"Very many of them." 



"What constitutes a good breeder?" 



"As a rule, we prefer a perfectly develop- 

 ed queen of about medium size. We have 

 found that queens of abnormal size, or those 

 much under size, are not equal to those 

 which are about normal. Aside from s ze 

 and perfect development, we next ascertain 

 how her eggs are laid. If scattered about in 

 the combs with missing cells here and there, 

 together with some stuck on the sides of the 

 cells, she can not be classed as a good breed- 

 er. Now, understand, this is when she has 

 a hive of empty combs before her, as any 

 queen has, as a rule, when she first begins 

 to lay. If there is brood emerging here and 

 there in the hive, any queen will scatter her 

 eggs about among this brood, no matter how 

 good she is. Then when her brood emerges 

 from the cells and gets straightened up, say 

 three days after they begin to emerge, these 

 bees should be of normal size and show the 

 regulation markings, while her queen pro- 

 geny should be of the kind as to develop- 

 ment, size, etc., as was the mother." 



"Tnere seems to be no standard as to 

 what constitutes a pure queen of any race." 



"I fear you have not read the many good 

 books on bee-keeping. Nearly all of the 

 books like the A B C and X Y Z of Bee Cul- 

 ture, Langstroth, Quinby. etc., treat on 

 these things, and I would refer you to them." 



"All right. But what is the size of a col- 

 ony that can be called strong in the spring, 

 say when the first pollen comes?" 



"At a New York State bee-keepers' con- 

 vention, some 25 years ago, this same ques- 

 tion came up, and a committee was appoint- 

 ed to report on it. As my memory serves 

 me, that committee told us that any colony 

 which, on the first of May, in an average 

 season, on a morning so cold that there was 

 a frost, showed a cluster of bees between 

 seven combs, or what is known as a six- 

 space cluster, could be considered a good 

 colony of bees, as such colonies would give 

 better results at the end of the season, other 

 things being equal, than colonies showing 

 either more or fewer spaces occupied. And 

 as I remember it, the sense of that conven- 

 tion was that the five-space cluster was pre- 

 ferred to any colony occupying from eight to 

 ten spaces, or what would be considered an 

 extra strong colony at that time of the year. 

 Years of experience has told me that the re- 

 port of that committee was a wise one for a 

 latitude ranging between 40 and 45 north." 



