1910 



tiLEANIX(iS IX BEE CULTURE 



283 



Conversations with 

 Doolittle 



At Borodino 



CONDITIONS WHICH INFLUENCE THE DE- 

 VELOPMENT OF QUEEN-BEES. 



"I reared a few queens last summer, and 

 was infatuated with the work. What are 

 the conditions under which the bfst of 

 queens can be reared?" 



"Did you ever go to a colony which was 

 preparing to swarm, Mr. White, and ask the 

 bees how they reared queens so as to bring 

 themselves all the way down, from creation 

 to the present, in such good condition?" 



"But, Doolittle, queens can not be reared 

 in the numbers needed for market as the 

 bees rear them for swarming })urposes." 



"Possibly not, under just the same cir- 

 cumstances, but we can come very near to 

 it. Most of those who advertise queens for 

 sale do the best possible to bring about the 

 conditions needed, I think." 



"A few years ago one of our noted men 

 said, ' In a normal colony a queen emerges 

 into an atmosjihere of warmth and high 

 humidity, and has accessible an abundance 

 of nutritious and stimulative food.' Would 

 that describe the condition in which queens 

 emerge under the swarming instinct?" 



"Yes, and it also describes the condition 

 under which most queens emerge, when 

 reared where an old queen is superseded by 

 the bees during July and August, the time 

 of year that supersedure occurs most often." 



• ■ And are queens reared under the super- 

 sedure impulse as good as those reared un- 

 der the swarming impulse?" 



"I have not found them inferior." 



"Does the Swarthmore plan come under 

 either of these conditions? I read in a paper 

 purporting to tell what Swarthmore said re- 

 garding the little colonies in which he had 

 his queens during the time they emerged 

 from their cells, time of mating, and till 

 they w^ere sold or given to his own colonies, 

 where he desired to requeen: He said that 

 twenty-five bees will mate a queen. Fifty 

 will do it better, but more than a small tea- 

 cupful is a i^ositive disadvantage. When I 

 read that I said I was going to talk this mat- 

 ter over with you; and if you, who have 

 Ijeen in the queen business for more than a 

 quarter of a century, endorse this statement, 

 then I was going into the queen-rearing 

 business by putting a big advertisement 

 into each of the bee-papers, splitting up 

 part of my colonies into teacupful lots, w'hen, 

 by the pre-introduction plan, I could get a 

 dollar queen from each teacupful once a 

 week. As each colony would make from 

 twenty-five to fifty such cupfuls for that 

 many nuclei, I could make 500 or more nu- 

 clei from the colonies which I put into 

 queen-rearing, and work the rest for honey. 

 In this way I would more than double the 

 results from my apiary each year." 



"You remember what you quoted from 



one of our noted bee-keepers, one having 

 years of practical experience, about the con- 

 ditions under which queens emerge in nor- 

 mal colonies. Well, that normal colony 

 condition can not be obtained in any com- 

 mercial queen-yard, subject to all of the 

 changes of weather in your latitude and 

 mine, with a teacupful of bees of any age; 

 and I have been greatly surprised that some 

 of our bee-papers should lend their influence 

 toward baby nuclei and the pre-introduction 

 of queens to sucli. I have tried the matter 

 very fully, introducing to my own colonies 

 the queens thus reared, so that I could prove 

 this matter before I sent out any queens 

 that might be a damage to those who pur- 

 chased them, and the result proved that 

 such queens did not come up nearly to the 

 standard of those which emerge aiid were 

 mated in nuclei having from three to six 

 full combs, with bees to cover them fully, 

 as has been my way for the past thirty 

 years; so that all of this pre-introduction 

 and twenty -five -to -fifty -bee baby-nuclei 

 contraptions have been burned." 



"But you did not tell why a normal con- 

 dition could not exist witli a cupful of bees." 



"It is barely possible that it might in 

 mid-summer, in a latitude like Florida and 

 Texas, where there are no cool nights (if 

 there be such a place) ; but with us who are 

 not so favorably located, it is best to be 

 sure that all of our queens have the advan- 

 tages of the conditions in a normal colony 

 which is about to make a change of queens. 

 Based on many years of practical experience 

 and close observation I find this; W^hen a 

 queen emerges from the cell she is far from 

 being a fully developed insect. She is a 

 white, soft, 'mushy thing, easily mashed 

 and susceptible to "cold and neglect unless 

 held in her cell by the bees as in after- 

 swarming. But in" a commercial queen- 

 rearing yard where only one cell is placed 

 in a nucleus, or as in pre-introduction, 

 where a cell is placed in a cage, queens are 

 not so held, and these queens, just from the 

 cells, need a high temperature and the hu- 

 midity and nutritious food found in a nor- 

 mal colony. And by reducing this in any 

 particular the perfect development is by that 

 much retarded, and the queen is damaged 

 in proportion to the reduction. Imagine, if 

 you can, such high temperature, humidity, 

 and nutritious food, in a little thin box out 

 in a night when the temperature goes dow^n 

 from 38 to 50 degrees, with 50 bees to pro- 

 vide the same. Or in any of the pre-intro- 

 duction cages provided with candy, as un- 

 tritious food for the queen, and wire cloth 

 for her to snuggle uj) against, like a prison- 

 er, which she is, instead of an escort of bees 

 to fondle her, or the expanse of a normal 

 colony to roam in. Xo, the man who is 

 taking up space in our bee-papers in pro- 

 claiming the improvement of our bees by 

 selection, by importation, by various cross- 

 ings, etc., and at the same time advocates 

 rearing queens by the pre-introduction and 

 cupful-of-bees plan, is drifting out on an 

 open sea, without chart or compass." 



