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GLEANIN(iS IN BEE CULTURE 



June 15 



Conversations with 

 Doolittle 



At Borodino 



QUEENLESS BEES DESTROYING EGGS AND 

 LARV.E. 



"My name is Anthony, and I live a little 

 out from Auckland, New Zealand, where 

 we are having our winter at the time your 

 bees are at their best, in summer. In ' Sim- 

 plified (.Jueen-rearing for the Honey-produc- 

 er ' there is a passage that reads thus: 



Right liere I should like to make an important 

 statement, which all should bear in mind when 

 rearing (lueens. it is this: It matters little, so far 

 as the loss of brood is concerned, what you do with 

 a queen when you separate her from her brood. 

 The loss in egg-laying, the death to open brood, and 

 the removal of fresli-laid eggs, will occur to the same 

 extent, whether a ciueen is placed below a zinc hon- 

 ey-board, caged in the hive, or put into one's coat 

 pocket; the bees feel that they are queenless, and 

 thousands upon thousands of future bees are lost to 

 the colony In the removal of young brood and eggs 

 by the bees. Never remove a queen, therefore, ex- 

 cepting when absolutely obliged to do so. 



"Now, Mr. Doolittle, if that passage is 

 right, a whole lot that yoti Americans have 

 been teaching us in regard to queen intro- 

 duction, caging queens to prevent swarm- 

 ing, etc., must result in a financial loss." 



"Inoteyoti say vj that passage is right. 

 Do you think it is right?" 



"I am hardly competent to answer." 



"Well, unless locality makes more differ- 

 ence than I think it can there are very few 

 facts that even so much as look toward its 

 support. But for years I have noted that 

 with queen-rearing nuclei, or very small col- 

 onies which have only sealed brood, if the 

 young queen is taken away from them after 

 she has commenced to lay, and before any 

 of her eggs have hatched into larvtp, the 

 bees, in many instances, will remove all or 

 nearly all the eggs in the hive, possibly 

 keeping from two to a dozen from which to 

 rear another queen. I should say that in 

 fully one-third of the cases which have come 

 under my observation this thing has hap- 

 pened. Now, I can not say that this same 

 thing would happen in full colonies, for I 

 do not practice taking a queen away from 

 such at this stage of proceedings; but my 

 opinion would be that it would not." 



" How do you overcome such a condition?" 



"By not removing the young qtieen until 

 her first-laid eggs have begun to hatch." 



"Whyshotild any one wish to take her 

 away sooner?" 



"Of course you know that the apiarist 

 who breeds queens for sale is just as an.xious 

 for the most and quickest returns as is the 

 apiarist who raises honey to sell. For this 

 reason, every short cut is valuable; hence, 

 if the eggs which the young queen laid dur- 

 ing her first day of laying would be suffi- 

 cient to keep up the jiopulation of the nu- 

 clei she emerged in and was fertilized from, 

 a saving of three days in the time of that 

 nucleus could be made over that in which 

 she remained laying eggs for four days, or 

 till larv* hatched. Thus a saving of three 



days to the queen-breeder with from 200 to 

 1000 nuclei wotild amount to hundreds of 

 dollars during one year. With the cell-in- 

 troduction ])lan it takes about two weeks on 

 the average to turn out a good laying qtieen 

 whose first eggs have hatched into larvte, 

 while, if the queen could be sent off after 

 she had laid only one day, it would take but 

 eleven days for each nucleus." 



"But you have been talkingonlyof eggs." 



"Correct. And why I am often compel- 

 led to leave the qtieen till the first larvie 

 hatch is that, as soon as this comes to pass, 

 none of the eggs are destroyed. If the eggs 

 were removed the same after the first larvae 

 hatched, there would be no object in leaving 

 the queen unless she were left until the 

 brood from her eggs was sealed." 



"Then you do not think the i)art about 

 the bees removing thousands upon thou- 

 sands of the young brood is correct?" 



"From my experience in queen-rearing, 

 which I have just been telling you, I can 

 not; for, with the advent of young brood, 

 all of the eggs are saved. And where any 

 colony, from a nucleus up to the maximum 

 colony, has young brood, I have never even 

 once known of any of it being destroyed, if 

 it would not have been destroyed had the 

 queen been present. There come times, 

 through a great famine of nectar, when the 

 young brood will be sucked dry as a last re- 

 sort, the bees looking to the continued ex- 

 istence of the colony; but in such a case a 

 small part of the brood with a queenless 

 colony would be more likely to be i)reserved 

 for the rearing of a queen than with a colo- 

 ny that was in a normal condition with the 

 exception of the food scarcity." 



"Do you see any difference with a colony 

 that you wish to restrict from swarming, 

 whether the queen is taken away entirely 

 or left caged with the bees?" 



"Not along the line of the passage you 

 quoted. After my forty-two years of bee- 

 keeping I think that, under such conditions, 

 neither eggs nor young brood will be remov- 

 ed in Central New York; and I believe the 

 testimony of every observant bee-keeper liv- 

 ing in North America would be the same. 

 The difference between a removal and a cag- 

 ing of the queen, especially if the cage coq- 

 taining her is left near the entrance among 

 the combs, would be that in the latter case 

 very few, if any, queen-cells would be start- 

 ed by the bees; while if she is removed en- 

 tirely the building of many queen-cells will 

 be the result. When a lot of queen-cells are 

 built over worker brood the bees must be 

 shaken off before all of them can be found; 

 and great care is necessary that all of the 

 small ones, some of which may be no larger 

 than capped drones, be not overlooked." 



"And you think the passage quoted would 

 not apply in queen introduction for improve- 

 ment of stock also?" 



"Not applicable in any case except with 

 nuclei or very weak colonies that have seal- 

 ed brood only, as I have explained. Of 

 course, there is a loss in eggs at any time a 

 colony is without a laying queen, but only 

 to the extent she would lay if present." 



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