1910 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



391 



Heads of Grain 



from Different Fields 



The ^ hole would be i>lenty large for the queen, 

 and probably also for the bees. With entirely free 

 communication between the two stories through 

 the excluder for several days after the laying above, 

 and before reversing, there ought to be no trovible 

 upon reversing; yet the whole question must be 

 submitted to the bees before you can be sure. 



Queens Mated from Upper Stories. 



Mr. i?ou^— Please refer to the C'hambers requeen- 

 ing-device in Gleanings, p. 178. UiOti. and to the ar- 

 ticle by A. J. Burns, page 58, 1910. and give nie your 

 opinion as to the following described operations: 



Mate a queen from above, using a flight-hole ?3 

 inch in diameter through the rim of a wire and 

 wood excluder, facing reverse of main opening, 

 with mosquito-netting so placed on the under side 

 as to allow comravmication at either side through 

 the space between the hive side and the first wood 

 slat of excluder. Alter the young queen is estab- 

 lished, reverse the positions of the queens and bees, 

 disposing of the older after assurance that condi- 

 tions are satisfactory. 



The conditions are that I am running for extract- 

 ed honey, and natural swarms in April are not un- 

 usual, about ten days i rior to locust bloom, which 

 supplies considerable nectar just after May 1. under 

 normal conditions, and is succeeded by the main 

 flow shortly after May 15. Use three deep supers 

 under the excluder, and two above, and have them 

 all filled with bees, as I succeeded in doing last .sea- 

 son, and give the queen-cells in West protectors to 

 secure the laying of the new queens just at locust 

 bloom, at which time I had the greatest difficulty 

 with swarming last year. This contemplates the 

 use of spring feeding or honey in combs as deswibed 

 by Mr. Doolittle. The reversing would be done 

 when the bees were busy. 



I take it that Mr. Burns" failure was largely due to 

 lack of colony odor above and to the season of the 

 year: but I should like to have some assurance on 

 the subject. If covering the entire excluder with 

 netting is necessary, it could be done: but the 

 flight-hole would probably have to be larger, and I 

 am not certain as to the size of the hole for mating 

 the queen, although I have prepared .several exclu- 

 ders, and widened the holes so as to make them 

 yk inch in their smaller dimension. My gravest 

 doubt is as to the practicability of reversing the 

 queens, and I had intended making the communi- 

 cation through the excluder entirely free after the 

 new queen laid, for several days before reversing: 

 but possibly the Burns article indicates the con- 

 trary. Will the procedure possibly prevent swarm- 

 ing? Arthur M. Wheeler. Jr. 



West End, Virginia, Jan. 20. 



[This matter was referred to Dr. Miller, who re- 

 plies as follows:] 



To begin with the closing question, if the young 

 queen becomes established in the lower story, there 

 ought to be no fear of her swarming that sea.son. 

 No more ought there to be any fear with the Cham- 

 bers i)lan, page 178, 1909. This on the general prin- 

 ciple that, if a young queen does not swarm until 

 she begins laying, she will not swarm at all her first 

 season, provided she remain in the hive where 

 she was reared. And it probably matters little 

 whether she may have been reared in the hive from 

 the egg or introduced as a virgin. 



Mosquito netting is quite commonly understood 

 to be of cotton material: but that would hardly 

 work in the present case, and no doubt wire cloth 

 is meant, for that may also be used as mosquito- 

 netting. 



The failure in the case of Mr. Burns ought hardly 

 to be laid to the season, provided the original queen 

 were old, for fall is the usual time for super.seding. 

 or at least toward the close of the harvest. In 

 another respect the season might be blamed: for an 

 interloper is likely to have kinder treatment during 

 a flow. The suggestion as to lack of colony odor 

 looks rea-sonable. Mr. Burns allowed two openings, 

 which together were less than a twelfth of the up- 

 per surface of the hive, and the.se openings were 

 partly closed by excluder zinc, while Mr. Chambers 

 allowed mostly opening, the air above being thus 

 of the same odor as below. Mr. Burns also allowed 

 free passage for the bees from the very first: and 

 with a vigorous queen below, a worker of an in- 

 quisitive turn going up would not feel kindly to- 

 ward a strange virgin. While Mr. Chambers gave 

 free passage for air, he gave at first no passage for 

 bees. 



Chickens Eat Nothing but Drones. 



Allow me to add to the article by Lewis Efaw, p. 

 32S, May 15, in regard to chickens eating drones. 

 My brother and I have each a flock of chickens 

 which keep the undesirable drones cleaned out. 

 We have to use wire fencing around the colonies 

 we wish to save, to keep the chickens out. We 

 have watched the chickens many times, and with 

 glasses too, but have never caught them eating any 

 thing but drone.s. We have also tried different 

 breeds of chickens, but the bees soon chased away 

 all colors but the bufT. 



I am tending a good many of my neighbors" bees, 

 and I have found several cases of pickled brood. Is 

 it customary to shake as in foul brood, or do you 

 just take out the affected combs? Would the sealed 

 combs of honey be fit to leave in or to use for feed? 



I have access to all the bees within iVz miles of 

 my apiary. If 1 were to Italianize all the bees with- 

 in that radius in June, and then again next August, 

 and should 1 give them another queen, would I 

 then have pure-bred queens? I should like to buy 

 one or two breeding queens and rai.se my own. 



Clymer, Pa.. May 2:^. S. W. Uber. 



[It is a question whether it is profitable to allow 

 drones to become so numerous as to make good 

 feed for chickens. My impression is that it would 

 be cheaper to use full sheets of worker foundation 

 and stop the useless breeding of drones and buy 

 chicken feed. 



I do not know exactly what pickled brood is. 

 The probabilities are that most cases of so-called 

 pickled brood are nothing more nor less than ordi- 

 nary dead brood. It may have been chilled or 

 overheated, or it may have been poisoned during 

 the .spraying season. As a general thing a colony 

 suffering only from pickled brood will soon clean 

 out its dead and start new and healthy brood. On 

 the other hand, pickled brood often looks very 

 much like the European type of foul brood. If you 

 have any of the dead brood of any sort in your 

 yard at the present time you had better send sam- 

 ples of it to Dr. E. F. Phillips. Bureau of Entomolo- 

 gy. Washington, D. C, for examination of the bac- 

 teria. 



If you introduce Italian queens the second time, 

 as you describe, and allow no queens to be reared 

 in the apiary, you would have pure stock: but the 

 probabilities are there would be some queens rear- 

 ed in the hives, and these would send out drones 

 having some black blood, in all probability. If 

 these queens survived the winter they would send 

 out the same kind of drones. However, your Ital- 

 ian stock, to all intents and purposes, would be 

 pure.— Ed.] 



Chickens do Not Eat Worker Bees. 



On p, 328, May 15. chickens are mentioned as eat- 

 ing drones. I think that, if closely watched, you 

 will find they nearly always eat drones only. I saw 

 a chicken eat 35 inside of about 15 minutes one day. 

 He was there for a much longer tfme. and would go 

 from hive to hive, and never made a mistake day 

 after day. 



CELLS STARTED IN LAYING-WORKER COLONY. 



My cousin had a queenless .swarm this spring 

 that developed laying workers. He looked the hive 

 through several times, but could not find a queen, 

 and there was no worker brood at any time this 

 spring; but the bees started queen-cells and hatch- 

 ed a queen— another proof that bees steal eggs. 



I had a swarm that escaped from a hive with an 

 entrance-guard misplaced. The same morning. I 

 refastened the guard and left it for ten or fifteen 

 days, then found plenty of eggs in the hive, proving 

 that a laying queen was present. It was the first 

 swarm, and I suppose the old queen went; so it 

 looks as if the young queen became fertilized in the 

 hive. 



OLD AND Y'OUNG QUEEN IN THE HIVE DURING A 

 HONEY-DEARTH. 



I had a weak queenless swarm last fall after the 

 honey-harvest was all over. I gave them eggs, and 

 they started queens. Later, just before the queen 



