584 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



Sept. 15 



with the hand lever, which is attached to 

 the hinged blade. We tried a spring for 

 holding the blades against the separator, 

 but found that some needed more pressure 

 in cleaning than others, and so adoi)ted the 

 hand-lever plan, which works very satisfac- 

 torily. The separators are fed into the ma- 

 chine against the 45-degree angle of the 

 blades, and the pressure on the hand lev^r 

 is applied when drawing (he separator 

 through between the blades. This cuts the 

 burr combs and propolis off better than any 

 method we ever used before. 



Two operators are required — one to feed 

 and pull the separators through, and one to 

 work the hand lever; but w'ith this little 

 machine we can do at least twice the work 

 that Iw^o men would do with hand scrapers. 



We made several of these outfits before 

 we got one that would work well under all 

 circumstances. The machine requires a lit- 

 tle practice before one can do good work, 

 but it saves much muscular effort, cleans 

 the wood well, and does not break the scal- 

 lops as often as when working by hand. 



Boulder, Col. 



A SAFE PLAN FOR INTRODUCING WITH- 

 OUT WASTING MUCH TIME. 



Forming a Nucleus Beside the Colony whose 



Queen is to be Replaced and Running the 



New Queen Directly into the Nucleus. 



BY W. L. ecu PER. 



Of methods of queen introduction there 

 is no end. They all seem to work all right 

 — sometimes. That none of them are with- 

 out fault seems to me jiroven by the fact 

 that, every year, new schemes or old schemes 

 renewed are put forward by enthusiastic ex- 

 perimenters. Of course, there is the one in- 

 fallible way given in all text-books; but it 



entails too much work for use except in the 

 case of a very valuable queen. Alexander's 

 method, by which he used to introduce ei- 

 ther one or a number of queens to the same 

 colony, is open to the same objection. Prob- 

 ably the great majority of bee-keepers use 

 the ordinary method printed on queen-cages; 

 but if their experience is the same as mine 

 they lose a considerable number of queens. 

 There is a well-known method of stopping 

 robbing in spring by placing the robber col- 

 ony on the stand of the robbed, and vice ver- 

 sa. The robbed colony is almost certain to 

 be weak, and it will receive 

 practically all the field bees of 

 the robbers. Why don't they 

 kill the queen that is strange 

 to them? I don't know; but 

 the fact remains that they ac- 

 cept the situation quite tran- 

 quilly. On this fact, and the 

 other fact that it is quite sim- 

 ple to introduce a queen to a 

 properly made nucleus, depend 

 my method of introduction, 

 which I call the substitution 

 method. 



To make nuclei for this pur- 

 pose, frames of brood should be 

 placed above an excluder for 

 nine or ten days. Take four 

 of these frames and place in a 

 hive, filling up with empty 

 combs. Make sure there are 

 no queen-cells in the brood- 

 combs. The morning of a fine 

 day is the best time to do this, 

 as the field bees will return to 

 their old stand. Place this nucleus-hive be- 

 side the one whose queen is to be replaced. 

 In the evening run your new queen in at 

 the entrance of the nucleus-hive. She will 

 be quite safe. As soon as she is laying, 

 her hive can be i)laced on the stand of the 

 one containing the useless queen. This 

 should be done in the evening, so that the 

 field bees come to their new queen gradual- 

 ly the next day. 



The experienced bee-keeper will have no 

 difficulty in disposingof theframesof brood 

 when he has killed the old queen. There is 

 always a place for them. To the beginner 

 I suggest that he can employ these frames 

 for strengthening weak colonies, for making 

 fresh nuclei by placing them above an ex- 

 cluder, or he can return some of them to the 

 colony with the new queen. 



An objection that is sure to be raised to 

 this plan is that it takes too much time and 

 work. Let us look into the thing. By the 

 ordinary method you ha\ e to hunt up and 

 kill your old queen. In a full colony, that 

 is sometimes quite a job. I think that, on 

 the average, I could make a nucleus quite 

 as quick. Substituting the nucleus for the 

 full colony, and changing the supers, takes 

 only a minute or two. In either case you 

 will have to look the colony over in a few 

 days to see if the queen-bee has been accept- 

 ed; but by my method, if she should have 

 been killed you can return the old ones. I 



