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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Aug. 1. 



[But, friend M., it has not been ten years 

 since I made tliat pleasant visit through Wis- 

 consin. It is true, we have had more drouths 

 than usual for several years; but it is not very 

 long ago that our seasons were so wet, espe- 

 cially the fore part of the year, that people 

 really longed, and perhaps prayed, for the 

 ground to get dry enough to work as it had 

 been in the good old time.->. — A. I. R.] 



KEABIN6 QUEENS TO ITAI.IANIZE AN APIAKY. 



Question. — My bees are ail pure Italians, and 

 all my neighbors for miles around have either 

 blacks or hybrids, so that it is impossible for 

 me to Italianize my bees, the neighbors' bees 

 being all kept in box hives, and therefore hav- 

 ing a great many drones in the summer season. 

 How can I, in rearing queens for my own use, 

 secure them purely fecundated? and what 

 would be the best time of the year to rear such 

 queens ? 



^?isu>cr.— There are several ways of doing 

 this, nearly all of which I shall speak beiug used 

 by myself to a greater or less extent during the 

 past twenty-five years. A good and practical 

 plan is to give to all of the colonies, which have 

 good Italian queens, one or two frames of drone 

 comb, so that large numbers of drones will be 

 reared in your own apiary, which will be very 

 likely to secure the pure mating of one-half or 

 more of your queens; and when one is found 

 that is impurely mated, kill her and give the 

 colony a queen-cell from your pure breeder, and 

 try again. As your colonies increase, your 

 drones will increase also; and the more drones 

 reared in your Italian colonies, the better will 

 be your chances of having all purely mated. 



The next plan would be to give capped brood 

 to your drone-rearing colonies early in the 

 spring; and this, together with a little warm 

 feed given each day, will cause the desired 

 queens to lay in the drone comb early, through 

 the stimulation given, thus giving you strong 

 colonies with plenty of drones, before your 

 neighbors' colonies rear any drones. As soon 

 as any drone brood has been capped from three 

 days to a week, start to rear queens, and in this 

 way you will have your queens ready for the 

 first drones which appear. The main objection 

 to this plan is, that such rearing of queens 

 comes at a time when it is likely to interfere 

 with your crop of honey ; for in all queen-rear- 

 ing the colony is thrown out of its normal con- 

 dition; and whether the old queens are taken 

 away from their colonies to give place for 

 queen-cells desired, or nuclei formed to take 

 care of these cells, this interference comes at a 

 time when all should be booming as much as 

 possible along the line of rearing the laborers 

 (bees) in time for the honey harvest, which, as 



a rule, will be from 30 to 50 days ahead. I am 

 one of those who believe that impure stock, 

 with a good yield of honey, is to be preferred to 

 pure stock and little surplus honey. 



Another plan is, to wait till fall about rearing 

 queens, when, if you can preserve the desired 

 drones till all your neighbors' drones are killed 

 off, you will have every queen to mate with 

 the drones you desire. To preserve drones, 

 gather all the drone brood you can find in the 

 apiary from the queens you have decided shall 

 be drone-mothers, and mass this brood in one 

 hive, tiering it up, if necessary, to accommo- 

 date this brood and lots of honey; for, the 

 larger the hive and the more honey it contains, 

 the better your chances of having the drones 

 preserved in large numbers. When this drone 

 brood is massed, the queen should be taken 

 away from the colony; and as often as a new 

 queen commences to lay she should be taken 

 away also, and this colony kept supplied with 

 sufficient worker brood to keep it in a prosper- 

 ous condition, so that it will not be robbed of 

 its honey on account of fewness of bees to 

 guard and care for it. If you wish that all the 

 drones which your queens mate with shall be 

 strong, robust fellows, on some cloudy day 

 (when it is not so warm that you will be trou- 

 bled with robbers, nor so cold that the bees will 

 gather in bunches to keep warm) look this hive 

 over and hand-pick the drones, killing all 

 which you think are not such as you would 

 desire. To best do this, take out the first comb 

 and pick out as above, when it is to be set into 

 an empty hive, set on the stand originally oc- 

 cupied, and thus when you have gone over 

 every comb, and the drones clinging to the 

 sides of the hive and bottom-board, your colony 

 is just where you want it, without any extra 

 handling of the frames. You are now sure 

 that every queen will come as near perfection 

 as is possible along the line of right mating; 

 and were it not that this plan requires much 

 extra work and care in feeding the queen-rear- 

 ing colonies, that fairly good queens may be 

 reared out of season, and, also, that this late 

 manipulation of colonies forfeits our chances 

 for successful wintering, I should say that this 

 was the plan above all others to secure purely 

 mated queens. But with all of these draw- 

 backs, I have thus reared queens which proved 

 of great value to me. 



Another plan is to take a hive containing 

 our best hand-picked drones to some locality 

 isolated four or five miles from other bees; and, 

 as often as may be, take a load of nuclei, sup- 

 plied with queens from our best mother, they 

 being from three to five days old, to this isolat- 

 ed place, leaving them there from eight to ten 

 days, when they can be brought home with 

 laying queens, which will, as a rule, be all 

 mated with the desired drones. With a proper 

 rack fixed on any light spring wagon, from 12 

 to 25 can be carried to and fro at one time, so 



