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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



June 1. 



NURSE BEES. 



Question. — If field-bees make poor nurses, 

 how about a colony that comes out in the 

 spring queenless and broodless? If given 

 choice brood, will they be prepared to care for 

 it to the best advantage and rear a queen that 

 will prove satisfactory ? Or do you regard it as 

 a makeshift when nothing else can be done ? 



Answer. — There is quite a difference between 

 old field-bees and bees which come out of win- 

 ter quarters, as regards their making good 

 nurse-bees. The vitality, and different parts or 

 olifices performed by the bee, become exhausted, 

 or change in accord with the amount of labor 

 performed, not in accord with the number of 

 days which go by; hence a bee which has seen 

 five months of winter, where a colony has win- 

 tered to the best advantage, may be no older in 

 reality than the same bee would be at from ten 

 to fifteen days were the date of the season June 

 or July. All know that bees which have been 

 wintered over become good nurse-bees, while 

 nearly all admit that a bee which has been in 

 the field as a worker for two weeks is afmost 

 wholly incapacitated for such work; and, if 

 forced to nurse the larva?, does it as a "make- 

 shift," as our correspondent puts it. I have 

 found that a colony losing its queen soon after 

 coming through the winter will rear a very fair 

 queen, though I have never found them to be 

 among the best; but in order to raise such a 

 fair queen it seems necessary that the nurse- 

 bees should be feeding some larval bees before 

 they set about raising a queen. I have often 

 taken a colony of queenless and broodless bees 

 in the spring, and built them up in this way: 



As soon as possible after spring opens, give 

 them a frame of eggs and larvte, and in eight 

 or ten days open the hive and break cflf all 

 queen-cells started, giving brood to them once 

 a week if possible, till plenty of young bees 

 hatch from the tirst brood given, when 1 give a 

 frame of. choice brood and allow them to raise 

 a queen from the same. In this way I have 

 succeeded in getting queens that would prove 

 of value, and saved a colony which otherwise 

 would have been lost. Had I allowed them to 

 perfect a queen from the brood first given, she 

 would have been a makeshift queen, and, in all 

 probability, a drone-layer, as she would have 

 been perfected long before there would have 

 been any drones flying. I firmly hold this 

 belief, coming from long experience along the 

 queen-rearing line, that good queens can not be 

 reared except where there are nurse-bees in 

 the hive, feeding larvte at the time they are 

 required to rear queens. To force any bee, 

 which is not in the habit of preparing chyme, 



to immediately prepare chyme for a larva in- 

 tended for a queen, is out of the ordinary course 

 of nature, and the result can be only an apology 

 for the better article, or a "makeshift," as our 

 questioner puts it. But here is a point I have 

 never seen mentioned, viz., that, so far as my 

 experience goes, the bees, when in the proper 

 shape as to nurse bees, can rear a really good 

 prolific queen from this makeshift queen, so 

 that the colony will be a thriving one with 

 a queen reared by supersedure from her brood. 

 In fact, I have often found such queens to equal 

 those reared from the very best of mothers, 

 although I do not advise using such as mothers 

 for a whole apiary. In this we see how a kind 

 Providence has provided for the perpetuation 

 of our pets even under the most adverse circum- 

 stances. 



NON-INCKEASE DESIRED. 



Question. — Will you kindly answer in Glean- 

 ings this? I have ten colonies of bees which I 

 run for comb honey in eight-frame L. hives. I 

 have no extra hives for increase, and I do not 

 wish to increase beyond the ten colonies. How 

 shall I manage them so as to get the most 

 honey in the sections, and yet never have more 

 than the ten colonies? 



Answer. — I very much doubt whether our 

 questioner is on the right road to the best suc- 

 cess from his bees, for there often come emer- 

 gencies where it is almost a positive necessity 

 to have a few extra hives on hand; for, to so 

 manage bees that none of the ten original colo- 

 nies shall ever cast a swarm, is something very 

 few if any have attained to, when working for 

 comb honey. Swarming is the result from a 

 colony in its normal condition; and if we would 

 have no swarms, the bees must be thwarted in 

 their purpose by throwing the colony out of 

 this normal condition. This is generally done 

 by taking away the queen; for without a queen 

 no swarms are likely to issue. This queen can 

 be caged in one of the sections so that the bees 

 can have access to her; and I would advise this 

 instead of removing her entirely from the hive, 

 where she is to be returned again; for the bees 

 not only retain their relationship to her, but I 

 think they will continue to work better in the 

 sections when she is near them. Soon after the 

 queen is removed from the brood-apartment, 

 the bees will commence to construct queen-cells 

 to supply her loss; and at the end of ten days 

 the hive must be opened and all cells started 

 broken off. If the queen is now left caged a 

 week longer b fore liberating, the brood will be 

 largely hatched out, and all desire for swarm- 

 ing given up, when she can be liberated with 

 almost a certainty that she will be accepted all 

 right, and no swarms issue from that hive 

 until young bees are hatching plentifully again, 

 if at all, that season. Or, if preferred, the 

 queen can be destroyed, and all queen-cells 

 destroyed at ten days, when a nearly mature 



