March, 1918 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



151 



FROM THE FIELD OF EXPERIENCE 



ested in any one that has. I simply write 

 this article for the benefit of the wide-awake 

 beekeepers; for the men who think; for 

 those who are willing to take the advice of 

 one who has spent hundreds of dollars of his 

 hard-earned " dough " looking for new lo- 

 cations. 



Falmouth, Ky. Virgil Weaver. 



CONVERSATIONS w.th DOOLITTLE 



He Answers a Question About the Egg-laying Ca- 

 pacity of Queens 



"A neighbor gave me some old bee papers 

 he had, and in one of them I find something 

 about the capacity of cpieen bees for laying 

 eggs, the claim being made that a good 

 queen could lay as many as 3,000 eggs in 24 

 hours. This hardly seems j)ossible. Will 

 you tell us something about this in Gleanings 

 in Bee Culture?" 



The prolificness of queens was something 

 much discussed in our bee papers a quarter 

 of a century ago, the claim being then made 

 that the more eggs a queen could lay the bet- 

 ter the results would be in honey, and quite 

 a few reasoned that the queen and colony 

 which would keep strong at all times of year 

 was the ideal queen to breed from. This led 

 to difference of opinion between those pro- 

 ducing section or comb honey, and those 

 producing extracted honey. The latter held 

 to the idea that queens should lay a large 

 amount of eggs at all times. The former 

 were strong in their belief that only as the 

 queens reached their maximum prolificness 

 about six weeks before the main honey har- 

 vest for surplus, could this prolificness 

 count for the highest success. By going 

 over an old diary, I find that prior to 1874 

 I had thought that nine Gallup frames, con- 

 taining a comb space of about 1,000 square 

 inches, would entertain the best queen to 

 her fullest capacity, no matter whether the 

 colony was worked for extracted or comb 

 honey. At about that time a prominent 

 beekeeper by the name of Adair brought out 

 what was called the "long-idea" hive. I 

 made two of them, working one of them for 

 extracted honey and the other for comb, 

 these hives being made to hold 32 Gallup 

 frames instead of the nine I had been using 

 up to that time. I selected two average 

 colonies, and when the nine frames were well 

 covered with bees, and there was brood in 

 seven or eight of the combs, I set each over 

 into these four-foot hives. At the same 

 time I selected two other colonies of about 

 the same strength, one to be worked for ex- 

 tracted honey on the tiering-up plan, and the 

 other on the plan I had before been using 

 for comb honey. In due time the two long 

 hives were filled out with the full 33 combs, 

 with sections on the one for comb honey, and 



extracting going on every week to 10 days 

 vyith the other, as was the custom at that 

 time. With the tiered-up hive, the queen 

 was kept on the nine frames by means of 

 a slatted honey-board, and the one for comb 

 honey manipulated as well as Doolittle knew 

 how. Before the basswood harvest arrived 

 the extracted-worked colony had brood in 

 every one of the 32 combs, the amour.t 

 of about 18 to 20 combs full of brood; while 

 the one worked for comb honey, having 32 

 combs, had brood in only 13 combs, the 

 amount in these being little more than what 

 nine frames would have contained. Thus the 

 queen in the extracted-honey hive was laying 

 about 5,000 eggs each 24 hours, and the 

 one in the comb-honey hive was giving only 

 about 2,500, each queen evidently laying to 

 her fullest capacity. 



After considerable study and experiment- 

 ing along several lines, I was driven to the 

 conclusion that the cause of this difference 

 was that where extracting was done as often 

 as once a week plenty of cell room for brood 

 was given; and that, under the stimulus of 

 the bees cleaning up their combs, the queen 

 was fed by the bees to an extent that caused 

 her to double her usual egg-laying powers 

 that were natural and as nature demanded 

 when the colony was in a hollow tree or 

 some cleft in the rocks. Thus, thru manage- 

 ment, I had brought about the doubling in 

 development of the embryo eggs she had 

 in her ovaries. These four queens used in 

 the experiment were less than a year old, 

 but the one in the long extracted-honey hive 

 died of old age that fall, while the other 

 three lived and did good work the next sea- 

 son. This long hive worked for extracted 

 honey gave 566 lbs. surplus, while the one 

 worked on the tiering-up plan gave 359, thus 

 showing 207 more pounds of honey for dou- 

 ble the brood reared. The long hive worked 

 for comb honey gave 51 lbs. of section honey, 

 with the 32 combs almost solidly full of hon- 

 ey, while the one worked by my old plan 

 gave 309 lbs. of section honey, with enough 

 l>elow to winter the colony. 



A good queen can lay from 2,000 to 3,000 

 eggs in 24 hours in the swarming season; but 

 the question arises with many, can a greater 

 amount than this be produced at a profit f 

 If it were the EGGS in themselves which 

 gave the financial profit, as with our pouUry, 

 then the queen which gave the most would 

 be the one we all should want; but there are 

 many times that the prolificness of the 

 queen causes a large amount of honey to be 

 used iji rearing the brood from her eggs, 

 which produce only bees that become con- 

 sumers instead of producers, on account of 

 this vast horde coming at the end of any 

 certain honey flow, instead of at its begin- 

 ning. 



Borodino, N. Y. G. M. Doolittle. 



