July, 1918 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



409 



c 



JE. CRANE, 

 ^ I 'm quite in 

 sympathy 

 with you and 

 Editor Eoot as 

 to the matter of 

 breeders and 

 tested queens, 

 pafje23'l. You say, 

 ' * A queen can 



liardly be fully tested in much less than a 

 year. ' ' Isn 't that a very moderate state- 

 ment? The average queen that is sold as 

 tested is born hardly later than August. In 

 that same year you can tell practically noth- 

 ing about what her bees will do at storing, 

 and must wait till the close of the season 

 the following year, and at that time she will 

 generally be a year old or more. But I 

 think it safe to say that 9 out of 10 — I 'm 

 inclined to say 99 out of every 100 — queens 

 sold as tested, are less than two months old 

 when sold. And that's all right according 

 to the agreed definition of a tested queen, 

 which is, "A queen whose progeny show she 

 has mated with a drone of her own race. ' ' 

 According to that a tested queen need be 

 only 21 days older than an untested one. 

 But you and I would want a good deal more 

 than that to satisfy us with regard to a 

 queen fully tested. Yet there may be said 

 to be something quite definite in the word 

 ' ' tested, ' ' as generally used. But when we 

 come to the term ' ' select, ' ' we 're on uncer- 

 tain ground. What is a " select tested 

 queen," anyway? Suppose a man has 100 

 queens that have begun to lay, and the 

 markings of their worker progeny show that 

 each has met a drone of her own race. How 

 many of them may be called select, and 

 why? If the best looking one of the lot is 

 chosen as select, the conscience of the seller 

 would no doubt be easy. And it would be 

 about as satisfactory if the best of the re- 

 maining 99 should be chosen. And would he 

 keep on selecting the best one of the lot on 

 hand until only one was left, thus making 

 99 out of the hundred, or at what point 

 would he stop and say I have no more se- 

 lects"? The problem is too much for me. 



I move a vote of thanks to Miss lona 

 Fowls for her very full and satisfying dis- 

 cussion of Demaree and similar plans, and 

 especially the diagrams, page 338. Miss 

 Fowls raises the question whether any of us 

 know what the Demaree plan is, and 

 whether it should be credited to Demaree. 

 When any plan is devolved, it is generally 

 the case that it is more or less a putting 

 together of things previously known, and if 

 Demaree was original in any one item, or in 

 any new combination of old items, it seems 

 fair to apply his name to the plan, especially 

 if he is active in its promulgation. 



As to what the Demaree plan is, I have 

 been in the habit of thinking of it as the 

 plan of putting the brood above an ex- 

 cluder, with the queen and empty combs or 



STRAY STRAWS 



Dr. C. C. Miller 



1 



foundation b e - 

 low the excluder. 

 Was not De- 

 maree original 

 in doing that? 

 To be sure, 

 Langstroth ante- 

 dated Demaree 

 by 27 years in 

 the matter of 

 putting brood in an upper story, but he did- 

 n 't put the queen in the lower story, and 

 Demaree did. Langstroth left the queen 

 with the brood in the upper story, and says 

 she was almost certain to descend and lay 

 her eggs in the new combs. There was no 

 "almost" in Demaree 's case; he put the 

 queen in the lower story with the empty 

 combs, and made sure she would stay there. 

 That use of the excluder made all the differ- 

 ence between success and failure as a relia- 

 ble method of prevention of swarming. Lang- 

 stroth says that as long as bees have an 

 abundance of room below they very seldom 

 swarm. How seldom? Honest Injun, lona, 

 just between you and me, do you believe 

 that it would be so seldom that you would 

 feel safe to leave an out-apiary for a week 

 or more without an excluder in the yard and 

 expect to find that not one colony in ten had 

 begun to think about swarming? I may say 

 in passing that I gave some trial to the 

 Langstroth plan, and would not think of 

 placing dependence on it. Sometimes the 

 brood-nest was above, sometimes below; 

 oftener it was partly in both stories. 



As to the Fowls plan. I like it — much. I 

 like the brood hoisted away up. Not that 

 it makes any difference about swarming. 

 For if there is no thought of swarming with 

 the brood in the second story, as is the case 

 with many, how can there be less thought of 

 it with the brood higher up? But I like the 

 abundance of super-room, and the brood so 

 easily got at to kill cells. Moreover cells 

 are more sure to be started and matured 

 so far from the brood-nest, and often this 

 is desirable. 



"Grace Allen informs us on page 287," 

 says J. E. Crane, page 350, ' * that she picked 

 the first clover blossoms March 31. It is 

 May here in Vermont and we are yet looking 

 forward to some time in June before we 

 shall enjoy such a pleasure." In this north- 

 ern edge of Illinois I picked the first white- 

 clover blossom May 22. All of which goes 

 to show that the season is somewhat mixed 

 up. At any rate, I may say of the season 

 here what Mrs. Allen, page 353, says of the 

 season in Tennessee, "This has been an ab- 

 surd sort of season here, so far." Some of 

 the time it has been one of the most back- 

 ward seasons I ever knew, yet I think I 

 never knew clover to bloom quite so early. 

 I can always count on the beginning of 

 storing ten days after the first bloom, if 

 there is any storing at all from white clover. 

 It is close to that time now, clover seems 



