284 



GLEANINGS IN ]}EE CULTURE. 



Apr. 



Several years ago I had a colony of bees that 

 were nicely at work in the sections, havinj? a part 

 of them filled with comb, when, one day, in han- 

 dling the frames below, I lost the queen from some 

 unaccountable reason, and from that date till they 

 got a laying queen they built the poorest and thick- 

 est comb which I had ever seen at that time. 

 Many of the sections had the comb in them " stub- 

 bed " off at the sides and bottoms; some were not 

 built more than half down when the cells were 

 lengthened out, filled with honey, and sealed over, 

 so that very much of the honey was unsalable. 

 Since then, in trying to control swarming by cag- 

 ing the queen I have had the same state of affairs, 

 so that I am very positive that loss of queen was 

 the cause of the whole trouble. In fact, I very oft- 

 en perceive when a colony has lost its queen, by 

 the looks of the comb which they are building in 

 the sections, thus being able to remedy the matter, 

 when I otherwise might not know it, or not till the 

 colony was considerably injured. That not nearly 

 as nice comb is built when a colony has no laying 

 queen in the hive, is one of the reasons why I do 

 not like the plan of taking away the queen in 

 swarming time to prevent swarming. 



GOOD QUEENS. 



On page 423 I see it is thought that Doolittle is a 

 little " off " in claiming that queens reared by what 

 he terms "natural processes" are better than those 

 reared by other methods, as put forth in my book. 

 Now, I only wish to take space to say that I do not 

 claim for the queens reared as I advise, any superi- 

 ority because they are cradled in artificial cradles, 

 or because these cradles are supplied with plenty 

 of royal jelly into which the selected larvte are 

 transferred, or any thing of that kind. No, noth- 

 ing of the sort. These are only conveniences to 

 pave the way for having the queens reared just 

 when and where we wish them, by that good and 

 inexpensive way of having them reared in the up- 

 per stories of hives having a laying queen below. 

 What I do claim as rupcrior is in the hringiny of the, 

 colony into that condition where they will rear 

 queens leisurely, and under the same conditions 

 that they do in superseding their own queens with- 

 out the interference of man, when, as all know, the 

 very best of queens are reared. When this can be 

 done, and that, too, without having a queenless 

 colony as a loss on our hands, I think that even 

 friend Root will concede it to be of advantage to do 

 so. If any one does not wish to use the artificial 

 cups (which friend Alley calls "fussy"), let him 

 use the plan as given, minus the cups, royal jelly, 

 etc., having the cells built in the old way, or a Ja 

 Alley's plan, as he desires, and, my word for it, bet- 

 ter queens will be reared than have been the most 

 of those reared in the past. 



UNSEALED BROOD TO PREVENT SWARMING. 



On page 604 I read as follows: "Out of some 35 or 

 40 swarms which we have hived during the last few 

 days, as nearly as we can make out some 7 or 8 of 

 this number have actually left their frames of un- 

 sealed larvae. While a frame of brood tends very 

 greatly to hold the swarm, it is by no means infalli- 

 ble." Now, after all I have said in the past on this 

 subject, I do not know that any thing further will 

 be tolerated from me; but I do feel so anxious that 

 others shall not sustain a loss, as I have done, that 

 I venture a few words more, especially as the 

 swarming season is near at hand. I take the 

 ground that brood is no preventive of pji'me swarms 



leaving their hives, but, rather, an incentive; and 

 any person who should have 8 out of 40 swarms try 

 to leave their hives after having brood given them, 

 ought to so see it, it seems to me, instead of trying 

 to bolster up that old fallacious idea. Any man 

 who hived 40 swarms and had 8 of them leave the 

 hive and run away, would be a great exception to 

 the general rule, for past knowledge compels me to 

 say that the average is not over 4 ';'■• where swarms 

 leave an empty hive. Bees leave the hive for the 

 express purpose of getting away from the brood, 

 where they have the laying queen with them; and 

 by placing brood in the hive they are put in, we 

 bring about nearly the same conditions they swarm- 

 ed out to be rid of. With after-swarms the case is 

 different, as brood then is not objectionable, and 

 helps build up a weak colony. G. M. Doolittle. 

 Borodino, N. Y., Mar. 30. 



A^ery likely, friend D.. you are partly 

 right in regardto these awkward combs. The 

 reason why I gave my opinion, however, 

 was, when I experimented largely with the 

 thin loose hoop hive you may remember 

 about, I found nice combs in the center sec- 

 tions of the super, but thick and awkward 

 ones toward the outside ; and right close to 

 the hoops, where the bees couid look out 

 and see the stars through the corncrib-like 

 openings, the combs were thick, awkward, 

 small, and finally none at all. AVhen the 

 idea was first advanced of caging queens or 

 removing them in order to increase the hon- 

 ey yield, you may remember that I protest- 

 ed strongly, saying the bees would stop 

 work just as soon as the queen was taken 

 away, or, at least, many colonies would do 

 so. Well, it has transpired that they did 

 not always stop work, for I saw them doing 

 very good work at Dr. Miller's when the 

 queen had been caged for a week or more, 

 and then I concluded it made a difference 

 whether the queen was caged in the hive or 

 taken entirely away from it. Like your- 

 self, I have so many times seen comb-build- 

 ing slacken up at once on the removal of 

 the queen, that I am sure her presence or 

 absence has much to do with it. It is well 

 known that queenless colonies usually build 

 drone comb, and I have repeatedly seen the 

 bees change from worker to drone comb 

 when the queen was taken away. I wish 

 Dr. Miller and others who practice caging 

 queens when they are getting comb honey 

 would tell us whether they have noticed 

 such things as I have mentioned — namely, 

 changing from worker to drone comb after 

 caging the queen. In regard to getting 

 good queens, it seems quite reasonable that 

 queen-cells built and queens reared under 

 the influence of the swarming fever would 

 be better than those where the queen was 

 taken out of the hive in order to get cells. 

 In my experiments, however, theory did not 

 seem to be sustained by practice; but Er- 

 nest just now adds, that, in their recent ex- 

 periments, they did get, he thinks, rather 

 nicer queens reared under the swarming 

 impulse. In regard to the last matter, un- 

 sealed brood to prevent swarming, if you 

 emphasize prime swarms, as you do above, I 

 do not know but that we can pretty nearly 

 agree with you ; but where we buy swarms 

 brought in by farmers round about, and di- 



