



Or how to Realize the Most Money with the Smallest Expenditure of Capital 

 and Labor in the Care of Bees, Rationally Considered. 



PUBLISHED MONT1IX.Y. 



Vol. I. 



MEDINA, O., AlJCi. 1, 1873. 



No. 8. 



STARTING AN API ART. 



No. 8. 

 ESUMING our friends have all suc- 

 ceeded in extracting all the honey 

 that has been gathered, satisfactorily to 

 themselves at least, thus tar, we shall re- 

 commend new that steps be taken at mice 

 to rear queens. (We are presuming these 

 remarks will reach you about Aug. 1st.) 

 Whether we rear queens to replace those 

 not sufficiently prolific or for making new 

 colonies, we want just the verg best we 

 can have, and in giving directions for so 

 doing we shall confine ourselves to such 

 processes as are least likely to fail, and 

 have been fully tested. 



In the first place assuming that among 

 bees "like produces like," we would ask 

 every one of our readers to mentally de- 

 cide which is his very best queen, i. e., 

 which one invariably fills her hive with 

 brood early in the season and as surely 

 gives you a large yield of honey. At the 

 same time we would have this progeny 

 show the three yellow bands as an indica- 

 tion of Italian blood if possible, yet bear- 

 ing in mind that when we are obliged to 

 select stock to rear queens from our own 

 apiary, we should consider it better to 

 rear from a very prolific queen not pure, 

 than to use a queen producing very light 

 colored bees though not very prolific. 



This advice may be qualified somewhat 

 by those who very much fear stings, but 

 as we are to "make the most money" at 

 all hazards, we shall have to make stings 

 a secondary consideration, and rest as- 

 sured that you will all in time learn to 

 fear stings but little. If you are so for- 

 tunate as to have a queen, very prolific, 

 producing three banded bees, and these 

 of a quiet disposition, too, consider her 

 worth $25.00 at least, for we have found 

 such queens quite rare ; our most prolific 

 ones oftenest produce cross hybrids. 

 During poor seasons we welieve the full 

 blood Italians invariably gather more 

 honey according to their number than the 

 hybrids, and to conclude we should dis- 

 like to rear many queens from a queen 

 that we had not previously tested our- 



selves. We would have an imported 

 queen if we could afford it, because we 

 should then be sure of having a pure 

 mother, but did she not prove prolific we 

 should use some other, perhapsone oi in". 

 daughters. 



Having carefully decided on your best 

 colony, we now wish you to point out 

 your least profitable, in all points enum- 

 erated, i. e. diametrically the opposite of 

 your best. 



If your apiary contains fifty hives or 

 more you can probably find one so poor 

 that her head had better be taken off at 

 once, no matter if she is pun; Italian. 

 Some, we are sorry to say, knowingly 

 sell such queens, thereby doing much to 

 deteriorate the reputation cf the Italians, 

 for all such stocks are sure to die out un- 

 der the old order of things and are con- 

 sequently never or rarely permitted to 

 reproduce themselves. We should be 

 very careful that we do not subvert nature 

 by carefully nursing unprolifie queens 

 that would otherwise die before they could 

 have a chance of perpetuating their poor 

 qualities, simply because they produce 

 three banded workers. 



Assuming that introducing queens is 

 always risky (we shall treat this subject 

 in future) we will avoid the necessity of so 

 doing by "swapping" all the brood combs 

 of our first mentioned colbnj for an ( qual 

 number from the latter. This should i^ive 

 us at this season of the year from fifteen 

 to twenty queen cells, and yon are to 

 count them carefully in just one week 

 from the date of making the exchange 



Now it' yon have in you apiary so 

 many queens that are not good ones n 

 move and destroy them the same day thai 

 the cells are counted. .V very plain test 

 of what we call a "good queen 1 is to de 

 troy all that are not working in an upper 

 story at this date, presuming that had 

 there been no more than a pint of bees 

 April 1st, she should before Aug. 1st have 

 made a good colony, and if she has not, 

 done this we would throw her away and 

 try another. In two days more or in 

 nine days from the time our cells were 

 started we will insert a cell in each of the 

 queenless colonies, and to avoid as far as 



