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NOVICE »' GLEANING* IN BEE CT/LTttRE. 



I« IT WELL TO tNDERTAKE TO 

 W1XTKR A ilUEENLESS COLOST ? 



WE {ire sure there are at least 

 a few of our readers who have 

 seriously asked themselves this ques- 

 tion, and, without claiming we have 

 done it ourselves, we will tell you what 

 we do know of the matter. 



In our experience in queen rearing 

 daring the past summer and fall, a friend 

 called on us, and in discussing the matter 

 of having young queens attacked by their 

 own bees/ he suggested that this almost 

 invariably occurred during an entire ab- 

 sence of eggs or brood in the hive; and 

 that the bees worried the queen because 

 she didn't lay eggs for them to take care 

 of. Perhaps we may here remark that 

 our experiments did not iully corrobor- 

 ate this theory, for we have had queens 

 attacked when about ten or fifteen days 

 old even with brood and eggs in the hive, 

 hut we think the unsealed brood helped 

 to prevent it. 



Well, we so far fell in with the idea that 

 we determined to keep eggs or unsealed 

 brood constantly in all of our queen rear- 

 ing nuclei, then numbering forty or fifty. 

 Now in case the young queen be lost in 

 uny way, it was plain that a new one 

 would be reared, from this brood or eggs, 

 which made it quite desirable that all 

 these egzs should be furnished by our 

 . lioicest.queen; and Novice proposed the 

 Argo queen be kept furnishing eggs con- 

 stantly, to be taken as soon as laid and 

 distributed among the fifty nuclei, "just 

 to keep them busy enough to be out of 

 mischief." 



"But you'll ruin our 'Argo' colony," pro- 

 tests "P. G." 



O, no," says Novice with animation, 

 ' for we will keep them supplied with 

 brood from other hives, and a prolific 

 queen like that one will lay two or three 

 thousand eggs daily, when necessary." 



Accordingly the hive mentioned was 

 deprived of all the eggs it contained and 

 an empty worker comb interposed be- 

 tween two brood combs. After about 48 

 hours we almost invariably found this 

 omb nicely filled with eggs. Thes« 

 combs when thus filled were cut into 

 strips about 2x3 inches, and when p-jt 

 into the nuclei were so thoroughly cared 

 bal almost every egg produced a bee. 



\ <. . ■ <■' . i in,:' produces about fitty, 



each slice adds to the population of one 

 nucleus something like 300 full blood 

 I'lalians. In order to have the comb of 

 t-^iis taken cave of without, fail it should 

 be inserted in the center of the cluster of 

 be< - 



Our combs will cut so us to give about 

 MXteeu such pieces, and in order to give 

 mte to each nucleus about ouce a week, 

 our "Argo" queeu was obliged to lay over 

 ' 000 eggs daily, which she would do 

 readily if sealed brood was constantly 

 kept on each side of the comb in which 

 we wished the egc^ deposited, 



Would all those eggs hare produced a 

 like number of bees, had they remained 

 in the hive? Most assuredly not, but 

 where they do go to, we are not now pre- 

 pared to determine. One thing ie very 

 certain, and that is that nearly every 

 queen lays a much larger number of eggs, 

 both in spring and fall, than can be used 

 for brood, unless a great part of them be 

 taken care of by other queenless colonics, 

 or colonies containing queens that don't 

 lay. 



Perhaps our readers have remarked 

 with what eagerness a colony, destitute of 

 eggs or brood from any cause, will take 

 to a comb containing egg?, and how 

 Mirely each of these eggs will produce a 

 bee. 



To get round to the point from which 

 we started, then our course would be to 

 winter a queenless colony, just as we do 

 the rest, providing they contained suffi- 

 cient bees. As soon as practicable in 

 the spring we would insert a comb in the 

 cluster of a strong colony, just long 

 enough for the queen to deposit a few 

 eggs in it, and give this to the destitute 

 colony and about once a week repeat the 

 operation, giving a few more eggs each 

 time. Of course they will rear a queen 

 which they may keep until nearly time 

 for drones to appear, when she should be 

 killed to induce them to rear a good one. 

 The colony from whieh the eggs are taken 

 surfers almost no loss at all compared 

 with that sustained where combs contain- 

 ing sealed brood and larvae are taken ; 

 and likewise the queenless colony will 

 undertake to rear only so many of the 

 eggs a3 they can conveniently take care 

 or, whereas had sealed brood or larvae 

 been given them they would many times 

 have allowed the greater part of it to per- 

 ish. 



It is our opinion from the experiments 

 we have mentioned that one good queen 

 could be made to furnish eggs thus, suf- 

 ficient to not only keep up the population 

 of one dozen colonies, but to slowly 

 build them up. We should advise such a 

 course only to those who think it a 

 pleasure to work with and handle bee*, 

 admitting, of course, that by far th^ 

 easier way is to have a good queen in 

 every stock, but as queens are sometimes 

 lost in November or the winter mucus 

 'tis well to consider what is best to be 

 done in such a case. Our readers can 

 probably recall manj iiialaii>;es ot pro- 

 ducing good strong colonies of tbogt? 

 found queenless in the spring, when time- 

 ly aid has been given. Getting eggs in 

 the combs is a simple matter, but getting 

 these eggs hatched into larvae by the 

 thousands in one hive, at any desirable 

 season of the vear, is y«t an unsolved 



problem. See Problem No. 12 and IS. 



♦ « ■. » 



We expect to be able to fureish back 

 numbers to all applicants, and the price 

 for Vol. I. will be the same as Vol. II. 

 Both will he cent, with photograph, for 

 ?l.s>0. 



