208 



June, 1916. 



American l^ee Journal 



are sealed destroy all the cells but one. 



8. They are likely to swarm if the season is 

 good. If the swarm was a first swarm, the 

 queen is old; if an afterswarm sh;? is less 

 than a month old. 



use again a /live, although some object even 

 to that. But the combs cannot be used 

 again safely. But in the case of European 

 foulbrood. either of the plans you mention 

 will generally result in a cure if the queen 

 given be a vigorous Italian. 



Queen Eggs Sent by Mail— Making Queen Lay 

 in Prepared Cups 



1. Why can't the eggs of a queen be sent 

 by mail in a piece of comb ? 



2. What is the Swarthmore plan of getting 

 the queen to lay in prepared cell-cups ? See 

 Beekeepers Review, page so. lo'*'. 4th para- 

 graph. Wisconsin. 



Answers.— I. lam not sure about it. but I 

 think in Europe they do send them by mail. 

 Of course, the distance sent makes a differ- 

 ence, and like enough the age of the eggs. 

 The way is open for you to do some experi- 

 menting. 



2. In the paragraph referred to. Jay Smith 

 does not mention the Swarthmore plan; but 

 does object that " taking a larva up with the 

 needle, giving it a punch in the stomach, a 

 gouge in the ribs, and taking it out into the 

 sunlight and hot, dry air," may not "make 

 quite such a vigorous, long-lived queen for 

 having received such a heroic massage." 

 Mr. Smith's ideas are worth considering. I 

 do not now recall, if I ever knew, just what 

 was the Swarthmore plan to get the queen 

 to lav in prepared cells. For rearing my 

 own queens. I have not for years done any 

 transferring: preferring to use eggs and 

 larvas, as described in " Fifty Years Among 

 the Bees." leaving the bees to do all the 

 manipulation themselves. 



Italian vs. Hybrid Stock 



1. I have what I suppose are hybrids, and 

 there are other hybrids around me. Would 

 it be profitable for me to invest in a pure 

 Italian queen, or would there be no gain by 

 it on account of the hybrid drones ? 



2, I have read of the Italian red clover 

 strain as valuable. Have you this strain, 

 and how much would you charge for a 

 queen ? Illinois, 



Answers,— I. Yes, it would be well worth 

 while to get a pure Italian queen. Just how 

 much gain there would be depends upon the 

 quality of your present stock. The poorer 

 they are the more the gain. Even if your 

 young queens meet hybrid drones, you 

 would have more Italian than black blood, 

 and by rearingyour youngqueens constantly 

 from a pure queen you would be getting in 

 more and more Italian blood, and soon some 

 of your stock would be pure. 



2, I don't personally sell queens, although 

 there is a company that sells queens of my 

 stock. I have no red clover stock, and if 

 any one has queens of such stock you will 

 be likely to find them advertised in the 

 American Bee Journal. There 'have been 

 bees that would work more than others on 

 red clover, but the characteristic has not 

 been well fixed, and the strain has generally 

 run out. Some, indeed, insist there is no 

 such thing as a red-clover strain. 



Foulbrood 



It is claimed that if a colony has foulbrood 

 and the queen is taken away or killed and 

 the colony left ten days, then requeened 

 with a good Italian queen, it will in most 

 cases cure the foulbrood. If a colony has 

 died with foulbrood, and after a few days or 

 months I throw a strong swarm into that 

 hive, will they clean it up and will the foul- 

 brood be cured ? Or if I take a hive that 

 has foulbrood and kill the queen, and after 

 ten days I take a swarm and hive them with 

 this colony, will that cure the foulbrood and 

 will they clean it up ? Pennsylvania. 



Answer.— If you are talking about Ameri- 

 can foulbrood, then you cannot safely do 

 any of the things you suggest, unless it be to 



Cause of Wingless Bees 



1. I have a hive of bees that has a lot of 

 wingless bees; their wings seem to dry and 

 shrivel up. They seem to be healthy other- 

 wise. What is the cause of it ? 



2. Is a drone reared from fertile or unfer- 

 tile egg? Minnesota. 



Answers —I. Once in a while a young bee 

 emerges with defective wings, for which 

 there seems to be no special reason unless 

 it be lack of vigor. Oftener it is caused by 

 the bee moth. Exchanging the queen for 

 one of vigorous Italian stock, and then keep- 

 ing strong colonies will likely remedy the 

 trouble. 



2. A drone proceeds from an unimpreg- 

 nated egg. 



. How to Get Bees to Empty Old Combs 



I have often read your answers to the 

 question " How to transfer bees from old 

 box-hives ?" and have frequently used your 

 method, but when the bees are all out of 

 the old box-hive there is generally some 

 honey left in the old crooked combs. How 

 can I get the bees to remove this honey 

 from the combs without permitting the bees 

 from any other hive to get a taste of it ? 



Michigan. 



Answer —Your problem is not the easiest, 

 if you want the combs to remain unbroken 

 in the old hive. The only way I know of in 

 that case is to have the old hive either under 

 or over the new one. with all cracks closed, 

 so no bee can gel in from the outside except 

 through the regular entrance of the new 

 hive. The chances are that even after you 

 have done this the bees w'ill make very poor 

 work at emptying the combs, and if they are 

 gathering, just as like as not they will fill 

 more honey into the combs. But you can 

 cut out the combs, put them into a dish, set 

 an empty hive-body on the hive, and set the 

 dish in it, close up bee-tight, and the bees 

 will make a good job of cleaning out. 



Controlling Swarms 



Knowing that you ran outapiaries for 

 comb honey, would you kindly tell me the 

 best plan to control swarming as far as pos- 

 sible. I want to put an outyard three miles 

 from home and cannot be there all the time. 

 I have your " Fifty Years Among the Bees," 

 but don't seem to get what I want to know 

 from that. Iowa. 



Answer.— I doubt if there is any one thing 

 in beekeeping that I have worked harder 

 upon than finding an answ'er to your ques- 

 tion; and I think I succeeded in keeping 

 down to a minimum the matter of swarming 

 in outapiaries. Exactly the plans I used are 

 given in full in " Fifty Years Among the 

 Bees." I don't think I can add anything to 

 what is there given; but I may help by call- 

 ing attention to what is given. I think it will 

 pay you to study carefully all contained on 

 pages 156 to 186. 



Turn to page 174, " Preliminary Work," 

 and you will see that before there was any 

 real danger of swarming we began once in 

 about ten days to look for queen-cells, and 

 up to the bottom of page 176 you will find 

 particulars as to proceeding up to the time 

 when it would no longer do to depend upon 

 killing cells. Then radical measures were 

 taken, by taking away for a period of per- 

 haps ten days the queen, or the brood, or 

 both. One of the plans to do that was the 

 " put-up plan," page 157. Although it is given 

 there as a plan for proceeding after a colony 

 had actually swarmed, we used it later be- 



fore swarming had actually taken place. We 

 may use the " Excluder Plan. " page 177. It 

 may be "Forced Swarming" (page 166). more 

 commonly called shaken swarms. More 

 likely than any other way. the " Dequeening 

 Treatment" (page 181) will be used. This 

 you will find given in the following very few 

 words : " The queen is removed, the queen- 

 cells are killed, and in ten days the queen- 

 cells are again destroyed and their own 

 queen returned or another queen given." 



I don't know of any better way than one 

 of the foregoing ways to prevent swarming 

 in an outapiary, and if you find any point 

 upon which you would like to ask further 

 light, it will be a pleasure for me to answer. 



Rearing Queens 



How early do you consider it advisable to 

 rear queens in the State of Alabama ? 



Minnesota. 



Answer.— As a rule good queens can 

 hardly be reared earlier than the last of 

 May in my locality in northern Illinois I 

 don't know how much earlier the date 

 would be in Alabama; perhaps a month or 

 two. 



The Swarming Problem 



I keep bees in four outyards. and they are 

 run for comb honey. One often sees articles 

 on swarm prevention for outyards for ex- 

 tracted honey, but comb or section honey is 

 a different and more serious proposition. 

 The questions which now concern me are 

 not so much swarm prevention as the best 

 methods of treating bees to secure the most 

 honey and no increase. 



I doubt whether there is any method of 

 non-swarming manipulation whereby one 

 can get as large crop of section honey as to 

 hive prime swarms and prevent after- 

 swarms in a locality of summer or clover 

 flow, and fall flow of about equal propor- 

 tions However, I don't want increase and 

 so here is the rub; I have followed your 

 method as described in " Forty Years Among 

 the Bees " in my outyards for ten or a dozen 

 years, and it is all right if done thoroughly 

 and in time; but the question of lotsof super 

 room, big entrances, lots of ventilation, 

 shade and things to aid non-swarming have 

 been thrashed out in bee journals for years, 

 and are valuable and good advice, but for all 

 this, the rt'a/ t>robU-m still remains, how to 

 manage swarming with the least interfer- 

 ence with the honey crop. I have never been 

 able to get much super work done with the 

 queen caged or killed and virgin given, or 

 when a colony prepares to swarm. Bees 

 loaf, build burr-combs, crowd honey into the 

 brood-chamber, and this time is lost right in 

 the best of the honey flow. Others report 

 work with the queen caged or absent, but it 

 doesn't happen here; possibly they extract. 



Here is a plan I have thought of trying 

 this season, a week or ten days before 

 swarming: Start cells from the best queens. 

 A couple of days before maturity of the 

 cells, go through colonies and kill all queens 

 except the best, and 6 to 12 hours later give 

 each a cell. 



1. Would one run too much risk of hatched 

 queens leading a swarm ? 



2. If not, wouldn't this cause the least in- 

 terruption in super work, and at the same 

 time get better stock ? 



3. Also, would this be more successful if 

 colonies so treated were given cell before 

 any swarm preparation ? 



4. How long after queen is killed would 

 you give an unprotected cell ? 



5 Would it pay to go through colonies in 

 three to five days and look for other cells 

 and destroy them ? Iowa. 



Anwsers.— I, If. at the time you give the 

 cell, cells are not already started in the 

 hive. I should not expect swarming: and 

 perhaps not if you kill all cells already 

 started: but not having tried it I am not 

 sure. 



2. It should, I think, cause as little inter- 

 ference as any; although I doubt if the in- 

 terference would be less than with my plans 

 as they work here; although they may not 

 work so well with you. 



3. Yes, but the later the better, so long as 

 no cells are actually started, 



