1917 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



263 



times or when the colonics cjuglil to 

 be busy storing honey. It is espe- 

 cially wasteful when 1, 2, 3 or more 

 natural swarms issue from one col- 

 ony. We have known of apiaries en- 

 tirely depopulated when a hard win- 

 ter followed a season of excessive 

 swarming. The worst feature of it 

 is that many inexperienced bee own- 

 ers arc pleased with what they think 

 is extraordinary prosperity. The care- 

 ful and practical beekeeper never al- 

 lows secondary swarms, and returns 

 them to the parent colony, if they 

 happen to issue. Hiving them in any 

 sort of box and returning them to 

 the parent colony the next day is al- 

 most a positive cure for further 

 swarming. 



cumstanccs. In good honey weather, 

 when everybody is happy, things go 

 on smoothly. You may take a nearly 

 full super with all the bees in it 

 from a strong colony and exchange it 

 for the nearly empty super of a col- 

 ony under average, thus equalizing 

 their storage room, and you will have 

 no disturbance if the crop is on. But 

 if the dearth has come, you may look 

 for a fight. If there is plenty of 

 honey in the fields, the drones may 

 make their home in any colony or go 

 from one to another without opposi- 

 tion. Similarly, if you wish to intro- 

 duce queens safely, you will succeed 

 much I)ctter in good honey weather. 



Goverument Help to IJeekeepeis 



More than ever before, the United 

 States Department of Agriculture is 

 making efforts to help beekeepers by 

 furnishing information free of charge 

 and by urging beekeepers in the 

 whole country to follow modern 

 methods. The result will be better 

 beekeeping, less diseases and more 

 practical methods of selling the 

 crop. Honey producers must stop the 

 practice of selling their honey at 

 whatever price they are offered. A 

 fair, reasonable price should be se- 

 cured, which ought to be based upon 

 the amount produced. 



Can What You Cau 



The very excellent piece published 

 in our July number under the above 

 title has been praised by many. It 

 was written by Mrs. H. K. Beard, of 

 the Pennsylvania Association, and 

 read before that association in the 

 fall of 1909. It was then published 

 in Gleanings and republished in their 

 June number of the current year. It 

 is worthy of the notice 

 cured. 



it has se- 



Bees KUliug Queen, After Sate 

 Introduction 



Why do bees sometimes kill their 

 queen after she has been safely in- 

 troduced and has been laying a num- 

 ber of days? 



The above question is sent to us by 

 a novice. But even a man of long ex- 

 perience cannot answer this question 

 with any great certainty. Dr. Miller's 

 well-known "I don't know" would 

 probably fit the question best. We 

 can only make suggestions. 



The behavior of bees towards each 

 other as well as towards queen and 

 drones depends very much upon cir- 



protractcd transportation. They 

 lose their fertility to a certain extent 

 from the confinement, acquire an un- 

 leasant odor and become sluggish. 

 Usually a few days of rest bring them 

 back to full vigor and breeding ca- 

 l)acity, but in some instances they 

 never do regain full activity. We be- 

 lieve very young queens are more 

 likely to regain their strength after 

 travel than old queens, even if the 

 latter are only yearlings. 



This is an explanation of the su- 

 perseding ([ueens which have been 

 thought safely accepted. The dan- 

 gerous thing is that it takes only two 

 or three angry bees to cause a queen 

 to be balled. Bees are not much su- 

 perior to human beings when it 

 comes to insurrection, and much of 

 the troubles of the world would not 

 happen if living beings had more pa- 

 tience. 



The less fatigued a queen is, the 

 more certain she is of safe accept- 

 ance. We have never had any trouble 

 in inserting a queen into a drone-lay- 

 ing colony, because we have always 

 used for that purpose queens that 

 we wished to discard to make room 

 for better ones. Those queens were 

 always taken from colonies when in 

 good condition, and were therefore 

 in the best of trim for safe intro- 

 duction. No one can boast of an in- 

 fallible method of introduction who 

 has not tried it on queens fatigued 

 by two weeks or more of travel. 



W. D. WRIGHT, of New York. 

 One of the oldest subscribers to the 

 American Bee Journal. See article 

 in last issue. 



If a queen is introduced in times of 

 scarcity, after the old mother has 

 been removed, she may be accepted, 

 under self-reservations, by some of 

 the bees, although the great majority 

 of the workers may have accepted her 

 in entirely good faith and are con- 

 sidering her as their real mother. If 

 she should prove insufficiently pro- 

 lific, or if disturbances beyond con- 

 trol should induce more or less rob- 

 bing, those bees who have reluctantly 

 accepted her may become angered at 

 her and start a revolt or balling of 

 this queen. Or they may start queen- 

 cells, with the expectation of super- 

 seding her as soon as the young 

 queen is fertile. This is noticed often 

 with queens that have suffered from 



Congregation ot Queen.s and 

 Drones 



Last summer I saw a sight which 

 seems to bear out Doolittle's idea 

 that queens and drones congregate 

 in places to mate. I had out proba- 

 bly 800 nuclei. About 2 o'clock in the 

 afternoon I was out in the queen 

 yard and heard the roar of drones 

 and later saw something flying very 

 fast and walked out to where I saw 

 it, as it was in a clear place. There 

 were I don't know how many queens, 

 and drones without number. You 

 have seen birds chasing crows; that 

 is the way they were, from one to 

 fifty drones after a queen at once. 

 Then in a second one would have her 

 and the drones would disperse so 

 quickly it was hard to tell where 

 they went. They flew so fast that 

 you could hardly follow them. At 

 the rate they were flying none but 

 the strongest drones could ever be 

 lucky enough to capture them. Af- 

 ter about ten minutes the whole thing 

 had moved out of sight. 



D. D. STOVER. 



