DEVOTED TO BEES AND HONEY, AND HOME INTERESTS. 



Vol. VII. 



JUNE 1, 1879. 



No. 6. 



A. I. ROOT, 



Publisher and Proprietor 

 Medina, O. 



•} 



Published Monthly. ("TERMS : $1.00 Per Annum in Ad- 



< vance; 3 Copies for $2.50; 5 for $3.75; 



Established in 1873. (.10 oi more, 60c. each. Single Number, lOc. 



SCRAPS AI\D SKETCHES. NO. 6. 



QUEEN REARING. 



M FRAME filled with fdn. is hung in the hive 

 Jcf\ containing- my imported queen, and when I 

 find the cells drawn out and filled with eggs 

 (usually in about 3 days), I remove the frame, cut a 

 few small holes in the comb, hang it in the centre of 

 an empty hive, and fill up the hive with empty comb, 

 putting in perhaps a frame or two of honey and pol" 

 len. A strong colony is removed to a new location, 

 and the hive containing the eggs put in its place. To 

 furnish the new swarm with young bees, the bees 

 from 2 or 3 brood frames of the removed colony are 

 shaken in front of it; and to prevent getting the 

 queen back at the old stand, she is hunted up before 

 the "shaking" operation is commenced. Around 

 each hole cut in the comb the bees usually build 3 or 

 4 queen cells (1 have had 33 queen cells built on one 

 comb), and when they are sealed over, the comb is 

 hung in the lamp nursery, and another filled with 

 eggs put in its place. 



When a frame of eggs from the imported queen is 

 taken from the hive, it is always replaced with a 

 frame of fdn. The hive is opened every day, and 

 when a comb is found filled with eggs, the date when 

 they will hatch into queens is marked upon the top 

 of the frame. One colony builds cells enough to 

 supply constantly, 25 nuclei. After a swarm has 

 built 5 or 6 "batches" of cells, however, it gets 

 "tired" and does not build so many; then I general- 

 ly give it a laying queen, and turn the queen cell 

 business over to a fresh colony. 



My experience with the lamp nursery, and intro- 

 ducing virgin queens, is so exactly like that given in 

 the ABC, that I will not repeat it. 



Instead of making small nucleus hives, I use full 

 sized Simplicities, putting two nuclei in one hive. 

 Of course, the nuclei are placed at opposite sides of 

 the hive, and have their entrances at diagonally op- 

 posite corners. For division boards, I use the same 

 chaff cushions that are used to pack the bees in win- 

 ter. The nucleus hives are pretty well scattered 

 around the yard, and over one entrance to each hive, 

 is tacked a piece of bright colored paper; I used 

 this method last season, and lost but few queens. 



For stands upon which to set the hives, I use 

 boards a little larger than the bottom of a hive, with 

 cleats nailed under each end to keep them from 

 warping and to raise them a little from the ground. 

 The hives are turned around until the opposite 

 corners project beyond the edge of the bottom 



board enough to make entrances. For an alighting 

 board, or "door-step," a small piece of board is 

 nailed to the edge of the bottom board, % of an inch 

 below each entrance. 



I find that queen rearing, like ordinary bee-keep- 

 ing, cannot be learned entirely from books; it re- 

 quires practice. # W. Z. Hutchinson. 



Rogersville, Genesee Co., Mich. 



I heartily concur in your directions in the 

 main, friend II. Your plan of getting two 

 entrances to a Simplicity hive, without any 

 cutting or boring holes in it is quite ingen- 

 ious. We should be very careful that the 

 division boards are bee tight when having 

 two colonies in one hive, for many mishaps 

 and disappointments have resulted from the 

 bees getting through a crack in the bottom 

 board, or from the division board's not fit- 

 ting quite as it should. 



WINTERING. 



SAWDUST AS GOOD AS CHAFF. 



f-N" 18T2, having 30 colonies of bees, I constructed a 

 house to winter them in, with double walls 18 in. 

 apart, filled in all around with green sawdust. 

 I weighed each hive when I placed it in this house, 

 and again, at the end of 102 days, when I took it out. 

 The greatest consumption of honey by any one colo- 

 ny was 13 lbs. ; least consumption 2 lbs. ; average, 

 8' 2 lbs. When 1 had completed the weighing in the 

 spring, and found an abundance of live bees and but 

 very few dead ones in the hives, I was ready to run 

 into the street and shout eureka. But, alas! the 

 next winter frost crept into my model bee-house, 

 dysentery made its appearance, and some colonies 

 perished. The third winter more frost crept, in, 

 more dysentery, more dead colonies. Spring dwin- 

 dling set in, and my apiary was soon reduced to one 

 colony. Disgusted with bee-keeping, I sold my ex- 

 tractor, disposed of my hives, melted the combs into 

 wax, and was prepared to retire from the business; 

 but, when fall came, feeling sorry for that poor lone- 

 ly colony, for I thought death surely awaited it, I de- 

 cided to try another experiment in wintering. I 

 procured a large* goods box, put the hive inside of 

 it, fixed an outlet for the bees, took the top off the 

 hive, spread some burlaps over the frames, and filled 

 the goods box with dry, seasoned sawdust, so that 

 there were about 8 in. of sawdust all around, and 12 

 in. on top of the hive. The bees were allowed to go 

 out whenever they pleased, and were left in this box 

 till May. When I removed the colony from its win- 



