742 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Nov. 



then the yield has been very light. They have stor- 

 ed a little since buckwheat and g-oldenrod came into 

 bloom, but they will need it all, and manj^ will have 

 to be fed to carry them through the winter. 

 Orieco, Conn., Oct. 5, 1885. T. B. Mowry. 



Friend ^L, this thinf? has been up before, 

 a good many times, and 1 should be glad to 

 think you are correct ; but if I remember 

 rijjhtly, a good many reports at the time 

 the matter was discussed showed that the 

 crops of the birds contained hee- stings. 

 The sting could be, of course, readily identi- 

 fied under the microscope, even if they were 

 entirely mashed up. See " King-Birds," in 

 the A B C book. 



and do service more years when hatched 



ARTIFICIAL QUEENS. 



Are They Inferior to those Rai.sed under the 

 Swarming Impulse? 



THOSF. RAISKU I.ATi; IN 'J'HK SEASON, LONGEST 

 L1\E1>. 



R. ARWIXE shows by his tabulation that 

 queens long in growing are longer lived 

 (p. 587). So far he is without flaw, and no 

 man can show argument against him with- 

 out using smart catches that are not proof. 

 1 can trace back, by record, every queen I have 

 raised since 1874. their disposal, life's length in most 

 cases, and other items of their history. I have av- 

 israged over 60 nuclei, shifting the queens as fast as 

 laying commenced, and it is not so strange to have 

 5-year-old queens, because I have as many as 25 of 

 that age already. Four and three year olds are to 

 be found; but the singular part of all is, those 

 fjueens are all out of the August and September 

 raised queens. They are among those the least in- 

 clined to swarm, gentle to handle, and are good 

 steady layei-s. The May and June queens are as 

 bad swarmers as the swarm-cell queens, and are as 

 short lived as the October queens. I have averaged 

 setting up my nuclei May 12, the earliest being the 

 M, the latest the 18th as a season start; usually, ^3 

 lo Vz the number I intended to run through the sea- 

 son, bringing the number up to full before the last 

 of June. Give me, for my own use, queens from 

 cells started in 5-frame nuclei; let them build and 

 cap their cells promiscuously, then destroy them 

 just at night, and give them some eggs, taking 

 away the center comb; and though all the queen- 

 breeders in the world speak against it, I am forced 

 to believe what facts prove to be so under my eyes. 

 There-is one queen coming 6 years old in Aug., 

 1886, that has never trifd to swarm. She was clip- 

 ped as soon as she began laying, and has been in 

 the same hive she is now occupying, since Oct., 1882. 

 She was weak in bees last spring, but otherwise good. 

 She is the mother of well-to-do daughters to the 

 third gene»ation. How is that for forced, or artifi- 

 cial queens? Close-kept record tells me that the 

 swarm-cell "blow" is very well, but I take my pick 

 out of August and September nucleus cells. I don't 

 find that so many swarm or so many fill the brood- 

 nest with honey. Fall-raised queens get some age 

 before being obliged to make laying a steady busi- 

 ness. Hard steady work breaks down all young an- 

 imals. IT, H. L. JEFIKEV. 



New Milford, Conn. 



Friend J., you have suggested an idea that 

 is at loast new; viz., that a queen will live 



i and fertilized late in the fall, so that she 

 i has many months of comparative rest before 

 ' the great labors of swarming-time. It seems 

 j to me reasonable, and we should be very 

 glad of reports from others when they are 

 I prepared to give us facts in this matter of 

 1 much importance. 



NATURAL SWARMS. 



INTRODUCING A VIRGIN QUEEN, TO PREVENT 

 AFTER-SWARMING. 



F you have no objection to the following, I 

 should like to give to the readers of Gle.^n- 

 l INGS, and especially those who, like myself, 

 have had but little experience with bees, a 

 very good way of managing bees through the 

 swarming- season— not that it is new, but because I 

 find it such a simple and easy way. In the first 

 place, I thiuk we all want our bees to swarm as ear- 

 ly as possible; for that i-eason I don't put th(^ sec- 

 tions on until they really need them, which, of 

 course, depends on how soon the lower part, or 

 brood- chamber, becomes filled with brood, bees, 

 and honey. This treatment, I think, induces them 

 to make preparations for swarming. When a hive 

 sends out its first swarm I let them get well cluster- 

 ed, and then hive them in a new hive (new to them), 

 with two frames of comb, and the rest of the 

 frames with foundation. As soon as they are all in, 

 or clustered on the hive, I move them to a ncic 

 stand, and gently smoke them into the hive, g 



This, I know, is different from the way many do; 

 but the reason I do not move the old hive on a new 

 stand and put the new hive on the old stand, is, it 

 sometimes happens that the bees cluster, and go 

 into the hive all right, but they may not have a 

 queen with them; and if the old hive has been 

 moved from its stand, and the new hive placed 

 where the old hive stood, and if the queen did not 

 swarm out wirti them, your newcolony is queenless, 

 and they can't go back to their old home, for they 

 don't know where it is. If It had not been moved, 

 however, as soon as they found they had no queen 

 they could go back home and try it again. So much 

 for first swarms; but let me add, I put all first 

 swarms back after July 10th. Of course, I have 

 after-swarms to deal with. I have each hive num- 

 bered, and I have a plat of the bee-yard, using a 

 small blank card to represent each hive, and each 

 card is numbered to correspond with hive, and is 

 located the same as in the yard. It is about the 

 same as going to the bookstore and selecting your 

 reserved seats for an entertainment. When a 

 swarm comes out, and is hived and located, I i)ut 

 the date and the number of the new swarm on the 

 card on the plat, that the swarm came out of. I 

 also put a new card on the plat- board to represent 

 the new swarm, and put the new number, date, and 

 number of hive it came from (double-entry book- 

 keeping). When a second swarm issues, I look on 

 the plat-boai-d to make sure it is not a first swarm. 

 I watch them until they begin to cluster, and then 

 go to the hive and remove the tier of sections, and 

 cut out all the queen-cells. If they have a tier of 

 sections partly filled, and the flow of honey is good, 

 1 put a tier of empty sections (with starters) with 

 open tops on the hive first and then the tier they 

 had partly filled, on top. Then I take a well-made 

 nail-keg, M'ith :'.i'-inch holes all around near the top 



