1889 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



677 



Question 140.— a. What is the longest time you 



have known a queen to give good service? It. How long 

 will queens usually give good service in the hive? 



a. Five years; b. Two years. A.J.Cook. 



a. Three years; b. Two years. S. I. Freeborn. 



a. Four years; b. Three. Dadant & Son. 



a. Three years; b. I think two years, on an aver- 

 age. E. France. 



a. Between four and Ave years; b. Three and 

 one-half years. James Heddon. 



a. I have had some for four years, b. Usually 

 two years. Paul L. Viallon. 



a. Four years, b. Not over three years, and very 

 often not over two. J. A. Green. 



a. I hardly know; but 1 think not to exceed 3 l A 

 years; b. Three years. Geo. Grimm. 



a. Almost four years, b. They are often as pro- 

 lific as the best, in their third year. C. F. Muth. 



a. If no mistake has been made in my entries, 

 five years, b. Perhaps two to three years. 



C. C. Miller. 



a. Five years; b. Two years. Usually, a queen 

 hatched in June or July will be in her prime the 

 next season. A. E. Manum. 



a. Four years, b. Queens carefully bred, three 

 years; but as a rule, I try to have queens not much 

 over two years old. Rambler. 



a. Four seasons, b. For two full honey seasons. 

 I am inclined to think, that here in Cuba not more 

 than one full season. O. O. Poppleton. 



a. Five years, b. Good queens, two years; the 

 best, three years, if not crowded too hard, and two 

 much hardship in wintering. P. H. Blwood. 



a. Four years; b. For two years; some, perhaps a 



half, for three years. I think that most begin to 



fail " a leetle " the third year. 



Mrs. L. Harrison. 



I doubt if the average queen can be made profita- 

 ble more than three years; and 1 think the most 

 useful period of their lives is spent in two years. 



H. R. BOARDMAN. 



a. Five years, b. With me, two years usually, al- 

 though one of the best colonies T now have has a 

 queen three years old, and is now better than ever 

 before. A. B. Mason. 



a. Five years; b. The average life of my queens 

 is not far from three years. If they do not do good 

 work, the bees find it out and supersede them, this 

 being done with some in the second year, and not 

 till the fifth year with others. G. M. Doolittle. 



a. Years ago, while living in Cadiz, O., I got a 

 queen from Italy. I do not know how old she was 

 when I got her. T kept her three years, and sold 

 her, with the colony she was in, for $15.00. The 

 purchaser, the next season, had her stolen from his 

 hive, so we lost the run of her. While I owned her 

 she had one wing off, one leg off, and the foot off 

 another leg, yet hohbled around and laid as many 

 eggs as any queen I had. b. I should be inclined 

 to consider queens good for three years, in the 

 East, and for two years here. They get to rest 

 more in the Bast. R. Wilkin. 



As I neither clip wings nor raise queens for sale, 

 nor run many colonies for extracted honey, my fa- 

 cilities for knowing the age of my queens are much 

 less than usual. The long period that sections are 

 on, where surplus comes in in September, as well as 



in previous months, is a serious bar to knowing 

 when queens are superseded. When 1 began bee- 

 keeping I got a blank-book and entitled it " Queen 

 Ledger," and was going to have the life history of 

 every important queen all down in black and white. 

 But somehow or other the thing didn't run well, 

 and not a record in the book would be of any value 

 if published. E. E. Hasty. 



I am surprised to find that so many re- 

 port having had queens that would do good 

 service for four or rive years. In regard to 

 superseding queens, I once had a queen that 

 I thought did not lay up to the standard, so 

 I took her out of the hive and gave her to a 

 friend who happened to be there. She was 

 a line Italian, and her bees were beautiful, 

 and good workers. But the colony had been 

 weak so long that I decided it was her fault. 

 My friend, however, put her in a strong colo- 

 ny, and afterward decided that she was one 

 of the best queens he had, even though she 

 was in her second year. This incident has 

 led me to be more careful in deciding too 

 hastily that a queen ought to be superseded. 



THE OLD GERMAN BROWN BEE. 



BY W. P. HENDERSON. 



How sweet to our taste was the honey of childhood. 



When corn was in tassel and robbing time came! 

 The honey from linden, from poplar, and red-bud. 

 From clover and vervain, was sweet "all the 

 same." 

 The long line of gums, and the bark shelter o'er 

 them, 

 The big roll of rags, and the buckets hard by— 

 The neighborhood old folks, with cob pipe and long 

 stem,- 

 And e'en the old black bee which stung near the 



eye. 

 The wicked old black bee, the old native brown 



bee, 

 That stinging old black bee that closed up the eye. 



Such nectar! such sweetness! oh, who but a laddie 

 Could relish such chunks as they passed to and 

 fro? 



For bee-bread and larva 1 were mixed just as cut from 

 The top of the gum to the cross sticks below. 



The mead and metheglin, and cherry-tart pies ! 

 Oh ! who in his raising e'er wished or asked more? 



Come back, ye old times, and enliven our dotage, 

 And give us the bee and the honey of yore— 

 The thick linden honey— the honey-dew honey, 

 The rich candied honey and stinging brown bee. 



How fondly we cling to and cherish the mem'ry 



Of hollow elm gums and the comb they contained ! 

 Of piggins and pails full, stored by in the pantry. 

 And boiler with wax through the old meal-sack 

 strained. 

 Alas, what a change! now with sections and sling- 

 ing. 

 And fancy-marked bees from beyond the broad 

 sea! 

 No swarming, no tin pans to gladden life's evening, 

 We sigh for the ugly old German brown bee. 

 The old stinging workers— the brown colored 



workers, 

 The dark-colored, homely, old spiteful brown bee. 

 Mwrfree&oro, Tom. 



