i9o: 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



457 



I do this by way of apology for what I said 

 in favor of this work. Mr. Gale says : 



"It is the only comic production on 'bee life' that 

 has ever been produced. When bee-men want some 

 fun I strongly recommend them to its perusal. 'All 

 rights reserved,' except the right to laugh. What 

 makes it .still more comical is that some of the Euro- 

 pean periodicals have published, in all seriousness, 

 lengihy extracts from it, showing the wonderful econ- 

 omy of the bee nation. When it is evident the writer 

 was only ' taking a rise ' out of the non-bee-keeping 

 public, i will give a few extracts: 'Transport our 

 black bee to California or Australia, and her habits 

 "will be completely altered. Finding that summer is 

 perpetual and flowers forever abundant, she will, 

 after one or two years, be content to live from day to 

 day, and gather only .sufficient honey and pollen for 

 the day's consumption.' 'Drones, foolish, clumsy, 

 useless, noisy, pretentious, gluttonous dirty, coarse, 

 totally and scaudaloush' idle, insatiable, and enor- 

 mous.' 'Indelicate, wasteful, sleek and corpulent, 

 fully content with their idle existence as honorary 

 lovers, they feast and carouse through the alleys, ob- 

 struct the passages, and hinder the work; jostling and 

 jostled, fatuously, pompous, swelled with foolish, 

 good-natured contempt.' " 



Althoug'h the book is not all as bad as 

 this, it certainly must be read in the light 

 of something highly' figurative and fanci- 

 ful. If it is not read, nothing will be lost; 

 and if it is read, but little harm will be done. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 

 In a reply to E. E. Hasty, Prof. A. J. 

 Cook makes the following interesting obser- 

 vations in regard to the length of bees' 

 tongvies and methods of measuring them: 



"In a letter from Prof. Gillette he objects to my 

 method of obtaining the tongues. I cut off the head's 

 of the bees, and then dissect out the tongues. Prof. 

 Gillette threw the bees into hot water. His objection 

 to my method is that the tongue will move. Of course 

 we must wait until the muscles die. which requires 

 many hour.s, often a full day. I have known a head- 

 less wasp to inflict a painful sting more than 12 hours 

 after it had lost its head. Of course the muscles were 

 not all dead yet, and the sting will be thrust out as 

 long as the muscles are alive. Might not the hot water 

 set the muscles? If we stretch the tongue by pressure 

 on the mentum as soon as the muscles are dead and in- 

 active, and before rigor mortis has set in, I believe we 

 have the conditions best suited to give the most cor- 

 rect results.' 



SOMETHING ABOUT QUEEN-REARING; THE 



CELL-CUP plan; does it produce 



INFERIOR queens? 



"Good morning, Mr. Doolittle. I came 

 over this morning to have a little chat with 

 you regarding queen-rearing, as I wish to 

 rear quite a few queens this year. What 

 is the best method to pursue? " 



" Without doubt, Mr. Brown, as good 

 queens can be reared b^' the bees under the 

 swarming impulse as by any other plan. 

 This has been the way in which queens 

 have been reared mostly during all the 

 centuries which have passed, up to about 

 fifty years ago, and the way by which the 

 bees survived all of the perils through 

 which they have passed, so that they came 



down to our day as hardy and vigorous as- 

 they were on the morn of that day when the 

 Creator of all things pronounced all which 

 he had made as good.^'' 



" Undoubtedly that is correct, but I da 

 not wish to be tied up to the little space 

 during the season when the bees are swarm- 

 ing, in which to rear queens. I wish to- 

 rear queens just when I desire to do so. Is 

 there any way good queens can be reared 

 at any season of the year? " 



"As you put it I shall have to say no, 

 and saj' the same very emphatically. Good 

 queens can not be reared in the spring un- 

 til enough young bees have emerged from 

 their cells to make quite a comfortable 

 showing in the hive; neither can good queens 

 be reared in the fall after brood -rearing 

 has mainly ceased. It needs plenty of 

 young bees and a good supply of brood in 

 the hive to rear first-class queens. With 

 this as a fotmdation, you can supply a lack 

 in pasturage by feeding. Then if you can 

 find any colony which shows by its build- 

 ing queen-cells outside of the swarming 

 season that the bees are about to supersede 

 their queen, you can raise as good queens 

 from that colonj', during the time that the 

 old queen lives, as can be reared under the 

 swarming impulse." 



"I am glad to hear that, for I found one 

 of my strongest colonies building queen- 

 cells yesterday, some having royal jelly 

 and larvje in them. But this colony has 

 not my best queen in it, and I wish to raise 

 my queens from my best queen. How can 

 I overcome this difficulty? '" 



" By doing what is known as grafting 

 the queen-cells, which is simply transfer- 

 ring larva; from your best queen over into 

 the royal jelly in the queen-cells the bees 

 have started, after first removing the larva 

 that floats on this royal jelly. In this way 

 3'ou fool the bees, and they go on and per- 

 fect a queen from the substituted larva, the 

 same as thej' would have perfected their 

 own." 



" But how can I be sure that the grafted 

 cells are not torn down, or that others are 

 not completed which I have not grafted?" 



" By sticking a slim 1 '4 -inch wire nail 

 through the comb immediately over the 

 grafted cell j^ou can tell all about this; 

 and if you wish to secure as many queens 

 from this colony as possible, while the old 

 queen lives, you will open the hive twice a 

 week and graft all cells having royal jellj' 

 in them at each time of opening, and, later 

 on, take out the ripe cells before the queens 

 emerge. In this way you may get as many 

 as from 25 to 100 splendid queens from this 

 colony before the queen dies." 



"But must I wait for the bees to start 

 cells ? They are sometimes loath to start 

 more than one or two." 



" I know that a colony desiring to super- 

 sede its queen will not, as a rule, start as 

 many cells as will a colony under the 

 swarming impulse; and if I wish queens 

 faster than they start cells of their own ac- 

 cord, I use the cell-cup plan. In other 



