1902 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



547 



would mean more to me than where frame 

 hives were used; and the bees being' in box 

 hives allows of ten times the drones being- 

 reared above what would naturally be rear- 

 ed were these neighbors prog^ressive enough 

 to use frame hives and restrict the building- 

 of drone comb. Now, under these condi- 

 tions how can I, in rearing queens for my 

 own use, secure them purely fecundated?" 



"There are several ways of working 

 looking toward the accomplishment of this, 

 all of which I have used during the past 

 30 years." 



"What I wish is a good practical plan." 



"Such a plan is the following-: Give to all 

 the colonies which have good Italian queens 

 one or two frames of drone comb, so that 

 large numbers of drones will be reared in 

 these Italian colonies, which will be very 

 likely to secure the pure mating of from 

 one-fourth to one-half of your young queens; 

 and when one is found that is impurely 

 mated, kill her and give the colony a queen- 

 cell from your best pure breeder, and' try 

 ag-ain. As your colonies increase, your 

 drones will increase also ; and the more 

 drones reared in your Italian colonies the 

 better will be your chances of having all 

 purely mated." 



"That would require a lot of work weed- 

 ing out the impure queens. Have you any 

 thing different from this?" 



"Yes; and were I to reject this, the next 

 I would try would be this: Give frames of 

 emerging worker brood to your drone-rear- 

 ing colony early in the spring; and this, 

 together with a little warm feed given each 

 night, will cause the desired queens to lay 

 in the drone comb early, through the stimu- 

 lation given, thus giving j'ou strong colo- 

 nies with plenty of drones before your neigh- 

 bors' colonies rear anj' drones. As soon as 

 any drone brood has been capped from three 

 days to a week, start to rear queens, and 

 in this way you will have your queens ready 

 for the first drones which appear. The 

 main objection to this plan is, that such 

 rearing of queens comes at a time when it 

 is likely to interfere with your crop of hon- 

 ey; for in all queen-rearing the colony is 

 thrown out of its normal condition; and 

 whether the old queens are taken away 

 from their colonies to give place for the 

 queen-cells desired, or nuclei formed to take 

 care of these cells, this interference comes 

 at a time when all should be booming as 

 much as possible along the line of rearing 

 the laborers (bees) in time for the honey 

 harvest, which, as a rule, will be from 30 

 to 50 days ahead. I am one of those who 

 believe that impure stock, with a good j'ield 

 of honey, is to be preferred to pure stoclc 

 and little surplus honey." 



"I think I should like this better than the 

 other, only, as you say, it would interfere 

 to a damaging extent with the jaeld of hon- 

 ey. As you said you had several plans, 

 tell me another, as that may please me bet- 

 ter than either of those you have spoken of. " 



"Another plan is, to wait till fall about 

 raising queens, when if you can preserve 



the desired drones till all of your neighbors' 

 drones are killed off, you will have every 

 queen to mate with the drones you desire." 



" Let me interrupt you long enough to ask 

 how I can have my drones preserved when 

 others are being killed. It is something I 

 have not been able to do." 



"My way of preserving drones is to gath- 

 er all the drone brood I can find in the api- 

 ary from the queens I have decided shall be 

 drone mothers, doing this just at the close 

 of the honey harvest, soon after which we 

 may expect drones to be killed, and mas 

 this brood in one hive, tiering it up as much 

 as may be necessary to accommodate this 

 brood and lots of honey; for the larger the 

 hive and the more honey it contains, the 

 more active will these drones be during the 

 late fall. At the time of massing this drone 

 brood the queen should be taken away from 

 the colony; and as often as a new queen 

 commences to lay she should be taken away 

 also, and this colony kept supplied with 

 sufficient worker brood to keep it in a pros- 

 perous condition. In this way you will 

 have reason to believe that all the queens 

 will be purel3'^ mated; and were it not that 

 this plan requires much extra work and 

 care as well, in feeding the queen-rearing 

 colonies, that fairly good queens may be 

 reared out of season, and, also, that this 

 late manipulation of colonies forfeits our 

 chances for successful wintering, I should 

 say that this was the best of all the plans 

 for securing purely mated queens." 



"I thank you for this plan, especially for 

 telling me how to preserve drones, for I 

 think I can now accomplish what has been 

 a failure with me heretofore. Have you 

 still other plans?" 



"Another plan is to take a hive contain- 

 ing many of our best drones to some locality 

 isolated four or five miles from other bees; 

 and, as often as may be, take a load of nu- 

 clei, supplied with queens from our best 

 mother, they being from three to five days 

 old, to this isolated place, leaving them 

 there from eight to ten days, when they can 

 be brought home with laying queens, which 

 will, as a rule, be all mated with the desir- 

 ed drones. With a proper rack fixed, from 

 20 to 30 can be carried to and fro at a time, 

 so that it is not as laborious as it at first 

 appears, and it has this advantage: Our 

 queens can be reared at a time when nearly 

 every queen will be perfection itself, all be- 

 ing reared in the height of the honey sea- 

 son, when the best queens can be reared 

 with the least work." 



"That sounds well, but I do not know 

 that I can find a locality isolated that far 

 from other bees. Have j'ou any thing else?" 



"Still another plan is to rear the queens 

 and drones in the best part of the honey 

 season, and, when ready, take the drone 

 colony, and as many nuclei as we have 

 queens of mating age, into the cellar or 

 some dark room, before the bees are fljnng 

 in the morning, leaving them there till some 

 three or four o'clock in the afternoon, after 

 all other drones have ceased fljang for the 



