THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



35 



tie time she may be quite readily discovered. 

 Wheh she is found let the operator, being 

 provided with a small pair of sharp scissors, 

 sit down, and, carefully seizing the queen by 

 the wings with the thumb and fore finger of 

 the right hand, let her seize the clothing on 

 his knee with her feet, then, holding her 

 gently but firmly by the head and shoulders 

 to the knee with the thumb and linger of the 

 left hand, and taking the scissors in the 

 right hand, clip off about two-thirds of one 

 of her large wings. I like to take the clip- 

 ping from the inside of the wing, leaving a 

 large part of the rigid outer edge of the wing. 

 In this way she is much less disfigured. By 

 clipping the right wing of queens hatched in 

 even years, and the left wing of those hatch- 

 ed in odd years, the age of almost every 

 queen can be determined at a glance. 



Next, as to the use of the queen trap. For 

 the few who possibly may not understand, I 

 may say briefly that the trap is a small box 

 made so as to close the entrance of the hive 

 except for the passages through perforated 

 zinc with which it is fitted. The perfora- 

 tions admit the free passage of the workers 

 but are too small to allow the queen to pass 

 out, and, in attempting to do so in swarm- 

 ing, she will usually find her way up through 

 a wire cloth cone to an upper appartment 

 where she is securely trapped. 



The use of the trap in the management of 

 swarming is almost self-evident. As no 

 swarm will desert the apiary unless attended 

 by a queen if a trap is properly fixed to the 

 entrance of the hive no queen can get out, so 

 the danger of loss of bees on account of 

 swarming, is entirely done away with. The 

 trap, it seems to me, must be of especial 

 value to those who keep so small a number 

 of colonies in one place that it is not profita- 

 ble to employ a person to watch them con- 

 tinually during the swarming season as well 

 as to those who for any roason are unable to 

 do so. 



The traps are so made that bees in the 

 upper apartment may be readily seen from 

 the outside and when they are used tliey 

 should be examined as often as every two or 

 three days that those colonies that have cast 

 swarms may be discovered and taken care 

 of. When a swarm has issued and returned 

 and the queen is trapped there will be found 

 from a small cluster to a quart or more of 

 bees in the trap with tlie queen so that it is 

 easy to determine the colonies which have 

 cast swarms, by simply looking at the traps 



as one passes along in front of the hives. Of 

 course when found the colonies must be 

 taken care of by taking out sufficient bees to 

 go with the queen to make a new colony, by 

 dividing combs and bees, or otherwise. If 

 a swarm is discovered when it is out it should 

 be hived as described heretofore where I 

 speak of clipping queens. 



If after-swarms are possible, traps should 

 be kept on the colonies from which prime 

 swarms have issued till the danger is past, 

 which may be from eight to sixteen days ac- 

 cording to management. The trap should 

 be removed from such colonies, as soon as 

 the danger is past, to allow the young queen 

 to take her mating flight. Care must be 

 taken that no young queen in taking that 

 flight is caught in the trap and allowed to 

 perish there. 



So valuable have both these methods 

 proved to be to me that I would not willingly 

 forego the use of either though I watched 

 my bees continually during the swarming 

 season. 



The traps are also useful for the capture 

 and destruction of useless drones but care 

 should be taken that the drones from one or 

 more choice colonies have full liberty 

 throughout the season. 



Lapeeb, Mich. Feb. 2, 189;". 



>if^^r§~^'f^^'^ 



Conditions that Bee - Keepers Will be Com- 

 pelled to Meet. 



G, M. DOOLITTLE. 



TT was with more 

 1 than usual in- 

 terest that I read- 

 t h e editorial i n 

 last Review under 

 the title "Will the 

 Bee - Keeping of 

 the Future Differ 

 From that of the 

 Past?" for it 

 seemed lik3 a bit 

 of history all of 

 my own, and one 

 which I was glad would be preserved through 

 the Review, so that our children's children 

 could know something of what bee-keeping 

 was in the nineteenth century. I can well 

 remember the box hive days, with the rows 

 of board hives on the benches in the back 

 yard of my childhood home, of the section 



