1!>()8 



GLKANlNCiS IN BEE CULTURE. 



37 



son was a fairly good one, and other colonies 

 prndueed a fair crop of section honey. 



1q the following spring I found one of my 

 queens missing. It occurred to me that 

 there were virtually two hives in one, with 

 all the danger of losing a ffood queen at 

 any time, as well as that of disturbing both 

 colonies in handling one, and the other dis- 

 advantages that presented themselves to me 

 caused me to abandon the experiment, with 

 the thought that the game was not worth 

 the powder. 



The idea that it is a good thing to have 

 two or more queens in one hive in early 

 spring for the purpose of building up strong 

 colonies does not appeal to me. If, with my 

 management, it required two or more queens 

 to give me good working force for honey- 

 gatnering at the proper time, those queens, 

 young or old, would be condemned and ex- 

 ecuted. I'd give very much more for one 

 good queen than for half a dozen poor ones 

 at any time of year. I should hesitate to 

 buy queens from any breeder who thought 

 it necessary thus to build up strong colonies 

 in the spring, for fear that I'd get the most 

 common sort of layers in time if the practice 

 were continued. Adopt the practice of us- 

 ing only large and well-developed queens; 

 let the management be such that the colony 

 shall be kept warm in early spring, and have 

 the right kind of nourishing food, and plenty 

 of it, then one queen will soon fill the brood- 

 chamber to overflowing with ambitious 

 workers when there is any thing to be done. 

 Such will be found to be a colony in normal 

 condition, and nothing better could be rea- 

 sonably hoped for. 



If I may be permitted, I'd like to illustrate 

 what I mean by giving an example from my 

 own yard. My apiary is pretty well known 

 as having strong colonies in the spring. 

 For example, let us examine No. 25, which 

 is a fair sample of hives in the apiary, so 

 far as numbers are concerned— a two-story 

 double- walled hive with 9 Hoffman frames 

 in the brood-chamber and 10 in the second 

 story On June 5 this colony swarmed. I 

 captured the queen and put the cage con- 

 taining her in my pocket and awaited the 

 return of the bees. In the mean time I pre- 

 pared three hives for use in dividing the col- 

 ony. When the swarm had returned, and 

 become quiet, I removed the cover and found 

 not only the hive proper but the two-inch 

 air-space outside of the super literally filled 

 with bees. Selecting a frame of brood con- 

 taining one or more nearly ripe queen-cells 

 for each of the three hives, I proceeded to 

 remove the ten frames of brood and bees 

 from the super to the center of these hives, 

 making as nearly an equal division as pos- 

 sible; then I shook bees from some of the 

 frames of the brood-chamber into each hive; 

 filled them at the sides with empty combs, 

 when they looked, for all the world, like 

 fairly strong colonies. Then I filled the super 

 of the parent colony with ten more frames 

 of comb, and released the queen. These 

 newly made colonies at the time of swarm- 

 ing may be placed immediately anywhere in 



the yard without danger of bees returning 

 to the parent hive, which is not the case at 

 any other time; but, to return to the parent 

 colony. 



On the 5th of July, the record shows, I ex- 

 amined it and found the super fairly well 

 filled, and considerable of the comb capped. 

 I put a section-case on top of the super, but 

 this was done too late; for on the 13th anoth- 

 er swarm emerged. I took off the super, cut 

 out the queen-cells, and added two more sec- 

 tion-cases, hoping to secure comb honey; but 

 the season immediately changed, so that only 

 about one case was secured. I extracted 

 about 50 lbs. from this hive — 40 from one of 

 the new colonies; 30 from another, and took 

 two-thirds of a case of comb honey from the 

 other; besides, each put in stores enough 

 for the winter. 



Now, the point is this: What would any 

 one want of two or more such queens in one 

 hive? I do not know what I'd do with half 

 a dozen of Root's $35.00 queens in one hive. 

 Can you tell? But such queens are just such 

 as I want, and I'll have no other if they can 

 be obtained. 



I forgot to say that, at the last cutting of 

 queen cells, three hatched at the operation, 

 which I used for requeening. They are from 

 the stock of that old queen I have thought 

 so much of, and have tried to perpetuate in 

 my apiary. 



Lake Geneva, Wis. 



[The Root $25.00 queens are very scarce 

 with us; that is to say, we seldom find one 

 good enough to bring that price. If we could 

 get plenty of such queens there would be no 

 need of discussing this plural-queen system, 

 as there would be nothing in it. To go a lit- 

 tle further, could we stock a whole apiary 

 with even three or five dollar queens? It 

 can be done at considerable labor and ex- 

 pense in weeding out stock below this grade; 

 but how could we know the first season, and 

 before the honey-flow, that any queen would 

 be a good one? As that does not seem prac- 

 ticable, is it not advisable to run two queens 

 to the hive, and then, if one of them should 

 prove to be of little value, the other, accord- 

 ing to the law of chance, would make up for 

 the deficiency of the other? By having two 

 or more queens to the hive we reduce the 

 chance of failure of a whole hive, and at the 

 same time make more sure of getting some- 

 thing for the labor expended. 



Then, moreover, if at any time we run 

 short of queens we can draw from a colony 

 that has one to spare. At all events, after 

 the honey-flow the chances are that the col- 

 ony will cut down its queen force to one. 



If we run the yard on the two-queen plan, 

 by all means strive to make the two just as 

 good as if we were rearing only one to the 

 hive. This would give us two queens, one 

 of which ought to be a good one, even if the 

 other were not. 



It is not wise just yet to predict the ulti- 

 mate success and general adoption of the 

 two-queen system. Candidly, we don't know 

 what the future is to be. — Ed.] 



