APRIL 1, 1913 



aUEE^LL RIGHT ^^^^^ ^^^^5- 



4- 5_ 



QUEENLESS. 



Want to supercede. 

 8 



Young LAYING Queen, 



REARED THIS 

 9 SEASON. 



Plenty OF HONEY and 



SOME TO SPARE. , , 



10 11 



NO STORES) 



NEED HONEY. 



Something wrong 



WANT TO SWARM. 



to hold the queen until, bj' the dullness of 

 the paint, I knew it had dried, or else 1 

 let her wander around for half a minute 

 on a bai'e comb. This half-minute seems 

 a much longer time when you have three or 

 four days' branding to do in front of you ; 

 but unless the alcohol has quite evaporated 

 you will find your queen, when next you go 

 to her hive, with only the remnants of a 

 brand — far too little to be of iDraetical use 

 to the large apiarist. 



A word of caution to the nervous : Brand 

 the Cjueens when holding the abdomen — not 

 the head — toward your right hand. I brand- 

 ed one head toward me, and daubed the 

 end of one of the antennae. I found queen- 

 cells four days after, and no queen. I had 

 noticed this bungling on my part, and had 

 marked tie hive for future investigation. 



223 



Another caution is 

 when marking the 

 wing. Be careful not 

 to daub the abdomen. 

 If the squai'e end of 

 the flattened wire is 

 just touched on the 

 wing ever so lightly in 

 the center of its length, 

 the wire marker can 

 be lowered till the wing 

 moves toward the 

 marker. When draw- 

 ing it away it brands 

 the wing. Try a few 

 drones first. Do not 

 be content with the 

 thorax mark alone. If 

 you can see a queen 

 with that mark only, 

 j-ou could, in the case 

 of yellow queens, find 

 her with no mark at 

 all. My queens were 

 marked at the spring- 

 overhaul, when n o 

 drones had yet hatch- 

 ed. All are very dark, 

 being granddaughters 

 of a queen imported 

 thirteen thousand 

 miles from Italy, and 

 a few queens are black. 

 Old queens were mark- 

 ed with the lemoi\ 

 chromo. 



This season's queens 

 are being marked witli 

 the washing-blue made 

 lighter bj- addition of 

 whiting used for fire- 

 places. Young queens 

 just laying are an ex- 

 ception to the calm behavior noted on the 

 part of the older queens. The clipping and 

 branding so excite the little '' newly weds " 

 that in two cases, while some bees were 

 going for the " wliisky '' on the thorax, oth- 

 ers were balling the Cjueen, and I had to use 

 a deal of smoke; and while all were roaring, 

 I shook the queen with a frame of bees at 

 the entrance, and let them all run in togeth- 

 er. But the five or six that acted in this 

 way were laying serenely the next morning. 

 All together I found and branded queens 

 from the whole apiary of 186 colonies in 

 four daj's, doing a few other items of man- 

 ipulation as needed, such as filling supers 

 lacking a few combs, and arranging brood 

 in supers when necessary. I judge that one 

 man ought, by the sifting method, to find 

 and brand five queens per hour. But if 



l/£RY LIGHT IN BEE5. 

 12 



"i FA LED HONE^. 

 READY rOTAKE OFF 



