GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



General Correspondence 



A NEW METHOD OF INTRODUCING 



The Various Methods Considered ; the Odor The- 

 ory — is it a Fallacy? 



BY ARTHUR C. MILLER 



Legion is the number of plans for intro- 

 ducing queens, and he is a rash man who 

 claims to have found a new one; and yet 

 perhaps the unexpected may have happened 

 here. 



The " direct method " was the first one 

 used; and, if memoi^ serves, Keaumur was 

 the man who used it. It was years after 

 he had passed away that the caging plans 

 arose. Who began them may perhaps never 

 be known, for, like Topsy, they seem to have 

 •' just growed." But growing and spread- 

 ing and vai-j-ing as they have, they have by 

 no means brought satisfactory results; on 

 the contrary, so great is the loss by all cage 

 methods that the beekeepers are few who 

 are not looking- for a better way. All of 

 the cage plans are based on the theory that 

 the odor of the queen governs her reception 

 — that is, if she is confined in a cage placed 

 in the colony to receive her until she has 

 acquired the hypothetical odor of that colo- 

 ny she will be safe when released. But, as 

 ail experienced beekeepers know, too many 

 times the facts do not prove the theory. 



Or)0n NOT THE GOVERNING FACTOR IN INTRO- 

 DUCTION OF QUEENS. 



Colonies do have individually character- 

 istic odors, some of which are such that the 

 human nose of fair acuteness and training 

 can detect them. If the human nose can 

 distinguish between certain colonies, then 

 surely the bees, with their wonderfully acute 

 sense of smell, must be able to disting-uish 

 between their own and a strange hive. But 

 because the individual bee can recognize the 

 home by odor, it by no means follows that 

 the colony can recognize the individual 

 worker by her odor. On the contrary, when 

 the bees of an apiai-y get to work on any 

 particular kind of flowers, whether clover, 

 basswood, buckwheat, or other flowers, the 

 bees mix freely. To illustrate : In an apiary 

 of thirty odd colonies there were three dis- 

 tinct and easily recognized strains of Ital- 

 ians and one of blacks. The season until 

 mid-July was poor, the bees getting but 

 little more than a living. An examination 

 of the colonies then showed vei'y few bees 

 in them that were not raised there. There 

 followed a heavy flow from Clethra, and 

 within a week eveiy colony had a very con- 

 siderable part of its population made up of 

 all the different strains. Had the bees' sense 



of smell gone wrong? Or is the odor factor 

 of less impoi'tance than we have given it? 



DIRECT METHOD OF INTRODUCTION. 



For many j-ears the writer has used some 

 form of direct introduction with queens, 

 and only occasionally has used a cage. In 

 the beginning the " fasting plan " was care- 

 fully followed; then, little by little, it was 

 modified and changed, until ultimately all 

 sorts of ways were used for running in the 

 queens. The system which he now uses 

 most of the time, and which never fails, is 

 as follows : A colony to receive a queen has 

 the entrance reduced to about a square inch 

 with whatever is convenient, as grass, weeds, 

 rags, or wood, and then about three puifs of 

 thick white smoke — because such smoke is 

 safe — is blown in and the entrance closed. 

 It should be explained that there is a %- 

 inch space below the frames, so that the 

 smoke blown in at the entrance readily 

 spreads and penetrates to all parts of the 

 hive. In from fifteen to twenty seconds that 

 colony will be roaring. The small space at 

 the entrance is now opened; the queen is 

 run in, followed by a gentle puff of smoke, 

 and the sjDace again closed and left closed 

 for about ten minutes, when it is reopened 

 and the bees are allowed to ventilate and 

 to quiet down. The full entrance is not 

 given for an hour or more, or even until 

 the next daj'. 



The queen may be picked from a comb 

 and put in at the entrance with one's fin- 

 gers, or run in from a cage just taken from 

 the mails, her attendants running along too. 

 The result is the same. The alien queen 

 and workers are quite as much at home as 

 the 'real owners of the hive. It makes no 

 difference how long the colony has been 

 queenless, whether just dequeened, or so 

 long that lajdng workers have infested it. 



Right here two conditions should be cited, 

 or beekeepers not familiar with bee behavior 

 may sometimes experience trouble. Colo- 

 nies with sealed queen-cells or with virgin 

 cjueens will sometimes supersede the new 

 queen, particularly if that queen has been 

 kept from laying for some days prior to her 

 introduction. A queen taken fresh from the 

 combs where she is laying freely will gen- 

 erally cause the destruction of the cells or 

 the virgin. Different strains of bees and 

 different colonies of the same strain behave 

 differently toward a plurality of queens, or 

 queen and cells. For example : A good 

 populous colony late in September had been 

 dequeened, and had built half a dozen or 

 more qiieen-cells, most of which were allow- 

 ed Jpy the bees to hatch. October 14, ten 



