772 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



sary to the morals of the colony. But it 

 must also be admitted tliat such a queen 

 taken in the flush of her egg'-laying, and 

 confined with only five or six of her subjects, 

 with no chance to lay, and subject to "rough 

 handling and to being chilled in the mails," 

 is in very poor condition all around to re- 

 sume her normal rale of egg-laying so as to 

 satisfy her most critical judge — the man 

 who paid for her, and naturally expects 

 something. Some queens die in transit. 

 Others, while they pull through alive and 

 in apparently good condition, have been 

 rendered practically worthless by the hard- 

 ships of the trip. Numei'ous instances have 

 been cited of good queens starting, which, 

 after arrival, became drone-layers. 



Would it be going too far to say that fcAV 

 queens going 300 miles or more ever regain 

 their normal usefulness"? If they are good 

 ones, and regain within 10 or even 20 per 

 cent of their normal eliiciency, it might not 

 be noticed, and they would still be classed 

 as good. Nevertheless, the loss would be 

 there; and would be felt by the breeder as 

 well as the buyer. Northern beemen recog- 

 nize the desirability of getting early queens 

 from the South. Southern queen-breeders 

 would like to sell more queens, so it seems 

 to me that one of the biggest problems be- 

 for us is to minimize tlie chances of injury, 

 or, in other words, to provide such condi- 

 tions as will keep the queen as nearly nor- 

 mal as possible while in transit. Shipping 

 in nuclei does this; but the expense is too 

 great for one queen. 



I have an idea. It may be old, and it 

 may have been ti'ied before ; but in the five 

 years I have been reading bee lore, I have 

 never seen any mention of my plan. Breed- 

 ers advise shipping .$5.00 and $10.00 queens 

 in nuclei, but say notliing about shipping 

 five or ten $1.00 queens in a nucleus. Why 

 not? Beekeepers can not afford the trans- 

 portation charges on a nucleus with one 

 .$1.00 or even $2.00 queen; but they could 

 if it contained ten or twenty queens, all 

 safely protected from rough handling and 

 chilling by the same bunch of bees. Do not 

 call me a fool yet. Of course I don't mean to 

 turn ten or twenty queens loose in a nucleus ; 

 but when breeders raise twenty or more 

 queens to mating age in one frame, why 

 should they not be able to ship 1' e same 

 number in a modification of the same frame 

 with a warm living wall of bees on each 

 side? With cages placed back to back, some- 

 thing like 50 could be placed in the middle 

 frame of a nucleus; and if there would be 

 danger of the outside bees pulling the 

 queen's legs off, use a finer-meshed screen. 



Suppose I want 16 queens next spring. 

 and I want them to come through from 



Texas, and I want them to come through 

 not only alive but in a condition as nearly 

 normal as possible. What is to prevent the 

 breeder from taking some unfinislied sec- 

 tions, jiutting candy in one corner, a sponge 

 hlled with water in another, tacking wire 

 gauze on each side, pouring in a handful of 

 bees and a queen and then fitting the whole 

 16 sections of baby nuclei in a special 

 fiame. and putting this between two frames 

 of brood and bees in a nucleus box? While 

 he was about it he could partition the box 

 with screen each side of the middle frame, 

 and put a queen with the bees in the tAvo 

 outside frames. That would make 18 queens, 

 and each one protected from rough handling 

 and chilling, and with some natural comb to 

 crawl over, cling to, and perhaps lay in. 

 Why not? 



Still another: While E. R. is exjieriment- 

 ing with pound and half-pound packages 

 of bees, why not try sending a queen in with 

 them? When one needs queens, a few pounds 

 of bees would never come amiss. If a single 

 jiackage will go safely, wouldn't six, eight, 

 or a dozen — isolated or not from one an- 

 other Avith cardboard if necessary — hold 

 heat and go together in one package all the 

 better? 



North Platte, Neb. 



A HIVE HAVING AN OPEN BACK THROUGH 

 WHICH TO DRAW THE FRAMES 



BY GEORGE T. WHITTEN 



Tlie ])ictures show my new general-pur- 

 ])ose hive, befoi'e and after the bees were 

 ])ut in. It is 20 inches long, 131/2 wide, and 

 12 high. It takes the regular eight-frame 

 super or hive-body on top. The frames work 

 on the same principle as those in the ob- 

 servatory hive, and are shorter and higher 



Ut'orge T. Whitten's hive made on the l'rok<ipo- 

 vitsch principle of removing combs tlirougli an open 

 back instead of at the top. 



