December, 1914. 



419 



American Hee Journal 



is no rule in the art to apply to differ- 

 ent beekeepers. One man produces a 

 ton and sells it locally as best he can, 

 anotlier peddles, the next man trades 

 with the local stores, some buy ma- 

 chine-made advertising leaflets, some 

 use post cards. The great big pro- 

 ducers depend upon the commission 

 men, the bakeries, and an ad in the bee 

 journals. Every man is a law unto 

 himself, and I suppose it will always 

 be so. 



I believe in shorl, snappy ads, and 

 because of it, and to reply to scores 

 who write me, I am going to sug- 

 gest that the bee journals put on the 

 market little stickers, say 2 inches long 

 and I2 inch wide, printed in full face, 

 glaring red letters, 



BSEmns 



That is all. Let them be gummed. 

 They can be sold, if orders justified 

 printing them by the million, at from 

 30 to 50 cents a t/ioi/su/id. What! I 

 get a fine "SHAKE THE BOTTLE" 

 label, white letters on red ground at 

 about 50 cents the single thousand. 

 Let every beekeeper in the United 

 States use 5000 to 10,000 of these, stick- 

 ing them everywhere, and we can pretty 

 nearly do a national advertising stunt. 

 I am known as the " Eat Bonney Honey 

 Man" for a hundred miles in all direc- 

 tions, but I'll take and use 10,000. Who 

 is next ? Don't all speak at once. 

 Buck Grove, Iowa. 



[Dr. Bonney's suggestion is good. 

 These labels can be furnished on 

 gummed paper, printed in red, for 35 

 cents per thousand, postpaid. If our 

 beekeeping friends desire to try them, 

 we can easily supply them. Every one 

 knows the value of advertising by keep- 

 ing the name of the article constantly 

 before the public. — Editor.] 



A Few Statistics on Queen 

 Superseding 



BY DR. BRUENNICH. 



THIS year, my eldest son, a very able 

 beekeeper, and I have superseded 

 by different methods, some 40 

 queens. The circumstances were ex- 

 ceedingly unfavorable, I dare say as 

 unfavorable as possible. We had a 

 wonderful April, with a crop of cherry- 

 bloom honey, but May, June, July and 

 even August were unusually rainy. My 

 average crop, per colony, of extracted 

 honey, was only 5 kilos (11 pounds), 

 and in August the average supply of 

 honey in the brood-chamber was 3.3 

 kilos. Thus and worse it was in all 

 Switzerland this season. A great many 

 colonies starved, and many have given 

 no crop at all and have almost no sup- 

 plies. So it is easy to understand that 

 the humor of the bees was such as is 

 perhaps unknown in America. This 

 explains why relatively many queens 

 have been killed or mutilated. Had I 

 your circumstances of honey flow, per- 

 haps I would not have lost a single 



y-^i 



3^^ 



c^^. 



Wire Tube Cage for Queen Introduc 



TION 



queen. The odor theory alone can ex- 

 plain to me the ill success, as I will try 

 to prove in the end of my article. As 

 a general rule it is better to introduce 

 a queen in July than in August, in June 

 better than in July, and in May better 

 than in June. The more brood the 

 colony has the better we succeed. 



I adopted the following methods : 



1. The szcarm method. A, for super- 

 seding. The bees of the colony, de- 

 queened, are shaken into a swarm-box. 

 "The brood-frames are given to other 

 colonies for nursing. Th.- swarm is 

 fed, and after some hours I give, 

 through a hole in the honey-board, a 

 que' n in a tube of wire-cloth closed 

 above by a cork and below by a cylin- 

 der of candy. The swarm-box is placed 

 in a quiet, dark room for 36 to 48 hours. 

 Generally the swarm will build a little 

 comb which the queen will fill with 

 eggs, which is always a good sign. In 

 the evening the swarm is shaken again 

 in its hive where I have replaced the 

 combs of the colony. 



For feeding I use a simple cylindric 

 honey tumbler, closed with cheese- 

 cloth, double. 



B, for establishing a colony. From 

 different colonies I form a swarm in 

 the swarm-box as above. The swarm 

 is then shaken into a hive with comb 

 foundation. 



2. 'J'/ie smoke metltod, after Arthui C. 

 Miller. As a rule, I let the queen fast 

 for 20 to 30 minutes, for I believe that 

 the success is surer. 



3. riie cage method. This is a method 

 devised by my son and myself last year. 

 We use a square tube or cage of wire- 

 cloth, about \%> inches wide, Yi inch 

 thick, and 4>^ inches long. One end 

 consists of a 1%, inch tube filled with 

 candy. Both ends are shut by a wood 

 stopper. The figure will explain the 

 little instrument. From the dequeened 

 colony we pick a dozen or more bees 

 from the alighting-board, by holding 

 the cage at B with the right hand and 

 the stopper A with the left hand and 

 pushing the open cage along, on the 

 board where the bees are congregated. 

 Closing it from time to time, the bees 

 will go towards the candy, when the 

 operation may be repeated until we 

 have enough. Then I plunge the end 

 of the cage with the bees into water 

 about a minute, agitating the cage. 

 When the bees are wet enough one 

 can easily get the queen into the cage 

 and no bee will be aggressive The 

 cag ■ with bees and queen is now put 

 on the top-bars of the brood frames, 

 removing super combs if necessary. 

 Late in the season we use an empty 

 super over t e brood-chamber. So the 

 behavior of the bees toward the new 

 queen can easily be observed. If there 

 are many bees on the cage, and they 

 are restless and angry, they have a 

 tendency to ball the queen, which, of 

 course, they are unable to do. If there 

 is only a thin cover of quiet bees over 

 the cage, the matter is all right I leave 

 the tube as long as seven days on the 

 frames, and even up to ten days, but 

 not longer, and then I examine all 

 brood combs minutely for qucen-cells 

 which I destroy. Should the behavior 

 of the bees be kind, I run a match 

 through the tube at Y, and hang the 

 cage perpendicularly between twn 

 combs containing brood after having 

 removed the wood stopper C. In about 

 00 percent of the cases there will be 

 queen-cells; if there are none, it is 

 always a good sign. Once I overlooked 

 a queen-cell, but after a few days ^ 



Dr. Bku.nmch's Queen Cage 



dead young queen was found on the 

 alighting-board and all was well. 



4. I'lic meal method is a proceeding 

 where the cage method is combined 

 with the meal. I begin as in No. 3, 

 but can release the queen earlier, per- 

 haps after four days I also adopted 

 this method when I was not sure that 

 the queen would be accepted. After 



