AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



43 



may be well to be prepared for occa- 

 sional disappointments. 



2. If you leave the bees till they fill 

 up, and then unite, they will be so old 

 they may not be worth uniting. More- 

 over, they will gather as much, or more, 

 honey if united as where they are, so I 

 would unite immediately unless the num- 

 ber is suflBcient to make a fair colony by 

 giving a queen. If you don't care for 

 increase, it may be the best thing to 

 unite. 



3. It is not at all an unusual thing 

 for a swarm to return to the old hive. 

 In this case they did not swarm out in 

 a body, because the distance was so 

 short they could do better. Probably in 

 most cases the reason for a swarm re- 

 turning to the old stand is because of 

 the queen. She may not be with them, 

 or something may be wrong with her. 

 Possibly they didn't like something about 

 their new quarters. 



4. The trap will not stop their work- 

 ing, but they'll not work so well while 

 hindered in their plans. Whether best 

 to let them swarm depends somewhat on 

 your own convenience and your after 

 management. 



Queenless Colony — Laying Workers. 



.1 have six colonies of bees, and but 

 one of them has swtirmed. It cast the 

 first swarm on June 1st, and it did well 

 for the first two weeks, and then had a 

 little brood in the top edge of their 

 combs. Yesterday, when I was looking 

 through them, the brood was all gone, 

 and the combs filled up with pollen. But 

 the strange thing to me is, that they 

 have two pieces of drone-comb built, 

 some of the cells with two eggs in them, 

 and some of them v/ith one. What is 

 the matter with them ? Have they lost 

 their queen ? and are some of the work- 

 ers laying? 



One more strange freak is, they have 

 now about a dozen queen-cells started 

 on one frame. No. 2 came off June 

 9th, and it is doing well, and has as 

 much comb built as No. 1, with quite a 

 little brood in four of the frames. 



Now comes something else : I thought 

 that I would look through the old one 

 that cast No. 1 and 2, and to my sur- 

 prise I found the frames filled completely 

 full of pollen, and very few cells of 

 honey, with no brood or eggs of any 

 kind. What is the matter with them ? 

 Have they lost their queen ? What is 

 the best thing to do with so much pollen? 



This is a very bad year for honey 

 around here. All the bees killed off all 



their drones about three weeks ago, and 

 there are few pleople that have had any 

 swarms at all. The white clover is a 

 complete failure, and if the bees get a 

 living I will think that mine have done 

 well. G. R. M. 



Rockford, 111., June 25. 



Answer. — You've hit it, first guess. 

 Queen lost, then laying workers. The 

 queen-cells only form part of the regu- 

 lar programme, for it is the usual thing 

 to find the bees trying to rear queens 

 from laying-worker brood. Sometimes 

 the first intimation of laying workers is 

 a queen-cell with two or more eggs in it. 



As to the mother colony, it is just pos- 

 sible that the queen was slow about get- 

 ting to work, but is laying all right by 

 the time you get this. I'm afraid, how- 

 ever, that it is also queenless. If you 

 find no queen laying by the time this 

 reaches you, better not wait longer, but 

 give the bees and combs of the queenless 

 colonies to other colonies. Probably 

 swarm No. 2 would be benefited to have 

 some such addition. 



The great amount of pollen in the 

 combs comes from the fact that having 

 no brood and young bees to use it up, 

 the pollen has accumulated in the combs. 

 It can be given to colonies that have a 

 queen, giving only one such comb to 

 each colony. 



Perforated-Zinc Q,ueen-Excluder, Etc. 



Can Root's queen-excluder, or per- 

 forated zinc, be made l/'32 of an inch 

 smaller, and still allow workers to pass 

 through ? 



My reason for asking is that I have 

 invented a self-hiver which I am confi- 

 dent will be a success, provided that the 

 queen-excluder can be made smaller. In 

 testing the excluder, I find that during 

 the excitement of swarming, about one- 

 third of the queens are crowded through, 

 but that after re-hiving the bees, the 

 queens cannot return into the hives 

 through the zinc. In an out-apiary of 

 50 colonies I used the excluders to re- 

 tain swarms, but about one-half of the 

 queens escaped, thereby causing me to 

 lose about one-half of the swarms. 



I now have 380 colonies. I have pro- 

 duced from 5,000 to 6,000 pounds of 

 comb honey. I cannot yet give accurate 

 figures on extracted honey, because I 

 am not done extracting. I propose to 

 increase the number of colonies next 

 year to about 800. B. D. 



Du Pont, Ga., June 25. 



Answer. — I think Root's perforations 



