AMERICAN BEE JOURNAU 



459 



when vou see a plant from one to fuur 

 feet high, with very bright yellow flow- 

 ers iu clusters, you are pretty safe to 

 guess it may be golden-rod. I suspect 

 the kind you have is the genuine article. 

 There is great diversity as to the matter 

 of bees working on it. Some say it is a 

 valuable honey-plant; others say it is 

 not visited by the bees. In my locality 

 I often find bees on it, but oftener not. 

 I don't think I ever saw the Colorado 

 potato beetle on it, but often the bluish 

 beetle. 



Supply dealers may furnish seed, but 

 I doubt if you will find any golden-rod 

 better than what you already have. If 

 you have ground to fill with golden-rod, 

 I advise you to try sweet clover. 



Questions on Clueens and Drones. 



This is my first year with bees. I 

 have 17 colonies. I bought 7 Italian 

 queens from a Texas breeder, and intro- 

 duced them Aug. 8th. On examination 

 Aug. 19th, I found them all received 

 and laying. I had removed and killed a 

 black queen from each of the 7 colo- 

 nies previous to introducing the Italian 

 queens, which were 5 untested and 2 

 tested. On examination Aug. 22nd I 

 found that the tested queens were miss- 

 ing, and one of them had queen-cells 

 started ; the other one none. 



Four days after this I took a queen- 

 cell from the one and engrafted it into 

 the other. The day for the queens to 

 hatch I found the one where the cells 

 were reared was hatched, and the one 

 engrafted destroyed, finding the comb 

 filled with eggs. On close examination 

 I found a black queen. I know that the 

 Italian queen was laying when she was 

 in there, for there is her brood to show 

 for itself. 



I have also exchanged Italian brood 

 into some of my black colonies, after 

 killing the queens, and they had sealed 

 queen-cells in four days after I put it in 

 there. Now from reading bee-books it 

 seems that it takes the eggs three days 

 to hatch and eight days to be sealed ; 

 also that they cannot rear a queen from 

 an egg that had been layed more than 

 three days when I exchanged the comb, 

 and the four days after that would be 

 seven days in sealing. I am young in 

 the business, and would be glad to re- 

 ceive all the information I can get, so I 

 will proceed to a few questions : 



1. Will a colony receive a queen when 

 it has one ? 



2. Why were my tested queens killed, 

 and the untested ones not? 



3. Are drones of any account, that 

 are reared in worker-cells, as that is all 

 I liave in my apiary? 



4. Will the bees seal a queen-cell 

 under eight days ? L. C. B. 



Ivanhoe, Tex., Sept. 8. 



Answers. — 1. I think not. 



2. I don't know of any reason why 

 the bees should discriminate, unless the 

 tested queens had received treatment 

 different from the others before intro- 

 duction. 



3. Opinions difi'er. I'd rather have 

 full-sized ones. But I will venture the 

 opinion that for once in your life you're 

 mistaken as to having no drones. I 

 think some one would have a paying job 

 if you would give him a dollar apiece for 

 every full-sized drone found in your api- 

 ary. 



4. According to the books, I believe, 

 the cell should be sealed about eight 

 days after the egg is laid. I have some 

 thought that there may be exceptions to 

 this, from the small size of grubs I have 

 sometimes found in sealed queen-cells. 



If you will look again I think you will 

 find that the books teach that bees do 

 not usually rear a queen from a larva 

 more than three days old— although in a 

 strait they may do so — and not as you 

 put it, "that they cannot rear a queen 

 out of an egg that has been laid more 

 than three days." They can rear a 

 queen from a larva that is three days 

 old, that is, three days after hatching 

 from the egg, or six days after the lay- 

 ing of the egg. Now if they chose a 

 larva three days old, or one whose egg 

 had been laid six days, and you found 

 the cell sealed four days later, that 

 would be ten days from the laying of the 

 egg ; so there was nothing in the case to 

 differ from the teaching of the books. 



J»Ir. E. K. Xei-ry, of Burlingame, 

 Kans., President of a Kansas bee-associa- 

 tion, called at our office on Sept. 29th. He 

 was visiting a son who is a dentist in Chi- 

 cago. Mr. Terry expected to attend the 

 St. Joseph convention. 



^^° "The Bee Journal is the best bee- 

 paper, all around, that I ever saw. I have 

 kept bees for 33 years, and would feel lost 

 without them." — Dr. A. Puderbaugh, of 

 Kansas, on Sept. 25, 1894. 



i^° The valuable and interesting Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal is a welcome guest at my 

 desk. Best wishes for its success." — W. A. 

 Choate, of California, Sept. 16, 1894. 



