AUGUST 1, 1912 



481 



Pig. 3. — Eighty good cells — second attempt, second week in October, 1909. 



i'olony, o\ erflowing' with bees, witli many 

 thousands of muse bees, and plenty emerg- 

 ing every day, deprived of all unsealed 

 brood, can readily attend to and bring to 

 maturity more than twice that number (as 

 I have abundantly proved) of first-class 

 queen-cells. All our cells at the govern- 

 ment apiaries are raised in such colonies. 

 I never did believe in the "swarm-box" 

 and small-colony system of raising queen- 

 cells. 



Mr. Dines describes his plan of support- 

 ing the frame of comb in a horizontal posi- 

 tion, the ti'ouble connected with which seems 

 to me unnecessary. All we do is to lay an 

 emjjty frame on its flat, over the lower 

 frames; place the frame of comb on this; 

 cover the latter with a light mat; put on 

 an em)[)ty half-story, and the top box or 

 boxes above it. In four or five days we 

 return the queen to the brood-chamber; 

 place on a queen-excluder above, and the 

 cells and top boxes as before. 



PREPARING THE COMB FOR CELLS. 



I prefer a last season's built comb that 

 has been bred in, after getting it well 

 filled with eggs from one of my breeding 

 queens in the usual way. I cut down on 

 one side to the midrib on each side of every 

 fourth row of cells with a thin budding- 

 knife, and scoop out the three intermediate 

 rows with a broad bradawl; then one out 

 of every three eggs in the rows is left, and 

 the others killed with a splint that has been 

 dipped into wax. I don't touch the other 

 side of the comb. In very hot weather the 



comb may need a center support. Securing 

 such a large number of cells, one can well 

 afford to discard any that appear to be 

 below a liigh standard. 



Auckland, New Zealand. 



[Dr. E. F. Phillips, of the Bureau of En- 

 tomology, after seeing our footnote calling 

 attention to the similarity of this plan to 

 the Alley method, stated that he obtained it 

 from Mr. I. Hopkins, of Australia. He 

 thought so well of it that he placed it be- 

 fore the beekeepers of the New York State*" 

 convention some two or three years ago. 



While we admit that as many as eighty 

 or a hundred good cells man ^^ secured in 

 one batch, exi^erience in rearing thousands 

 of queens every season has shown us that it 

 is better not to try to raise over two dozen 

 at a time. One may sujspose that the cells 

 are all good ; but our experience seems to 

 indicate that queens raised from the cells 

 where so many are built at a time are likely 

 to be short-lived. We can raise a hundred 

 cells in a batch — have done it time and 

 again, years ago. 



There may be some advantages in the 

 method here described, particularly for be- 

 ginners and professional honey-producers 

 who have not the time to learn the intrica- 

 cies of the art of raising cells by the graft- 

 ing plan in wooden cell cups; but our men 

 who raise queens by the thousand say the 

 other plan is too slow. But we are going to 

 get them to try it over, following very care- 

 fully Mr. Hopkins' directions as here given. 

 We will report results. — Ed.] 



