26 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



eggs, no young liatching brood to nurse. 

 Then the workers fear that the queen may 

 be injured, and tliey begin to form queen 

 cells. 



It may be that the delay in tlie laying of 

 queens introduced late in the season is 

 caused by want of honey and the parsimony 

 of bees when they tind nothing in the fields, 

 the introduction of queens is more risky at 

 that time. Then a distribution of syrup 

 previous to tlie introduction would give 

 good results, if robbing be very carefully 

 avoided wiiile feeding. "W e will try it next 

 year and report. 



At the National Convention, as reported 

 in tiie A. B. J., page 301, Mr. Nellis made 

 several objections to our method. Six bee- 

 keepers took part in the discussion, Mr. 

 Nellis being one of tliem; live sided with 

 our method, and none reported bad results 

 from its use. 



Now 1 will say tliat most of the queens 

 sent by us which have been killed or not 

 well received by the bees, liave been intro- 

 duced in colonies which had been queen- 

 less for several days, and it is this ill-suc- 

 cess which incited me to write the article 

 criticised by Mr. Nellis. Had these unfor- 

 tunate bee-keepers followed exactly the 

 instructions of Mr. Nellis ? I cannot say. 

 But it should be remarked that a stock of 

 bees after having remained queenless for a 

 few weeks is very prone to kill the queen 

 introduced. 



Besides, 1 think that if you destroy the 

 queen cell after 7 days, and introduce the 

 queen, with the confidence that the queen 

 will be accepted, because the bees have no 

 material on hand to raise queen cells, you 

 will find more than one disappointment. I 

 liave two experiments in support of this as- 

 sertion. 



We do not usually remove our best queens 

 to raise (pieen cells from their brood. To 

 do that we deprive a stock of its queen and 

 exchange all its brood combs with bees, for 

 a similiar number of brood combs taken 

 from our selected colony. Of course the 

 queenless colony has no other brood than 

 the brood of our selected queen to raise 

 queen cells from. 



Now, according to Mr. Nellis, 7 days after 

 our exchange of combs, the combs intro- 

 duced in our best colony have no more 

 brood fit to raise queen cells. But such is 

 not the ease. For one day we exciianged 4 

 combs of brood which had been introduced 

 for 7 full days in a selected colony; and 

 amongst the queens hatched from these 

 combs some were black, entirely black; 

 ttiere being in the combs of the black 

 colony from which they wei'e first taken, 

 some orood yet fit to be changed to queens. 

 Now we wait 9 days before considering our 

 combs safe to be exchanged a second time. 



One day 1 received an order lor .j or 6 

 queens. 1 had a colony queenless for seven 

 days. I thought that there could be enough 

 queen cells to replace the queens ordered, 

 and went and counted the queeii cells the 

 bees had prepared so as to advise my 

 customers of the day I could send theni. 

 I opened the hive and found only 3 queen 

 cells. I visited carefully all the combs, to 

 see if there were no incipient queen cells, 

 and could find none. On the tenth day I 

 opened anew the same hive, to cut out the 

 queen cells, and lifted the comb on which 

 tney were, when 1 saw on another comb •5 

 queen cells not yet sealed. Therefore, on 



the 7th day these queen cells were not 

 elongated yet, although their grubs had al- 

 ready received some royal food. 



Now, let us suppose that on the 7th day 

 we had destroyed the three queen cells and 

 introduced a queen; this queen would pro- 

 bably have been killed, or would have been 

 well received by some workers and roughly 

 handled by others, and finally be killed. 

 We would have accused the bees of being 

 fickle; or the breeder of having furnished a 

 poor queen, which was sick, as she died a 

 few days after her introduction; or was a 

 poor layer, as she was superseded by the 

 bees. 



From the above facts I take the liberty of 

 advising bee-keepers who will persist in the 

 method indicated by Mr. Nellis, to wait 

 nine days before removing the aueen cells; 

 for there is but little security if these cells 

 are destroyed on the seventh clay. 



Cir. Dadant. 



For the American Bee .lournal. 



A Visit to a Canadian Bee-keeper. 



Mr. Editor : I have just paid a visit to 

 the land so much celebrated for "neutral 

 tints " about the time of our national un- 

 pleasantness. Of course while in this land 

 of enterprise and invention, I could hardly 

 come back, without embracing such a splen- 

 did chance to exchange my old foggy notions 

 for modern ways of doing things.' Accord- 

 ingly 1 wended my way to the home of the 

 gentleman v/ho paid me a visit, a short time 

 since, and not being quite over an American 

 drunk, got the impression that my hives set 

 on posts, and that the surplus boxes were 

 boxes of dirt, and that a patch of sun- 

 flowers in a neighbor's yard a half dozen 

 yards away, were just going to meet him in 

 the face. 



Well, I found my friend sober this time, 

 and in the apiary with a hive open, a como 

 out, peering into the cells with a telescope. 



'• Good morning," said 1. 



" Why, bless my soul, if here an't Box- 

 hives," " How do you do ? " 



"What seems to be the trouble ? " said I. 

 " I ain't getting any surplus this season," 

 said he, "as I can't get my queens to face 

 the north, when thev back into the cells to 

 lay." 



" What difference does that make? " 

 said I. 



" AVell," said he, "Probably you couldn't 

 comprehend it, but scientific bee-keepers, 

 have found out, that if the queen's don't 

 face the north with heads downward when 

 they lay, the abdominal viscera, pertaining 

 to the monacular functions predominating 

 ov^er the lactial ligaments, are too apt to be- 

 come emaciated and failure ensue." 



"Oh, you may laugh, but we know, you 

 see, for ' the proof of tlie pudding is chewing 

 the string,' and we don't get surplus honey 

 enough to put in tea." 



" Of course you can never know much 

 about apiculture, with box-hives." 



" I see 1 am rather behind," said I ; "but 

 what is this ? " 



" That is a Jewell Davis nurserj\" 



"Here is a curious apple pearer," 1 

 remarked. 



" That is a ' novice ' honey extractor, my 

 yankee friend." 



"Will it stand hard work? " I asked. 



"Bless your heart, yes," said he. 



