3 12 



BEES— MANAGEMENT AND CARE OF. 



after remaining in it four days (unless an 

 accident happened, such as melting down 

 the comb,) by that time there is brood 

 which bees will seldom leave. 



It may be necessary to explain what a 



bottom board is: it is simply a bottom 



board with a six or eight inch square cut 



out of the centre and a wire cloth tacked 



/ over it. 



BEE QTJEEN, Fertilization of the.— The 

 idea is just this — a young queen will be fer- 

 tilized in confinement if shut up about the 

 time she would have flown, providing, of 

 course, that a drone of the right sort is 

 confined with her. 



It is necessary to make a fertilizer of 

 some kind large enough to allow the 

 queen and drones to fly around in. It is 

 best to make them of fine wire cloth, say 

 twelve inches long by seven inches in 

 diameter — size immaterial. 



If coarse wire cloth is used in making 

 them, the queen will be apt to be caught 

 and held by the workers until she starves; 

 workers sometimes pull the wings and 

 legs from their own queen. We mention 

 this so that the necessity for using fine 

 wire cloth may be seen. 



A wire cloth dish cover, ten inches in 

 ■diameter, is just the thing for the purpose; 

 they cost but little and can be easily fixed 

 by fitting a piece of thin board in the 

 bottom, in which a door large enough to 

 put in one's hand should be made. Fas- 

 ten on the inside of the fertilizer a piece 

 of empty comb (drone comb is best) three 

 or four inches square, which, when required 

 for use, fill with honey and water — taking 

 pains not to drop any honey in the fer- 

 tilizer, or the queen and the drones will 

 become daubed up so as to prevent them 

 from flying. 



From close observations it has been 

 discovered that in the spring and summer 

 young queens leave the hive to meet the 

 drones for impregnation, usually on the 

 fifth day ; in tire fall months they very 

 seldom leave until seven or eight days old. 



On the morning of the day that a queen 

 is to leave the hive put her with four or 

 five drones into the fertilizer. 



In selecting the drones to be put with 

 young queens, great care should be taken 

 to choose only those that are strong, vig- 

 orous and well marked, and they should 

 he caught as they are about to leave the 



hive — those returning from a trip are 

 generally too tired to be serviceable. 



Having got the queen and the drones 

 in the fertilizer and everything fixed, lay 

 it over the frames of the hive to which 

 the queen belongs, so that the heat from 

 the hive can get into it. If a dish cover 

 fertilizer is used, put the round side 

 downward. 



Put on the cap, which should have an 

 opening in the side or top, covered with 

 glass to admit light. 



Leave her there thirty-six or forty- 

 eight hours — a shorter time usually an- 

 swers ; when a dead drone is found, ex- 

 amine it, and if the generative organ is 

 gone, the queen can be released, when she 

 will go down into the hive and begin to 

 lay in a few days, or she can be intro- 

 duced to a nuclei hive, which can be done 

 in a minute by giving the bees in the nu- 

 clei a dose of smoke, where she can be 

 kept until wanted. 



Fertilizers can be put on any hive, and 

 two or three can be put on at a time if 

 the space is large enough. 



If any are in doubt about their queens 

 becoming fertile, they can easily prove 

 the matter by clipping the wings of the 

 queen ; or, better still, confining her with 

 all the bees until she begins to lay. 



We had over one hundred queens 

 mated this season, in complying with the 

 above directions, twenty of which were 

 mated before our eyes. 



Those that go to work and raise a large 

 batch of queens in nurseries, and expect 

 to have them fertilized by the wholesale, 

 need not be surprised to find out that 

 they have got a large sized elephant on 

 their shoulders, and that instead of ac- 

 complishing their object, they lose the 

 whole lot. 



In our opinion, it is best to allow young 

 queens to run with the workers until four 

 days old, when the queen bees and all 

 can be confined until the queen is ready 

 to be put into a fertilizer, or she could be 

 caught and put into a queen cage until 

 six or seven days old, when there could 

 be some prospect of success. 



We have endeavored to describe the 

 methods as minutely as possible, and in 

 as "come-at-able " way as we know how. 



Those having an accurate and thor- 

 ough knowledge of the nature and habits 

 of the bee, will not only succeed with it, 



