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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Feb. 23. 1905 



is no lack of ability on your part to make the Canadian 

 Bee Journal more distinctly Canadian, and to rank like 

 Canadian honey— the ''first of its kind." W. J. Craig. 



Messrs Deadman. Holtermann, E. Grainger, R. H. 

 Smith, Chadwick, Sparling, Dickenson, Darling and others 

 spoke of the importance of bee-journals m general, and of 

 our national bee-journal in particular. Bee-keepers should 

 not only subscribe, but should contribute of their best thought 

 to the Canadian Bee Journal. 



Mr. W. Z. Hutchinson sent a paper on 



QUEENS AND THEIR INFLUENCE UPON SUCCESS 

 IN BEE-CULTURE. 



I expect it will be called heresy, but, many times, when 

 reading extravagant expressions about "the whole of bee- 

 keeping centering upon the queen," I have felt like exclaim- 

 ing- "Other things being equal, one queen is as good as 

 another." This may be putting it stronger than it will bear ; 

 besides, it does not exactly express my meaning. Perhaps 

 I can not make myself exactly understood, but I will try. 



It is not so much what a queen is herself, as what her 

 ancestors were ; or, rather, what her bees are. That is, she 

 may be an insignificant-looking specimen, may have been 

 reared in a manner wholly at variance with the established 

 principles of queen-rearing; may be one of those short-lived 

 affairs whose days are soon numbered, yet, if she comes 

 from the right stock, her bees, whatever may be the number 

 of which she becomes the mother, are just as good bees as can 

 be produced. In other words, there is no system of queen- 

 rearing that will improve a strain of bees. 



Try and not misunderstand me. To be sure, we must 

 have queens that are sufficiently prolific to keep the brood- 

 nests full of brood at a time of the year when this is desira- 

 ble; and possessed of a longevity that will enable them to 

 perform this feat two or more seasons; having this, what 

 more is needed? As a rule, the honey-producer need trouble 

 his head very little about the rearing of queens. The bees 

 will attend to that, and rear just as good queens as are 

 needed. If his queen don't fill the brood-nests in the required 

 season, how much more practical simply to reduce the size 

 of his brood-nests until the queens do fill them, instead of 

 ransacking the earth for more prolific queens, or else by 

 twisting, turning, and shifting about of combs, endeavor 

 to make one queen lay an increased number of eggs. 



As I look at the matter, in the light in which I am dis- 

 cussing it, the queen is simply the vehicle of transmission 

 from one generation to another. It is the qualities to be 

 transmitted, rather than the vehicle of transmission, that 

 should receive our attention. To illustrate: A man has a 

 strain of bees that are of little value as honey-gatherers. 

 Can he, by any sort of "jugglery" at queen-rearing, trans- 

 form them into energetic workers? Something might be 

 done in the way of selection, but not by methods of queen- 

 rearing. 



Bee-keepers often tell how much better are the bees from 

 the queen secured from this breeder than from the queen 

 bought of some other breeder, or that the bees from the 

 daughter of a queen from a certain breeder are superior to 

 bees from the daughters of some other queen, and have ar- 

 gued from this that the queens, and the manner in which they 

 were reared, caused the difference in results. I say no. The 

 difference is in the strain of bees, and not in the manner 

 in which the queens were reared. 



That there are circumstances in which much depends 

 upon the queen it is idle to dispute. Some of our best bee- 

 keepers have argued against extra-prolificness in queens, 

 some of them even going so far as to assert that prolificness 

 in the queen is at the expense of quality in the bees ; but 

 that prolificness is all-important to the user of large brood- 

 nests can not be dodged. He must have prolific queens, 

 else one-half of his brood-chamber is transformed into a 

 store-room. But this extra prolificness is not secured by some 

 pecular method of queen-rearing, but by selection — by rearing 

 queens from the colonies having the most prolific queens. 

 Here, again, the queen is simply the vehicle for transmitting 

 the quality of prolificness from one generation to the other. 



The age of queens may also have some bearing upon 

 success. Where the harvest ends with white clover, more 

 surplus will be secured if the bees do not swarm ; and colo- 

 nies with young queens are far less likely to swarm. Then, 

 again, young queens lay much later in the fall, and this has 

 a bearing upon the subject of wintering, as also does the 

 time when they begin laying in the spring. 



As I have already said, we need queens sufficiently pro- 

 lific to fill the brood-nests with eggs at the season of the 

 year when this is desirable, and possessed of a reasonable 

 amount of longevity. This secured, nothing more needs con- 

 sideration except the stock from which they come. Natu- 

 rally, when a man buys a queen, he expects to get the worth 

 of his money. If he buys her to rear queens from, he ex- 

 pects her to be able to endow her royal offspring with the 

 nualities and characteristics of her ancestors ; and, if she 

 does this, he need not mourn if she lives only long enough 

 to allow him to secure a goodly number of her daughters. 

 If he buys queens in large quantities to re-queen an apiary, 

 he has a right to feel that he has been cheated if the queens 

 live only a few short months. The practical honey-producer 

 has not this problem to solve. Simply let the bees rear their 

 own queens, and they will be as good as any. That queens 

 can be reared artificially, the equal of any, there is no doubt. 

 Most certainly they can. How it can be done has been re- 

 peatedly published. 



As I said at the beginning, we have a lot of sayings 

 something like the following: "Good queens are at the 

 foundation of bee-keeping." "Bee-keeping all centers about 

 the queen." " As the queen lays all of the eggs, of course, 

 success depends upon her." It is to combat such ideas as 

 these that I have written. The queen is of no more im- 

 portance than the hive, the combs, or the location. By 

 importance I mean, in this case, that which can by some- 

 decision, or management of the bee-keeper, be made to con- 

 tribute to his success. W. Z. Hutchinson. 



Mr. H. G. Sibbald read a paper on 



FOUL BROOD. 



A disease that attacks the larvse or brood of bees, the 

 most dangerous and destructive of any of the diseases that 

 bees are subject to, and had made such headway that the 

 Ontario government a number of years ago passed a law 

 and appointed an inspector for its suppression. Credit for 

 obtaining this excellent law is due, I believe, to our Ontario^ 

 Bee-Keepers' Association. 



Since the inception of the law and inspection, the disease 

 has been checked and is better understood by the mass of 

 expert bee-keepers. Still, on account of the contagious na- 

 ture of the disease, and the ignorance of a few, the expert 

 is constantly in danger as long as it exists and bees are in- 

 the hands of these few. 



It is therefore a subject worthy of a place in our pro- 

 gram, and of a full discussion by those who, like myself, 

 have had to their sorrow more experience than is desirable 

 or profitable. 



The larvae or brood in its early stages is attacked by the 

 foul brood germs, decomposes, decays, and settles in a shape- 

 less mass to the bottom and lower side of the cell ; becomes 

 yellowish-brown in color at first, later brown or coffee-color; 

 gives oflf a very offensive odor, and if pricked by a pin or 

 toothpick, it will be found ropy, and will draw or string out 

 a half inch or so. If the cell has been capped the capping 

 recedes, and presents a sunken appearance. In time the 

 matter dries down and is of such a sticky, gluey nature that 

 it adheres strongly to the side and bottom of the cell. Thus 

 leaving what we call the scale or stain-mark of foul brood. 



Other forms of dead brood, such as chilled, stained, 

 pickled and poisoned, are different and may be described as 

 follows : 



The larva dies, but holds its form better, that is, shrinks- 

 and dries from the outsides ; gives off very little odor and 

 less offensive ; does not adhere so tightly to the cell side,. 

 and may be removed by a pin or toothpick, and when pricked 

 by them will not string out but appears watery. They will' 

 be removed by the bees themselves. 



Not so with foul brood, however, for, soon after the 

 death of the larva, it becomes so foul that I verily believe 

 not a bee can be found that will attempt to clean it out. 

 The cell is apparently avoided until it becomes dried down 

 and the odor has become less noticeable. The bees then 

 accept it again, and after polishing it, fill it with nectar. 

 The moisture thus applied softens the scale or stain-marks 

 and releases the thousands ' of foul brood germs, wliich 

 float in the honey or nectar, awaiting only until fed to lar- 

 vx, thus coming in contact with . congenial matter, causing 

 its death and their further development and multiplication. 

 Thus it spreads more and more, cells become polluted, the 

 colony dwindles and dies, leaving its honey a prey to rob- 

 ber-bees which unsuspectingly carry it to their homes and: 



