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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



Aug. 24, 1905 



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®ur SeeKecpino^ Sisters 



Conducted by Emma M. Wilson, Marengo, 111. 



Mrs. and Mr. Honaker and Their 

 Apiary 



I am sending you to-day a picture of a por- 

 tion of our bee-yard, showing Mr. Honaker 

 and cayselt. The beekeeper has a scowl on 

 her face, which her husband declares is 

 "quite natural." 



The yard is located in the garden directly 

 back from the dwelling-house, so that all 

 hives are in view from the dining-room win- 

 dows. There are in all about 60 colonies, 3 or 

 4 more than were taken out of the cellar last 

 spring. This is the number usually kept. 

 All colonies have stored considerable surplus 

 this season, duplicate hives being generally 

 used for supers All supers have honey in 

 them, all but two or three being practically 

 full. Besides what is now on the hives, we 

 have perhaps taken off BOO or 700 pounds. 

 The picture shows the apiary as it is to-day, 

 having been taken less than a week ago. 



The shrubbery back of the hives where Mr. 

 Honaker stands is red raspberry bushes, 

 which, at the present time, are well loaded 

 with ripe fruit. The young trees shqwn 

 further back are 6-year old walnut seedlings, 

 some of which are perhaps 15 feet in hight. 

 Nearly all swarms that have issued the last 

 two years have settled on these trees, often 

 breaking down limbs with their weight. 



Back of the garden is a cornfield, just now 

 beginning to tassel. In the distance, on the 

 line between our farm and a neighbor's, is a 

 large cherry-tree, which may be seen for 

 many miles in all directions. 



We use a large 12 frame hive, something 

 like the Dadant hive. We produce mostly 

 extracted honey, using always queen-ex- 

 cluders between upper and lower stories. We 

 have no basswood within reach, our main 

 crop coming from white clover, although 

 alsike is grown quite extensively on our own 

 and neighbors' farms. We have a small field 

 of alfalfa, which, if it does well, will be en- 

 larged another season. I am fortunate in 

 securing a bountiful honey crop this season, 

 considering that we have only the one depend- 

 ence from which to obtain it. I have never 

 had any foul brood in my apiary, although it 

 is possibly at no great distance from us. 



Mrs. Millie Honaker. 

 Vernon Co., Wis., Aug. 4. 



Laying Workers— Bees Moving 

 Eggs, Etc. 



Mt Dear Miss Wilson : — You have helped 

 me so often through the American Bee Jour- 

 nal that 1 am afraid my gratitude is of the 

 sort described as " a lively sense of favors to 

 come." So 1 am sending you some of my 

 summer bee-puzzles. 



You helped me when 1 first began keeping 

 bees, 3 years ago; last year I wrote to you 

 about making artificial increase with Italian 

 queens; this time my questions are chiefly as 

 lo the "ways that are dark" of the bees 

 themselves. 



I was in California all last winter, and did 

 not return to unpack my bees till the middle 

 of May. I think this was rather an advan- 

 tage, as the spring was unusually cold. Two 

 colonies out of 3:i were dead, but the majority 

 were in splendid conouion, having nearly 

 double the amount of bees and brood they 

 had in May of last, year, and they had no feed- 

 ing. Only one colony hm] the listless, dis- 

 pirited look about it th::) made me say before 

 I opened it, "I expni this hive has no 

 queen." But there was a queen, and brood, 

 too, though only on •,' cumbs; but the capped 

 brood was all drone- brood in worker-cells, 

 and there were 3 vacau'- ueencells at the 

 bottom, and I thought i; :;,ust be a case of a 

 drone-laying queen. Ar, unusually early 



swarm came out that day, and I put what 

 bees there were (not very many) in with it, 

 and killed the queen. 



Lynch law — and the innocent murdered as 

 usual ! I put the brood in with the swarm, 

 and a week later the rest of it was all beauti- 

 fully capped worker-brood. 



I have now another colony that I think has 

 only laying workers. Over a month after 

 swarming 1 found brood on 7 combs, but all 

 the capped brood was drone-brood in worker- 

 cells. This time I waited a week and looked 

 again. Still there was no worker-brood, and 

 there were a lot of queen-cells with little 

 grubs in them. I cut these all out, and 

 stapled 2 capped Italian queen-cells on the 

 comb. Two days later they had not torn 

 them down, and I hope the colony will right 

 itself. If I do not find the worker-brood 

 after 3 weeks, what should I do? Is it pos- 

 sible to find and destroy laying workers, and 

 then give a laying queen? I was afraid they 

 might kill one, if given with the laying 

 workers in the hive. 



I have been rather unfortunate with my 

 queens. None of them are clipped, but I have 

 found as many as (i crawling on the ground. 

 Three came out with first swarms, so I hived 

 them as with clipped queens. Two are doing 

 well, but the third has been another puzzle. I 

 gave them one comb of honey at one side of 

 the hive, and one comb of brood at the other, 

 and the rest foundation only. A week later 

 the bees had queen-cells on the brood-comb, 

 and also on the corner of the new foundation 

 next to it, and I could not find the queen. I 

 gave them Italian brood, after cutting out the 

 other queen-cells, and after 31 days 1 found a 

 fine young queen and eggs on one comb. 



I should have thought the old queen got 

 hurt in swarming and died just after, if it 

 had not been for the queen-cells— and queen- 

 cells only — on the new foundation. The cells 

 had good brood in them, which could only 

 have been put there alter swarming. Do you 

 think they killed the (|ueen as soon as they 

 had gotten her to lay in their new queen- 

 cells? Now ants carry their eggs about. 

 Have worker-bees ever been known to carry 

 eggs from worker-cells to more conveniently- 

 placed queen-cells when deprived of a queen? 

 Now for my last puzzle, though I have a 

 feeling that I am asking very foolish ques- 

 lions. But it is one of the best ways to 

 learn. 



A colony swarmed .June 17. I did not know 

 that it had swarmed before, but the brood left 

 was all capped. I saw the queen that issued 

 with the swarm go into the new hive, but I 

 could find neither queen nor queen-cells in 

 the old one. I gave them a comb of brood, 

 and a day or two afterward I found lb queen- 

 cells on it. Feeling .sure now that they had 

 DO queen, I waited till the brood was 7 days 

 old; then I cut out all the queen. cells and 

 gave them a comb of luy best Italian brood, 

 on which they immediately reared a number 

 of fresh queen-cells. 7>» days after I gave 

 this brood, I looked again and found all the 

 queen-cells capped, and some " nibbled " by 

 me bees ready for hatching: and then, to my 

 surprise, I saw on the i-omb among the capped 

 brood several cells of baby brood. To make 

 "sure" into "certain," I went home and got 

 the magnifying glass. There they were, 

 healthy looking larvn , some looking only a 

 day or two days out of the &gg^ and only S in 

 all, uncapped on the omb. There was not 

 an egg anywhere or a lueen, that I could see. 

 Not wishing to lose the Italian queen-cells, 

 1 divided the bees ami put the comb with the 

 cells on in another hi\n, giving the old hive a 

 fresh comb of brocm On this they have 

 reared a lot more , .^en-cells, but there has 

 been no fresh bim-i ; the hive. 



Now with all li..'^. . leen-oells I can hardly 

 think there ever wa i laying queen in the 

 hive. But where m that tiny brood come 

 fpOTn? 



Bee-books say the eggs hatch at 3 days, and 

 are capped at the 9th. This is of course the 

 rule, but do they ever hatch when a week 

 old? The eggs of other insects often remain 

 a long time before hatching. The hive with 

 the other half of the bees and the queen-cells 

 reared a fine-looking queen, but misfortune 

 pursued them, too, and I suppose she was lost 

 on her fiight. There is no queen there now, 

 and they are hard at work at queen-cells 

 again. 



Thus far there has been very little surplus 

 honey ; most of my colonies have not begun 

 to put anything in the supers yet. Hitherto 

 I have ufed only a top starter in my sections, 

 but as you and Dr. Miller so strongly recom- 

 mend a bottom one also, I am trying them in 

 a number of marked supers to see the result - 

 in this locality. Colorado. 



July 33, 1905. 



No, it is not possible to find and destroy 

 laying workers. A laying worker looks like 

 any other worker, and the only way you could 

 distinguish one would be to find it in the act 

 of laying while you held the comb in your 

 hand. You might spend a long time before 

 succeeding in this, and then when you had 

 succeeded you would have put out of the way 

 only one of a goodly number of workers en- 

 gaged in the miserable business of laying eggs 

 that by no possibility can produce worker- 

 bees. 



You did a good thing to give them a sealed 

 queen-cell, for they will accept a cell when 

 they would kill a queen. In the meantime, 

 however, the colony will be rapidly diminish- 

 ing in numbers, and you can give it aid with- 

 out waiting until the prospective queen be- 

 gins to lay. From any colony with a laying 

 queen, take one or two frames of brood, 

 selecting the youngest you can find, and ex- 

 change for one or two frames in the invalid 

 colony. If you are willing to take the extra 

 trouble, it will be better to take only one 

 frame from a colony, and by drawing one 

 each from four or more colonies you can give 

 your patient quite a set-up. Neither will this 

 cost very much to the colonies from which 

 the brood is taken, if you select combs mostly 

 filled with eggs and young brood. 



There are those who are very positive that 

 bees carry eggs from one place to another ; 

 others are skeptical about it. But it is not 

 necessary to suppose there was any such 

 transportation in the case you speak of, 

 where eggs were found in queen-cells on 

 foundation. Did you ever stop to think that 

 in the usual course of events efrry queen is 

 superseded by the bees? That superseding 

 takes place generally in the latter part of 

 summer, and it would be nothing strange if a 

 good many queens made preparation for a 

 successor immediately after being hived with 

 a swarm. A queen may do excellent work 

 at laying up to a certain time, perhaps up to 

 the time of swarming, and then fail rapidly. 

 If she disappeared from your colony entirely, 

 before her successor was ready to set up in 

 in business, it is not likely the bees killed her, 

 but that she died from old age. And old age 

 may come to a queen before she has lived a 

 year, or not till she has lived 5 years. 



Before any attempt at a guess in the case 

 of your last puzzle, allow the remark that 

 jou need not worry as to any question about 

 bee-keeping being considered foolish, unless 

 it be one plainly answered in the books of 

 instruction which bee-papers are supposed to 

 supplement. Especially when one shows 

 such intelligent powers of observation, any 

 questions arising are likely to bring out 

 points of interest that may be instructive to 

 others as well as to yourself. A good ques- 

 tioner is, in an indirect way, a good instructor. 



The presence of those few cells of young 

 brood might be accounted for in more than 

 oneway. A queen might have been in the 

 hive, and after haying laid only a few eggs, 

 she may have been accidentally killed by you 

 when the hive was opened — queens are some- 

 times Killed in that way. Laying workers 

 might have begun work, and then desisted. 

 As good a guess as any is the one .vou yourself 

 have made. Eggs do remain in a hive some- 

 times without hatching for a number of days. 

 Dzierzon reports a case of the kind. 



After trying bottom starters, kindly report 

 whether a success or otherwise. 



