154 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER 



September 



be reared in nucleus hives, he is wrong. 

 Now, I do not rear queens in nucleus 

 hives, but I know good queens — yes, 

 queens far ahead of those reared under 

 the swarming impulse can be reared in 

 very small nuclei; and I now have the 

 queens to show and to prove my state- 

 ments. The nucleus hives I use for 

 keeping my queens in until they become 

 fertile, are only 5x5, 6 inches deep. 

 They take four small frames. 



Now, the fine queens spoken of 

 above were reared in these little hives. 

 After the queens are fertilized and fill 

 the combs with eggs they are sent off 

 to customers and in a few days after 

 queens are introduced and the same 

 process is gone over again in the ship- 

 m'ent of other queens. Sometimes when 

 I go for a second, or third queen, as 

 the case may be, I find several fine 

 queen-cells or a nice large queen. 

 These queens are always allowed to be- 

 come fertile and in all cases prove to 

 be the finest queens. 



One of the best queens I ever owned 

 or ever saw was reared in a nucleus 

 hive. The bees were not fed nor nurs- 

 ed while queenless. This queen lived 

 four years and two months and could 

 not have had less than 500,000 chil- 

 dren. Does this look as though good 

 queens cannot be reared in small hives 

 with about a pint of bees? I challenge 

 any one to produce better queens than 

 can be reared by the nucleus method. 

 You know, friend Hill, that I have al- 

 ways claimed that I could rear better 

 queens by a method I persue than can 

 be reared at swarming time. When a 

 colony of bees rear queens in prepara- 

 tion for swarming they have a laying 

 queen in the hive. They are in no 

 special need of a queen; and do not 

 produce such good queens as they 

 surely will under other conditions. Now 

 what are the conditions under which 

 bees will rear queens superior to those 

 reared at swarming time? When a 

 strong colony is made aueenless either 

 by accident or by dequeening, there not 

 only is a desire for another queen, but 

 an absolute necessity for one. In this 

 case there is a double reason why bees 

 work and bend all their resources to- 

 ward producing another queen. The 

 bees work with a will; every bee in the 

 hive seems to have a hand in rearing a 

 new queen. How is it in cases where 

 a fertile queen is present? The bees 



seem to argue in this way: "Well, 

 there are some cell-cups and we are 

 expected to take care of them; we do 

 not need another queen," and the re- 

 sult is, a lot of sickly, inferior queens 

 are born into the world- Bees can't 

 be fooled into rearing queens in that 

 way. They understand that they have 

 all the queens necessary to their ex- 

 istence, and do not work with so much 

 interest as do queenless bees. 



In speaking of making artificial cell- 

 cups, instead of allowing the bees to 

 do it for themselves, prompts me to 

 say that such work is not up to present 

 day improvements. What would we 

 say of a farmer if he were to throw 

 aside his plow and dig ud his land with 

 a common garden fork? Well now, as 

 bees will, if given a chance to do so, 

 make all the cell-cups that are neefled, 

 why should one spend his time in such 

 a foolish way? Some of the men wnu 

 work the cell-cup plan claim that 

 queens so reared are better than those 

 reared by bees that form their own cell- 

 cups. It would be interesting reading 

 if such reasons could appear in one of 

 the bee journals- Better in what way? 

 Why, the claim is a most foolish one. 

 As everybody knows who has purchas- 

 ed such queens, they are short-lived 

 and worthless. Very few can rear 

 queens by the cell-cup plan and I never 

 could believe the originator of the 

 method used it himself. 



I have found that the least disturb- 

 ance to a queen cell, or the contents 

 of a cell-cup, was sure to be noticed by 

 the bees and all such cells were soon 

 destroyed. For this reason I do not 

 understand how it is that the bees do 

 not remove all the transferred larvae 

 and jelly from the artificial cell-cups, 

 especially where cell-cups are given a 

 colony that is in no need of a queen; 

 or in other words, have a good laying 

 queen. I'll pay the expenses of Mr. D. 

 or any man who will come to Wenham, 

 prepare a lot of cell-cups, transfer 

 larvae to them and put them in a hive 

 of bees having a good queen if these 

 cell-cups are matured into queens that 

 are worth five cents per 100. I don't 

 believe even one cell-cup would be built 

 down to a finished queen cell. The 

 whole business is contrary to nature, or 

 just the opposite to the way bees do 

 business. 



Wenham, Mass., Aug. 6, 1902. 



