THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



265 



boards between each two hives, giving- 

 each hive a small entrance, and a 

 young virgin or a ripe cell, and the 

 bees will divide themselves about 

 equallj'^ in each of the hives, and ma- 

 ture two or three queens at one time, 

 just as well, if properly done, as they 

 would one; and are not half so likely 

 to swarm as they would be if all had 

 been left together in the lower hive. 

 This I have practiced for a long time, 

 and it has given me hundreds of choice 

 queens with but ve^y Utile trouble. 

 Shortly after they commence to lay I 

 take out all but one queen and return 

 the combs to the lower hive; then they 

 are in fine shape for a clamp of sec- 

 tions, or, if I wish to run the hive for 

 extracted hone}', I leave on one exclud- 

 er and put a hive of empty combs on 

 top. This is only one of many ways, 

 if you care to attend to them, that will 

 go a long ways in giving you all the 

 surplus laying queens you may want. 

 As I run all my bees now for ex- 

 tracted honey, I will not take up any 

 of the thousand and one different ways 

 of producing comb honey. That is a 

 trade of itself. Neither will I enter 

 into any of the many different ways of 

 rearing choice queens, except what I 

 have said in the above, but there is 

 one thing to which I wish to call your 

 attention, and that is this: Not one 

 bee-keeper in fifty can tell me, as we 

 walk through his apiary, the age and 

 quality of every queen in the yard. 

 This is one of the most essential things 

 to know at all times if you expect to 

 make a 5?<rr^5.y of the business; and I 

 have often wondered why some one 

 has not given us a good practical way 

 of knowing this. Many j'ears ago I 

 used a book for this purpose, but often 

 found it quite inconvenient to look over 

 two or three hundred pages to find out 

 what I wanted to know at a glance, so 

 I adopted the following, which is 

 very accurate, and tells me at once all 

 I wish to know about the age and 

 quality of every queen I have. Some- 



thing like thirty years ago I cut out a 

 lot of pieces of tin, some round, some 

 half-round, and some square, about 

 one inch in diameter, and whenever I 

 find a young queen commencing to lay 

 I put one of these little tin tags on the 

 front of the hive, in the left hand cor- 

 ner, about two inches from the bottom. 

 It is put on with a carpet tack through 

 the center, and is easily taken off with 

 my pocket knife, and it follows the 

 queen to every hive into which she is 

 is ever put. If she proves to be a 

 choice queen, the tag is put a few 

 inches higher up on the corner of the 

 hive, and, if very choice, still higher; 

 if she is inferior in an}' way, it is put 

 over toward the middle of the hive; if 

 very poor, it is put clear over to the 

 other side. I use only one shape of 

 tin each summer, with all the queens 

 of that summer's rearing. The next 

 summer I use another shape of tin; 

 then, when I walk through the apiary, 

 I can tell at a s:lance the age and 

 quality of every queen in the yard; and 

 then, when I have surplus queens on 

 hand, I can go right to the hives that 

 contain my poorest queens and super- 

 sede them at once without having to 

 open any hives unnecessarily. You 

 see, I can tell at any time I see the 

 fronts of my hives just how many 

 queens I have of a certain age, also 

 their quality. If you will adopt this 

 way of keeping track of your queens, 

 you will soon weed out the poor ones 

 and find it a great advantage to you to 

 do so. 



You must not expect large yields of 

 honey from your bees unless you look 

 closely to some of these things. It is 

 very easy to bring an apiary up to a 

 high standard when you give the 

 queens the proper attention; always 

 breeding from the best and weeding 

 out the small, mismated, inferior ones. 

 And then it saves so much time when 

 you come to fix up for the winter. If 

 you have all the queens in good shape 

 early in the season, you will also have 



