THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW 



121 



in this all-important subject, I will 

 briefly describe my method of rearing- 

 queens, which I feel certain will 

 g-reatly simplify their rearing, inas- 

 much as it enables the bee-keeper to 

 do away with all fussing- with queen- 

 excluding- metal, the uncertainty of the 

 swarming- fever, or waiting for queens 

 to g-et old and be superseded naturally; 

 and best of all, reduces the cost. 



I have thoroughly tested all of the 

 methods given through the bee-papers, 

 and know all of the merits and de- 

 merits of queens reared by each and 

 all of them. For a long time I reared 

 my queens by the Alley and Doolittle 

 methods, as I considered them the 

 simplest and best, but I became dis- 

 satisfied at times with the Doolittle 

 method, especially when queens were 

 reared above or behind queen-excluding 

 metal. 



The Alley method will produce a 

 good queen every time when conditions 

 are right, but it is too costly to suit 

 me. The making of a colonj' queen- 

 less, and keeping it so for a week or 

 ten days, means dollars and cents, and 

 if late in the season it may mean death 

 to the colony the following winter. 

 However, we must have some good 

 queens regardless of cost, and I would 

 rear them by the Alley method, too, if 

 I had not worked out the following: 



When settled warm weather has ar- 

 rived, and colonies have become 

 strong, i. e., one hive body well-filled 

 with bees, with brood in all combs ex- 

 cepting the two outside ones, and large 

 numbers of young nurse-bees on hand; 

 then, and not until then, should any 

 one attempt to rear queens. When 

 bees are in this condition, with plenty 

 of honey and pollen coming in from the 

 fields, I am then ready to begin queen 

 rearing operations, provided queens are 

 needed thus' early. 



I go over the apiary and select a good, 

 strong colony, preferably hybrids, 

 one which has a good, prolific queen 

 not more than two years old— still bet- 

 ter if not more than one year old. I 

 hunt out this queen, catch her, and 

 with a sharp pair of scissors clip about 

 X of an inch off one of the large legs 

 and liberate her among the bees again, 

 and close the hive. In about four or 

 five days you will find eggs in queen- 

 cells. 



Now prepare a bunch of queen-cups, 

 a la Doolittle, minus royal jelly, and 

 take them along with you to the colony, 

 destroy the cells the bees have started, 

 hunt out a comb containing small 



larvae, and with a goose-quill tooth- 

 pick, that has been previously polished 

 on a stone to take ofi" sharp edges, lift 

 out larvae that are about two days old, 

 as near as you can judge, and place 

 one in each cell-cup without royal jelly 

 — just the dry cup. Now place the 

 comb with cell-cups in the center of the 

 brood-nest and leave it for a day or 

 two, when you will find that just as 

 many, or more, cells have been accepted 

 as if you had put royal jelly in them. 



Now these cells have been shaped up 

 by the bees to suit their liking, and 

 there is considerable royal jelly in 

 them, lift out those old larvae that you 

 first put in, and replace them with the 

 smallest larvae you can find from your 

 best breeding queen, and place the 

 comb back in the hive where you took 

 it from. Those cells will be cared for 

 and fed from the very moment you 

 place them back in the hive. This I 

 consider very important, and must take 

 place if we are to have good queens 

 every time. And this leads me to say, 

 that with any method when artificial 

 cell-cups are used, unless given to bees 

 that are hopelessly queenless, they 

 must be grafted a second time if you 

 want good results. The reason is 

 plain to be seen — the cells are un- 

 natural in every respect, and in the 

 majority of cases remain unnoticed for 

 several hours, and the nature of them 

 is only discovered as some bee out of 

 curiosity pokes her head into one of 

 them, when she at once spreads the 

 news. But, alas, it is too late, they 

 have received a setback from which 

 they will never recover, and the omis- 

 sion of this very thing is, I believe, the 

 principal reason why so many bee- 

 keepers received or reared queens that 

 were not satisfactory, thereby causing 

 the queen-breeder and cell-cup methods 

 to be condemned. I am firmly con- 

 vinced that the grafting of cells a sec- 

 ond time has paid me enormouslj' — yes, 

 better than any other work I ever did 

 in the apiary. 



Now lest some think that a queen 

 treated as I have described will be of 

 little good from the standpoint of egg- 

 laying, and consequently a run-down 

 colony, to such I want to say that a 

 queen treated in this way will, with 

 the exception of a few hours when first 

 clipped, lay just as well as ever. That 

 has been my experience for the past 

 four years; and, further, the colony 

 vi^ill produce just as good results in 

 either comb or extracted honey as if 

 you never touched the queen. And this 



