THE AMEEICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



219 



Monmouth, Ills., March 9. — Friend Adair takes 

 some of us to task for not reporting the fractional 

 pounds of honey. If he was out here, I could show 

 him a string; almost a yard long, on the wall of the 

 kitchen, where I marked the weight of each box. 

 Few boxes weighed exact pounds ; most of them 

 contain fractions. Some day when I get leisure, I 

 will copy it and send it to him. Mine really averaged 

 llO^o pounds, instead of 110, as reported ; and had I 

 iucUuU'd three frames taken out of main hive and 

 empty frames put in their place and which were 

 filled, the average would have been larger. Last 

 year, in this section, was the best honey season I 

 ever saw or expect to see soon again. The season 

 was wet throughout, from June to October. — T. G. 

 McGaw. 



[For the American B«e Journal.] 



Dwarfed Queens. 



I do not believe that a dwarf queen is ahcays 

 the result of being reared in a small cell, from the 

 fact that thc3^ do not alvraj^s correspond in size, 

 to the cell they hatch from. Having watched 

 hundreds with this very point in view, I am com- 

 pelled to admit that I cannot always predict the 

 size the queen is to be, by the size of the cell she 

 is reared in. I have known a queen cell of the 

 smallest size, so small that it might have been 

 mistaken for a worker cell, had it not been con- 

 nected with others that were made as usual, to 

 produce a large size queen. On the other hand, 

 I have known a qut^en hatched from a cell of the 

 largest size, to lie even smaller than a worker. 

 These facts show that we must look for other 

 causes for diminutive size, in some instances at 

 least. 



1 will admit that a cell is sometimes too small 

 for the bee that is raised in it, like the drone in 

 the worker cell. But it is not often that a queen 

 or a Avorker is thus affected. A full sized worker 

 is reared in a cell nearly half filled with cocoons 

 left by previous occupants. The idea that a bee 

 never increases in size, after leaving the cell, will 

 have to be abandoned. 



Whenever the bees find it necessary to rear 

 queens from material deposited in worker cells, 

 the small size of such cell is thought to have effect 

 on the size of the queen. Notwithstanding the 

 egg may be laid in a worker cell, too small for a 

 queen, it does not follow that she must l)e de- 

 veloped there. AVhen the bees wish to rear a 

 queen thus, they immediately enlarge the outer 

 end, and if the comb is new, first bite away and 

 reduce the length, and fill the original cell with 

 chyme, crowding the larvti queen into the enlarged 

 part, where she literally floats. 



It cannot be made to appear thrt any lack of 

 food can make the difference. I have the aulliorily 

 of the Bee Journal for sa5'ing that "up to the 

 sixth day after emerging from tlie egg, all larvae, 

 whether workers, or drones, or those designed 

 for queens, receive precisely the same kind and 

 quality of food, namely chyme, as prepared by 

 partial digestion in the stomachs of the nursing 

 w^orkers. To the queen larva?, liowever, this is 

 administered in larger quantity — so plentifully, 

 indeed, and apparently so greatly in excess of its 

 immediate needs, that the nascent insect literally 

 swims in it." If natural and artificially bred 

 queens— I object to the word artificial here — are 



fed precisely alike, "up to the sixth day," it can 

 be shown that there is an excess in quantity, by 

 what is left in the cell after the queen has matured. 

 We must look still further. When bees are de- 

 prived of their queen, and they can choose larvae 

 to rear from, it would seem reasonable that they 

 would take such as could be matured at the earliest 

 possible moment. The uniformity with which 

 they mature a queen in just a few hours short of 

 ten days, in hundreds of instances, would look as 

 if that was the shortest time possible. I never 

 yet had any mature in less time. I think there 

 must be some mistake about their hatching in 

 seven or eight days. 



And now, if the food is the same in all cases, 

 and there is no want of room to cramp the chry- 

 salis, what is it makes the difference V Or is there 

 no difference ? I do not care to take the position 

 that artificial queens are usually smaller than 

 others. One reason why it is thouglit to be so, I 

 tliink will be found in the fact we see very many 

 more of such, than of the naturally reared ones, 

 and forget to compare the proportion. Notwith- 

 standing the cells are geiierally larger in a swarm- 

 ing hive, some small sized queens will be hatched 

 then. 



Can we not have some other solution of why 

 we have any small ones ? M. Quinbt. 



St. Johnsville, iV. Y. 



[For t]ie American 



Selecting Stock. 



Journal.] 



I receive a great many inquiries of this character 

 — " I have purchased two, five, or more swarms" 

 (as the case maj' be), " of a neighbor, in box or 

 gum hives, and I can have my choice out of the 

 lot" (which is more or less in number) ; "please 

 inform me how to make the selection so that I 

 get good swarms." — In answer to these inquiries, 

 I will give you an actual transaction, without 

 mentioning names. 



"Come, Gallup, jump into my sled and ride 

 up to Mrs. R.'s, and heij) me select a couple of 

 swarms of bees." In this case, the woman owned 

 the bees, as the man could have no luck. I se- 

 lected two swarms ; but my friend thought I had 

 not made a good selection. So I persuaded him 

 to take one of my selection, and one of his own. 

 I selected one that had the comb all built in regu- 

 lar order and nearly all worker comb, well crowd- 

 ed with bees, with honey enough and not too 

 much, and had cast a swarm the previous sea- 

 son, for in that case they had a young prolific 

 queen. My friend selected a very heavy liive, 

 with but a medium swarm of bees. Only a small 

 proportion of the comb was worker comb, and 

 all was very irregularly built. This was in the 

 latter part of February, and in box-hive times. 

 I explained that my selection would send out 

 three swarms to his selection sending out one ; 

 and that he was now i^urchasing for the bees and 

 not for the honey. The result was, my selection 

 sent out four sv/arms early next spring, and all 

 did well, filling their liives ; wliile his selection 

 sent out a small swarm late in the season, which 

 did not fill its hive, and died over winter. The 

 fact is, it had only an old unprolific queen. 



So much for selecting swarms. Now for trans- 



