182 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



EXPERIMENTAL 

 BEE FARM NOTES. 



With us the past month has been 

 an unusually busy one and the call 

 for queens in connection with sub- 

 scriptions has alone even almost 

 enough to give us but little time for 

 rest or study which has obliged us to 

 defer the carrying out of many of 

 our plans and projects until the rush 

 of the queen business is over. We 

 have been very fortunate this season 

 in rearing first-class queens and while 

 we have shipped large numbers of 

 them yet we have had but three or 

 four complaints as regards the im- 

 purity of the queens and we have 

 no hesitancy in stating that we never 

 saw a better collection of breeding 

 stock than we now have at the Api- 

 culturist Bee Farm. 



A short time since we shipped to 

 a party in California one lot of fifty 

 queens, twenty-five of which were 

 young Italian queens mated with Ho- 

 lyland (Syrian) drones and twenty- 

 five young Holyland (Syrian) queens 

 mated with Italian drones. We 

 have handled thousands of queens, 

 and with our superintendent, Mr. 

 Alley (who is authority on queens), 

 we can truthfully say that we never 

 before saw as many fine and uni- 

 formly marked queens packed and 

 shipped in one lot. 



By the time that this number of 

 our journal reaches our subscribers 

 every order for queens will have been 

 filled and we shall have at least 500 

 queens in nuclei which will enable us 

 to fill orders for Holyland (Syrian) 

 and Italian queens promptly. 



While many disparaging and un- 

 favorable reports concerning the 

 Holyland (Syrian) bees have ap- 

 peared in the various bee publica- 

 tions, yet those who will procure 

 one of our home-bred Holyland 

 (Syrian) queens will find them all 

 and even more than we claim for 

 them and now is the time to give 



them a fair trial and thorough testing 

 before winter comes. 



About June 25th we made up a 

 large number of nucleus colonies 

 (standard frame). We used eight- 

 frame hives containing two frames 

 filled with brood and six frames 

 filled with unwired foundation. We 

 then added to each, a young laying 

 cjueen and about two quarts of bees 

 that had just completed a lot of 

 ([ueen cells. 



These colonies now have every 

 comb well filled with brood and have 

 several quarts of bees clustering on 

 the hive fronts. With us the nucleus 

 system of increase is far preferable 

 to that of natural swarming. 



Our apiary has been damaged 

 more than $100.00 worth this season 

 on account of the utmost insane de- 

 sire to swarm with which our bees were 

 possessed. During the swarming 

 season we were very busy and had 

 carelessly neglected to supply every 

 colony with a drone trap ; the result 

 being that, suddenly, colonies that 

 contained some of our choice breed- 

 ing queens, and those from which we 

 had no reason to expect that swarms 

 would issue, sent forth their first 

 swarms and being unprovided with 

 traps had everything their own way 

 for a time. 



The "Whitman Fountain I'ump" 

 paid us many times its cost this sea- 

 son and proved a "friend in the 

 time of need." One forenoon a 

 swarm issued from one of our colo- 

 nies and settled on one of the topmost 

 branches of a high tree ; almost im- 

 mediately swarm number two poured 

 out from another hive and. mingled 

 with swarm number one. Our friend, 

 the fountain pump, was brought into 

 play and the cluster was thoroughly 

 drenched with water ; but to our dis- 

 may ere the bees had become quiet, 

 swarm number three issued from 

 another hive and you may be assured 

 that there was "fun ahead" for a 

 short time. However by keeping 

 those that had clustered thoroughly 



