THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



41 



Something about the new methods of rear- 

 ing queens. 



Mr. G. M. Doolittle has given one of 

 the latest methods for rearing queens. 

 With the exception of one thing he rec- 

 ommends in his work, I must say that 

 tlie Doohttle plan of queen-rearing is an 

 excellent one. The plan of starting 

 cell-cups as advised by Mr. D. is too 

 difficult and too fussy for the inexpe- 

 rienced to practise. I cannot recom- 

 mend that part of his method as there 

 are other ways for starting cell-cups 

 which are more in accordance " with na- 

 ture's ways." With this exception I do 

 not see tliat the Doolittle method of 

 queen-rearing differs materially from 

 those which have been practised for 

 years by several other well-known api- 

 arists. However, if any one is intend- 

 hig to rear queens, he should by all 

 means have a copy of Mr. Doolittle's 

 book, as it contains a large amount of 

 valuable information upon the subject of 

 which it treats. 



I do not think any great advancement 

 can be or has been made in the methods 

 of queen -rearing by transplanting an egg 

 or larva from a natural cell to an artificial 

 cell-cup. The work of starting cell-cups 

 is so much better and nicely done by the 

 bees, than it can be done by even the 

 most skilful beekeeper, I had rather they 

 would do such work for me. In this re- 

 spect I think no one can claim that 

 there is any improvement upon nature's 

 way of rearing queens. 



The artificial cell-cup ; method of cell- 

 building. 



It requires no little amount of inge- 

 nuity and tact, as well as experience, to 

 make the cell-cups and to transfer the 

 larva or eggs to them so that the bees 

 will not destroy all. While the artificial 

 cell-cup method is not original with Mr. 

 D., there is no good reason why Mr. 

 Doolittle should not have tlie credit of 

 putting such a method to the best prac- 

 tical use. Nevertheless, Mr. Doolittle's 

 method is not the method of rearing 

 queens that comes the nearest to na- 

 ture's way. On tlie contrary, it is the 

 farthest from nature's way of any plan yet 



made public. It is claimed that bees do 

 sometimes transfer an egg from one cell to 

 another and then rear a queen from that 

 particular egg. I have never yet seen 

 anything that would tend to convince me 

 that such is the fact, as I have seen 

 nothing of the kind in my experience. 



Some old experiments. 



Some twenty years ago I practised cut- 

 ting comb into single cells for the less 

 to build queen cells from. After prac- 

 tising that plan for a while, I thought the 

 queens reared from those cells were not 

 as good as those queens produced in 

 rows upon one long strip of comb, as illus- 

 trated in Fig. 7. The last three seasons 

 I have renewed those experiments with 

 far better results. The cells built by the 

 first experiments were by queenless bees ; 

 those built the last two years were by 

 bees that had a fertile queen in the hive 

 all the time cell-building was going on. 

 That may have made the difference, 

 though I will not say that it had any- 

 thing to do with the quality of the 

 queens. 



After cutting the comb into single- 

 cells, each one was dipped in hot bees- 

 wax and rosin and fastened to the 

 bottom of a comb in a full frame. About 

 two inches of the comb in the frame 

 was cut out to make room for the queen 

 cells. By this plan I never had any trou- 

 ble in getting a queen cell made to each 

 egg placed in the hive whose bees had no 

 queen. After the cells are started they 

 should be given to full colonies having 

 fertile queens as advised on another page. 



After the first day's work upon the cell- 

 cups, the little larva could be seen im- 

 bedded in quite a quantity of jelly food. 

 No royal jelly was used except what was 

 placed in the cells by the- bees. 



This is, as is well-known, the only food 

 upon which the queen subsists from the 

 egg to the mature queen. After the queen 

 emerges from the cell she is fed upon 

 honey the same as any of the bees. 



Mr. Doolittle uses a larva for starting 

 each queen cell. This method has al- 

 ways been condemned by all, or nearly 

 all experienced beekeepers. By the arti- 



