70 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



and no one would suspect it without ex- 

 amining the combs. 



How to know a nucleus colony has lost its 

 queen without opening the hive. 



To save the trouble of opening hives 

 in order to satisfy myself that no colony 

 is queenless from loss of queen at mat- 

 ing time, I usually take a stroll through 

 the apiary about dusk on the day that the 

 queens are likely to take a flight. Some- 

 times I find that several queens have 

 been lost. If any are found showing loss 

 of queen, I then change the position of 

 the indicator (which will be described 

 further on), we use to denote the condi- 

 tion of each colony ; and soon thereaf- 

 ter each colony is supplied with a queen. 

 If a queen-cell is given the bees under 

 such circumstances they will readily ac- 

 cept it. When there are no virgin queens 

 at hand to introduce to such colonies, a 

 cell is best to insert at once, but a virgin 

 queen over two hours old, should not be 

 used until the colony has Ijeen queenless 

 seventy two hours. I really think the in- 

 experienced beekeeper had better intro- 

 duce a queen, either fertile or unfertile, 

 by the cage system. 



Fertile and unfertile queens. 



It requires considerable experience in 

 beekeeping before the beginner is able 

 to decide whether a queen is fertile or 



Fig. 23. 



Unfertile queen. 



Otherwise. Hence it will be seen at the 

 start that it is no easy thing for me to 

 make this matter perfectly clear to all. 

 However, perhaps I can so explain the 

 methods by which the experienced bee- 

 keeper is governed in such cases, that 



the novice and inexperienced beekeeper 

 will be more or less benefited when un- 

 decided regarding the fertility of a queen. 



It is known that a queen emerging 

 from the cell is not near as large as she 

 will be in the course of a week or so 

 after becoming fertile. As a rule unfertile 

 queens are not more than two-thirds as 

 large as a fertile queen. 



Figs. 2 2 and 23 very well illustrate the 

 difference in the size of fertile and un- 

 fertile queen. 



"Ways of knowing a fertile queen. 



The experienced beekeeper is some- 

 times puzzled to decide at a glance 

 whether a queen is fertile or unfertile, 

 lake an old queen at swarming time as 

 an illustration. Unless her wings are 

 ragged, which is an indication that a 

 queen is an old one, there are but few 

 beekeepers who can say positively that 

 such a queen is fertile. 



A few days before a swarm issues, the 

 bees, and especially the queen, make 

 preparations to emigrate. Her egg- 

 producing capacity is curtailed, and her 

 abdomen so contracted that, though an 

 old queen, she is so small that her ap- 

 pearance and size seem about the same 

 as a virgin queen. There is a sure way 

 of deciding the matter of the fertility of 

 any queen. Place the queen in a cage 

 and then put the cage on the alighting 

 board of a hive which has no queen. 

 The bees will at once cover the cage. 

 Nearly the same thing would occur 

 should a virgin queen be placed near a 

 hive under the same circumstances. The 

 difference would be that while the bees 

 would offer food to the laying queen, 

 they would do their best to get at and kill 

 the virgin queen. The bees would cling 

 to the cage about the same as they would 

 toa queen when she is balled. The bees 

 can always be depended on to feed a 

 fertile queen, but bees having a fertile 

 queen will not feed an unfertile queen. 



Studying the habits of the bees through 

 glass. 

 If a fertile queen is placed in an ob- 

 servation-bive and under the same con- 



