80 



THE AMERICAN APIGULTURIST. 



A safe but slow and wasteful 

 method, is to take two or three frames 

 of hatching brood, and 3'our queen, 

 put them in a hive together, close the 

 hive and set it in the shade if the 

 weather is very hot, or in a warm 

 room if very cold. In a few da^-s 

 open the entrance and your queen is 

 intioduced, I do not recommend 

 tliat plan. 



Queens reared in my own apiary 

 I introduce, so to speak, largely by 

 uniting. I let the cell hatch in a nu- 

 cleus which I set down beside a hive 

 I want to requeen. After the queen 

 gets to laying, I destroy the old 

 queen and unite; but, strange to say. 

 I have lost several queens in that 

 way, whereas I have never had a fail- 

 nre b}^ the use of the self-introducing 

 cage, as I have said. 



Mechaiiicsburg ^ 111. 



Number Five. 



M. A. KELLEY. 



Introducing fertile nnd ^infertile queens — 



2'he novice, should not experiment in 



introducing queens. 



This Important yet simple operation 

 may be performed in several ways. 

 Several conditions may modify any 

 ordinary plans, but they are alike as 

 to resul's. A fertile queen may be 

 given to a queenless colony at any 

 time when honey is coming in by sim- 

 ply caging heron a comb and allowing 

 the bees to release her by eating out 

 the feed that all good cages are pro- 

 vided with. A virgin queen may be 

 given to a nucleus of young bees bv 

 taking all brood and eggs out of their 

 hive before the queen is put in. It is, 

 my opinion, however, that the novice 

 should let others experiment with vir- 

 gin queens. 



If any one has an extra valuable 

 queen and wishes to run no risks let 

 him take a queenless nucleus of young 

 bees and after removing all the coml)s 

 keep them shut up a day, and then he 

 can give them the queen by hiving her 



with them into a hive that contains 

 combs that have in them no eggs or 

 larva. There is another important 

 thing that should not be neglected and 

 that is to subscribe for and read the bee 

 journals. Do not depend on a single 

 article for information but read all the 

 papers and books you can. 

 Milton, W. ¥(1."^ 



Number Six. 



DR. G. L. TINKER. 



Seat method for the novice to adojtt to intro- 

 duce queens. 



There are many ways to introduce 

 queens that are usually safe in the 

 hand of the expert apiarist yet nearly 

 all of the |)lans heretofore advised are 

 not entirely safe in the hands of the 

 inexperienced. Il^ven during a good 

 flow of honey when the bees are least 

 inclined toattack strange queens, there 

 is an occasional failure. And these 

 failures are due almost invariably to 

 the fact that a colony of bees do not 

 appear to regard themselves queenless 

 as long as they possess brood from 

 which a queen may be reared. Hence, 

 with all of the direct plans recommend- 

 ed, which provides ibr liberating the 

 new queen within three days from the 

 time of removing tiie old one, there will 

 ever exist an uncertainty whether the 

 bees decide to raise a queen from their 

 brood or accept the one given to them. 



When we remember what the natu- 

 ral mode of requeen ing is, the wonder 

 is that a stranger queen can be intro- 

 duced at all until the bees have con- 

 structed queen cells and ca[)ped them 

 over. From that moment they live in 

 expectation of a queen. If all of their 

 queen cells are now destroyed and the 

 new queen be introduced in a cage 

 plugged up with a little bee candy, she 

 will be joyfully received and from that 

 moment there will be the utmost har- 

 mony between queen and workers. By 

 all of the direct methods of introduc- 

 ing there seem to be a few dissatisfied 

 bees that regard the new queen as an 

 intruder, so there is not the perfect 



