THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



67 



''profits," and big and little pack- 

 ages are valued in exact ratio to 

 the amount of solid cash they bring. 



In my next I will treat of small 

 paclvages of comb, and further on 

 of extracted honey. 



Christiansburg, Ky. 



A VISIT TO FOUR OF 

 THE LARGEST ITALIAN 

 QUEEN-BEE BREEDERS. 



Br Dr. a. Dubini. 



{Continued from p. 11, Vol. II.) 



Quitting Tenero I made my way 

 to Gndo. There I was shown a 

 goat path, steep and ston\% flanked 

 by a cascade; mounting tlie patli, 

 in half an hour I reached the dwell- 

 ing of Mr. Pometta whom I found 

 occupied in gathering his crop of 

 grapes. Approaching thereto I 

 could not help feeling sure of- the 

 nearness of the apiary, by seeing 

 the flowers of the heather, which 

 abounds in the mountain, all 

 loaded with joyful bees humming 

 loudly. 



Mr. Pometta, whose acquaint- 

 ance I had made at the exhibition 

 at Milan, could not have been 

 more polite, and showed me his 

 one hundred colonies spread around 

 on the grass in front of his dwell- 

 ing ; also his American instruments 

 of which I had read descriptions 

 in the journals, but had never yet 

 seen. 



He sends his superb queens all 

 over the Cantons of Switzerland — 

 to Germany — and mostly to Eng- 

 land. He speaks English fluently, 

 and writes it also. He is a very 

 clever workman with his hands, 

 and an extraordinarily active man 

 gifted with the natural ease and 

 grace of manner of a true mount- 

 aineer of free Switzerland. He 

 seems to know just how to do every- 



thing with a truh^ surprising ad 

 dress and precision. 



We opened several large hives. 

 To unfasten the lugs of the frames 

 he uses only a rustic pocket knife. 

 He showed me his choicest queens 

 with four large yellow rings which 

 the English and Americans so 

 greatly admire. Their daughters 

 appeared to me to be of a beauti- 

 ful shape, with three well marked 

 yellow bands. 



Here is, as he told me, his method 

 of procedure. In the spring he 

 takes the queen and all the frames 

 of brood that are not sealed, from 

 a colony of middling strength ; 

 these he distributes among the 

 weak colonies, and replaces these 

 frames by others filled with brood 

 not sealed coming from a hive con- 

 taining one of his choicest queens. 

 In this manner the bees of the 

 weak colony can only raise queen 

 cells in direct descent from a choice 

 queen. 



To the full colonies he does not 

 give frames with only guides to 

 replace the frames taken away, but 

 always those entirely filled with 

 comb foundation. He is not in 

 the habit of giving sealed cells to 

 nuclei. 



He examines each da}^ the colony 

 to which he has given brood from 

 the choice queen, and as early as 

 the eleventh or twelfth day he 

 sees a queen is born, he catches 

 her and lets her fall into a nucleus 

 hive in which he has placed some 

 hours previous three or four 

 frames ; one with some honey, an- 

 other with sealed brood and one 

 or two empty combs. 



The adult bees go off back to 

 their old hive and there only remain 

 the young bees which always re- 

 ceive without any opposition a 

 newly-born queen, even if she is 

 a virgin. The entrances of these 

 nuclei are capable of being made 

 smaller or larger by the use of two 

 pieces of triangular shaped wood 



