24 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



What led me to experimenting for 

 the purpose of having queen-cells so 

 built that they could all be transferred 

 to nuclei or nursery cages without de- 

 stroying even one cell in the operation 

 was this : I adopted queen-rearing 

 for a business. I knew as little about 

 new methods, at the time, for rear- 

 ing queens as most beekeepers at 

 this age who have not read the Bee- 

 keepers' Handy Book. Of course, I 

 pursued the old fogy plan, the same 

 as is now practised by all queen deal- 

 ers who are behind the times, and 

 whose methods may be found in 

 nearly all old works and treatises up- 

 on bees. Not one writer whose work 

 I have ever read has improved upon 

 or advanced beyond the methods 

 given in Mr. Langstroth's work. All 

 these old, stereotyped ways were 

 very unsatisfactory to me, and I found 

 it impossible to rear queens by any of 

 them as rapidly as I could get orders, 

 nor yet could I rear queens that 

 were ail first-class. 



Then, again, queen cells built by 

 the old methods were in clusters sim- 

 ilar to those shown in the illustration. 







XM^' \: 



It will be seen that the cells are all 

 attached and firmly joined to their 

 neighbors ; and it is impossible to 

 detach them without destroying 

 more or less of the queens, and in 

 order to save all, I made small hives 

 with glass on both sides, just large 

 enough to take one 5X5 inch comb, 



so that I could see the cells on either 

 side, or a young queen the moment 

 she emerged. I was obliged to be 

 up about half of the night and nearly 

 every night in the week too, dur- 

 ing the five months queens can be 

 reared. Sometimes, when I had a 

 nap of an hour, I would examine 

 a hive and find three or four queens 

 on the comb at one time. Some of 

 them would be stung ; as you know 

 that the first queen that emerges will 

 attack the next one the moment she 

 leaves the cell, and, if none are about 

 to hatch, the queen that has posses- 

 sion of the combs will select those 

 cells containing nearly matured 

 queens, cut a hole in the cells near 

 the base and sting the queen. 

 Hence, the importance of sitting up 

 nights in order to save the young 

 queens. Well, the idea struck me 

 that if I could devise a way to have 

 cells so built that they could be 

 transferred to nuclei or to cages so 

 that all could be saved, I might carry 

 on the queen-rearing business with 

 half the expense of both time and 

 money. And then I found that I 

 must give up night work, even if I had 

 to abandon queen-rearing. Accord- 

 ingly, I put my wits to work, and my 

 first experiments in the line of having 

 queen-cells built so that they could be 

 removed separately were as follows : 

 The strip of comb containing eggs 

 was fastened in position as described 

 in my book, but none of the eggs 

 were destroyed. When the bees had 

 been at work twenty-four hours on 

 the cells, I opened the hive and de- 

 stroyed the larvse in every alternate . 

 cell. My next experiment was to 

 cut up the comb containing eggs in- 

 to separate cells and fasten each cell 

 to a comb in a small frame. I found 

 the bees very unwilling to rear queens 

 when the combs were thus prepared, 

 and I never succeeded in rearing a 

 queen that was worth a copper. Of 

 course, this experiment was soon 

 abandoned. My next experiment, 

 and the one I now practise, proved 



