THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



245 



NOTES FR03T THE BAY 

 STATE APIARY. 



Henrv Alley. 

 FILLING ORDERS FOR QUEENS. 



On Suturday, Aug. 6, we put up 

 and mailed fifty-two queens and 

 cleaned up every order we liad on 

 our books. 



Tliis is one of the years when 

 the rearing of queens is an easy 

 matter, as with one exception we 

 have had no drawback. Even the 

 weather has been favorable all the 

 time. Nearly all our 260 nucleus 

 hives now (Aug. 20) contain a 

 beautiful queen, while there are 200 

 queens in the nurseries and 200 cells 

 neaily ready to hatch. 



We had not long to wait for more 

 orders as the evening's mail brought 

 a fresh lot of orders as does each 

 mail that comes in. 



FEEDING BEES. 



We find that feeding bees is a 

 thing that must be followed up in 

 our apiary through the entire sea- 

 son. The golden-rods are coming 

 into bloom, but the bees do not 

 gather any honey from them. A 

 glass fruit-jar may be seen on n)any 

 of our hives, as that sort of a feeder 

 is the most convenient one we know 

 of for feeding bees. 



Our inicleus colonies have al- 

 ready made way with nearl}' 800 

 lbs. of granulated sugar, and be- 

 fore the season is over it will re- 

 quire nearly as much more sugar to 

 keep the bees in good running or- 

 der. 



HATCHING QUEENS IN NURSERY 

 CAGES. 



Nearly all our queen-cells are 

 placed in the luirsery to hatch. 

 There is one advantage in doing 

 so. Every queen dealer knows 

 that many cells are worthless. 

 Well, if such cells are placed in the 

 nucleus hives to hatch, it cannot be 



known that a queen does not emerge 

 from them till the hive is examined. 

 All this is a loss of time. By 

 placing the cells in the nursery each 

 queen may be seen and examined 

 before introducing and if any one 

 is not up to the standard they should 

 not be introduced, and here is a 

 saving of several days' time again. 



INTRODUCING VIRGIN QUEENS. 



We never lose any queens by 

 introducing. Every virgin queen 

 is introduced by fumigation of to- 

 bacco smoke. This is a method 

 that has been in practice at the 

 Bay State Apiary upwards of 

 twenty-seven years. Our method 

 of introducing is this : No queen is 

 introduced until the nucleus has 

 been queenless three days, and then 

 just before sunset the old tin fumi- 

 gator is loaded with fine tobacco 

 made from the ends of cigars, dried 

 in the sun and ground up very fine 

 between the hands. This burns 

 freely and is not as strong as chew- 

 ing tobacco, which latter would kill 

 the bees if used. Last night, Au- 

 gust 20, sixty-three queens were in- 

 troduced in less than one hour's 

 time, and from past experience I 

 can safely say that not one of 

 those queens will be destroyed. If 

 one goes along by these hives the 

 next morning nothing will be 

 noticed out of the way except a 

 small wad of grass may be seen 

 at the entrance of each hive which 

 was used to close the entrance to 

 keep the bees and queen in after 

 fumigating. 



PLACING HIVES ON THE GROUND. 



All the nuclei in the Bay State 

 Apiary are placed on the ground. 

 We cannot furnish stands for so 

 many small hives and it is not con- 

 venient to use them in such large 

 numbers. One advantage in plac- 

 ing the hives on the ground is that 

 the grass protects the colony from 

 being robbed, as robber bees can- 



