242 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



[May, 



the honor to consult me, and whose assistants 

 possess only ordinary skill and intelligence, to 

 adhere to the hive and system of M. de Gelieu.* 

 With very slight alterations it can be adapted to 

 the formation of artificial swarms. Its con- 

 struction is very simple, its size handy, and it 

 has this further advantage over mine— that its 

 success has been confirmed by time. 



M. de Gelieu can reply much better than I to 

 most of your questions ; but since you place 

 some value upon my opinion, I will give it you, 

 asking only a little time for reflection. I only 

 write you to day, sir, to announce my reply, and 

 to prevent you from deeming me guilty of negli- 

 gence towards you of which I am innocent. I 

 will do my utmost to prove to you the interest I 

 take in your success. Rest assured of this, sir, 

 and believe in my devotion. 



F. H. 



P. S. If you have the courage to try the leaf 

 hive, you must first try it on a small scale. It 

 is enough perhaps, for the fir.st year, to have 

 four or five of this style, which will answer for 

 instructing your employees in the necessary ma- 

 nipulations. Experience and observation have 

 compelled me to make two alterations in the 

 construction of this hive. The first does away 

 with the hinges which have a disadvantage 

 which I will explain to you another time. The 

 second is in the entrances which I have placed 

 at the bottom of each leaf. Instead of these 

 you must make one, about an inch longer, in 

 each of the two boards which close the small 

 sides of the hive, fitting to it Palteau's entrance 

 regulator. If you expect to stock five leaf hives 

 next spring, it will be advisable to have ten 

 made this winter. The extra frames, you see, 

 will then answer for alternating empty frames 

 between the full ones. Cylindrical hives would 

 be good if they were not too difficult to make 

 accurately. Therefore, I prefer square frames 

 dovetailed together. 



(Translated by Dr. Ehrick Parmlet.) 



* Gelieu published in 1773; a work entitled " A new 

 method of making artificial swai-ms.'^ L. L. L. 



[For Wagner's American Bee Journal.] 



Queen Nurseries. 



As nothing is said on the subject of queen 

 nurseries in the 3d edition of my work on bees, 

 published in 1869, some of the readers of the 

 Journal may be interested in an extract from the 

 2d edition (published in 1857), page 337. 



"T shall here describe wliat may be called a queen 

 mirsery, wliich I have contrived to aid tliose who 

 are engaged in the rapid multiplication of colonies 

 by artificial means. A solid block, about an inch 

 and a quarter thick, is substituted for one of my 

 frames ; holes of about one and a half inches in di- 

 ameter are bored tlirough it, and covered on both 

 sides with gauze wire, which should be permanently 

 fastened on one side, and arranged in the form of 

 slides on the other, for convenience in opening. A 

 hole should be made in the wire large enough to 



admit a worker,* and yet confine a young queen 

 when hatched. 



" If the apiarian has a number of sealed queens, 

 and there is danger that some may hatch and destroy 

 the others before he can make use of them in form- 

 ing artificial swarms, he may very carefully cut out 

 the combs containing them, and place each in a sepa- 

 rate cradle ! The bees having access to them, will 

 give them proper attention, supplying them with fond 

 as soon as they are hatched, and then they will 

 always be on hand for use when needed. This nur- 

 sery must of course be established in a hive which 

 has no mature queen, or it will quickly be transformed 

 into a slaughter-house by the bees. 



" In the first edition of this work (published May, 

 1853), in speaking of the queen nursery, I re- 

 marked as follows: I have not yet tested this plan so 

 thoroughly as to he certain that it will succeed. . . . 

 When I first used this nursery, I did not give the bees 

 access to it, and I found that the queeus were not 

 properly developed, and died in their cells. Perhaps 

 they did not receive sufBcient warmth, or were not 

 treated in some other important respects as they 

 would have been if left under the care of the bees. 

 In the multiplicity of my experiments, I did not 

 repeat this one under a sufficient variety .of cir- 

 cumstances to ascertain the precise cause of failure, 

 nor have I as yet tried whether it will answer per- 

 fectly, by admitting the bees to the queen cells. 



" Since writing the above, I have found that this 

 nursery answers perfectly the end designed, by giving 

 the workers access to the queen cells." 



L. L. Langstroth. 



* One side might be covered with tin, having per- 

 forations just five thirty-secondths of au inch wide. 

 L. L. L., 1873. 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Nucleus Hives. 



In reply to Rusticus, on page 204, March No., 

 and also to numerous correspondents, I will give 

 my method of managing nucleus hives. In the 

 first place to stock our nucleus, we select two 

 combs from a populous hive containing mature 

 brood and honey at the top of the comb with all 

 the adhering bees. Be careful not to get the 

 old qvreen. We do this at the approach of even- 

 ing. We place these two combs in one apart- 

 ment ; on the following morning we insert a 

 sealed and nearly mature queen cell in one of 

 these combs. The reader will understand we 

 prefer raising our queen cells in populous stocks 

 that have abundance of brood and nursing bees. 

 The old workers will be apt to go back to the 

 parent stock, and if this leaves the nucleus too 

 weak before the young workers are hatched out 

 in sufficient numbers, we go to any large and 

 populous stock in the middle of the day, take 

 out combs from the centre of tlae stock, and 

 shake or brush down the adhering workers in 

 front of the nucleus and let them enter : thev 

 will be well received, and in this manner yoa 

 get all young bees to stock your nucleus as 

 young bees less than six days old will stay 

 wherever they are placed. This is a very good 

 plan for strengthening up any stocks. Now our 

 nucleus having all young bees may not gather 

 anything for a few days, and unless supplied, 

 they sometimes suffer for the want of water, so 

 we keep a piece of sponge saturated with water 



