1872.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



267 



lay to reply to yours, and to assure you of my 

 devotion, 



I have the honor to he 



Yours, very respectfully, 



Fr. Huber. 



[For Wagner's Americau Bee Jourual.] 



Are Artificial Queens Inferior to Natural Queens ? 



The experience of Mr. L. Bevan Fox, detailed 

 in the article republished in the April No. of the 

 American Bee Journal, from the London Horti- 

 cultural Journal, is precisely the same ^vitll our 

 own. As the subject is one of the greatest im- 

 portance, both to breeders and purchasers of 

 Italian bees, we shall give our views upon it 

 at some length.* 



In 1860, having an unusual number of natu- 

 ral swarms, we determined to secure for most of 

 our stocks, queens bred from what we shall call 

 swarming queen cells ; so that we could advertise 

 such queens for sale, if we found by experience 

 that they were better than qiieens bred from 

 non-swarming queen cells. The next season 

 being a poor one, both for swavms and honey, 

 the larger part of our stocks retained these 

 queens, and they remained in our apiary, until 

 in 1871 we superseded them by young ciueens. 

 Having thus tested such queens for three seasons, 

 and on a large scale, we could not see in them 

 any superiority to queens reared under favorable 

 circumstances, from non-swarming queen cells. 

 If any such superiority had existed, we think 

 that it could not have escaped our notice, as we 

 wei-e not influenced by any preconceived theo- 

 I'ies, and might have sold these queens to better 

 advantage, if we could only have guaranteed 

 their superiority. 



We shall now explain exactly what Ave mean 

 hy favorable circumstances, so that all our readers 

 may know how to secure them ; and thus be able 

 to breed queens from non-swarming, fully equal 

 to those bred from swarming queen cells. f 



By favorable circumstances, we mean : 1st. 

 The proper season of the year. We have had a 



* In 1849 we made our first observhig liive, and 

 witnessed, almost hourly, all the steps in the process 

 of queeu raising from worker brood. So few persons 

 la this country then believed in the possil)ility of 

 bees producing queens from worker larv;e, that we at 

 one time seriously thought of having the facts certi- 

 fied to by Rev. Albert Barnes, and other distinguished 

 Philadelphiaiis, who were eye witnesses to them ! 

 How strangely such reminiscences must strike the 

 new generation of beekeepers, to whom, by the aid 

 of movable frames, all the steps in tlie process of 

 queen rearing are now so familiar. 



t If the terms Natural and Artificial queens are 

 xised merely to designate queeus bred from swarming 

 or non-swarming queeu cells, we do not object to 

 them — but we wholly object to using the word artifi- 

 cial to designate some supposed deviation from the 

 laws of Nature, which secures an unnatural and infe- 

 rior kind of queens. The rearing of queens when 

 bees do not intend to swarm, eitlier to supply the loss 

 of a queen from accident or disease, or to supersede 

 one which is superannuated, or not sufficiently pro- 

 lific, is plainly a jiatural process. 



queen reared in a full stock in tlie month of 

 January, when the mercury during the time of 

 her incubation, was once below zero ! but while 

 this is possible, the right time for rearing queens 

 in nuclei is, when the season is far enough ad- 

 vanced for the bees to gather freely both pollen 

 and honey, and when drones are beginning to 

 appeal-, or are nearly matured. From this time 

 until late in September, I have ordinarily found 

 in the latitude of 40 degrees no difficulty what- 

 ever in rearing choice queens. 2d. Abundayice 

 of iDorker bees. If the nuclei are so small as to 

 become discouraged, the queens being often 

 poorly nourished will be shy breeders and short 

 lived. Not only should there be a generous al- 

 lowance of bees, but a large proportion of them 

 should be young bees, or the best results cannot 

 always be secured. 3d. Abundance of pollen. 

 If this is deficient the queens not being well fed, 

 will be undersized, or otherwise defective. 



We shall here call attention to a marked dif- 

 erence almost always found in the supply of 

 royal jelly given to natural and artificial queens. 

 While the larvae of the swarming queen cells are 

 usually so over supplied that a considerable quan- 

 tity remains in the cell after the queen has 

 emerged, there is seldom any excess found in the 

 non swarming cells. Those who' have so confi- 

 dently pronounced all queens reared in non- 

 swarming cells inferior if not worthless, will 

 probably think that these facts prove that the 

 swarming queen cells are well provisioned, while 

 the others are not. But '^enoughis as good as a 

 feast/' and enough the non-swarming cells will 

 usually be sure to have, if the breeder under- 

 stands his business. Why the bees provide an 

 excess for one kind and not for another, may not 

 be apparent, but the former, although "papped, 

 capped and naj)ped in the lap of prodigality," 

 haviuii' been "born with a silver" — or judging 

 from the color of the royal surplus — "with a 

 golden spoon in their mouths," are not a whit 

 better fitted for the exigencies of life than their 

 seemingly less lavored sisters. 



4th. Abundance of honey. It is desirable that 

 the queen-rearing nuclei should not only be well 

 provisioned, but if natural supplies are not 

 easily procured by them, they ought to be regu- 

 laily fed in oider to keep them at all times in 

 good heart. They should not only know nothing 

 of actual scarcity, but should by generous feed- 

 ing, be saved from even the apprehension of it, 

 and thus made to leel confident in their re- 

 sources, and ready for all emergencies. 



Every experienced breeder knows that he can 

 always have queeu cells so largely in excess of • 

 his wants, that he need save only such as are 

 perfectly developed. Such cells are usually of 

 good size, and roughened all over with ornamen- 

 tations, as though for some reason the bees felt a 

 special interest in their inmates, while such as 

 are undersized, smooth, and blunt instead of 

 having the usual tapering proportions, are much 

 more likely to produce inferior queens. 



Under the most favorable circumstances some 

 queens are pi'oduced which are so small, or so 

 poorly developed, that the exi^ert destroys them 

 as soon as seen. He who cannot form a pretty 

 accurate judgment from seeing a just hatched 



