258 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



[May, 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Fertilizing Italian Queen Bees. 



There have been quite a number of ways 

 cjiven to secure the pure fertilization of queens 

 in confinement, yet there are very few persons 

 who appear to have any success. I liave a 

 neighbor, with whom I became acquainted last 

 fall, who says he has not failed once in getting 

 queens fertilized by drones from any stock he 

 may select. He showed me two queens which 

 had been fertilized, that had no wings, but 

 merely small rudimental bunches where the 

 wings should have been. I was very busy at 

 the time, and it being then late in the season, 

 I did not try it, but intend to test it thoroughly 

 the coming season. He said lie had tried many 

 different ways to get queens fertilized by Italian 

 drones, and had at last found one by which he 

 always had good success, having never failed 

 when lie tried it in a full stock of bees. 



He selects a stock with ])lenty of the best 

 drones, and sets it fifteen or twenty rods from 

 any other stock, and as soon as the queen 

 hatches, he clips one wing. He then raises a 

 bed of saw dust three or four feet square, lays 

 thereon a good broad bottom board, and sets 

 tlie hive on it. so that the queen can crawl back 

 when she comes out. He has tried queens in 

 this way for three seasons, and they are all very 

 prolific. A queen can be introduced from any 

 stock, and in and in breeding thus prevented. 



Q. M. DOODLITTLE. 



Borodino, N. T., March 11, 1871. 



33^ It seems to us tbat the process above mentioned is 

 more liliely to be uniformly successful than any other yet 

 sug^'ested or tried. — Eu. 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Pertilization with select Drones. 



When a safe and sure method to secure the 

 fertilization of queens with select drones in con- 

 finement is devised, the inventor will deserve 

 the same honors now conferred on Langstroth 

 for his invention of the movable frame hives. 

 Tliere are ]tarties now claiming to have made 

 sucli discoveries, but, whether such claims are 

 valid, remains to be tested. I could heartily wish 

 they were, but I rather fear the statements are 

 exaggerated. At least, until I can succeed my- 

 self with their methods, I will not credit such 

 statements as have appeared at diffoi-ent times in 

 the Journals, as being successful in every case. 



I will give my experience the past season, 

 with their various methods, as I found them de- 

 scribed. I hope other writers for the Journal 

 will also give nothing but the plain, naked, and 

 unvarnished facts, and on both sides, the dark 

 as well as the bright. 



Early in the spring I received Dr. Jewel 

 Davis' circular— Queen Nursery; but as it was 

 not in connection with a method of fertilization, 

 and as I could never get bees to accept an unim- 

 pregnated queen, I thought I would wait until 

 others tried it. If friend Davis had sent me one 

 ou trial, I would have given it sl faithful one. 



I prepared a number of cages on Mitchel's 

 plan, described by him in his paper — expecting 

 to be sure of success, as he told us we wouldn't 

 fail but one time out of ten. Well, my exj^eri- 

 ence went the other way, for I didn't succeed 

 one time in Pm. I also prepared several other 

 methods, such as honey caps, 3 x 4 x G — the ends, 

 bottom, and top, wood ; wire cloth on one side, 

 and glass on the other ; and three one inch 

 holes in the bottom, covered with wire cloth. 

 Also, a number of small cages, two inches by 

 three, fastened to a board an inch and a half 

 wide and a fourth of an inch thick, fitted in the 

 hive in place of a frame. These were for cells 

 to hatch in ; but every queen died before she 

 was five days old, although each cage had sealed 

 honey in old comb. The other cages I tried in 

 almost every conceivable way — inside of the 

 hive, on the top, in dark rooms, some with 

 workers, and some without, luitil I became sick 

 of losing so many valuable queens. I failed in 

 every instance, except two or three, which I will 

 describe and leave to the readers of the Journal 

 to say whether I was successful. The first was 

 with one of the fir.st queens raised, a beautiful 

 and lively queen, but with no wings. The 

 weather being very rainy for several days, with 

 no signs of clearing off, I jmt her in the fertiliz- 

 ing cage on the morning of the fifth day, with 

 eight selected drones. Then ]5ut the cage down 

 into her stand (a full stand). In noticing her a 

 while after, say about one o'clock, on raising the 

 cage to the light, she made several attempts to 

 fly in the cage, and hopped on the back of a 

 drone and stuck fast. Here I was compelled to 

 close up, by the falling rain. Next day, I noticed 

 a dead drone. Queen all right I thought I 

 would follow out Mitchel's directions of forty- 

 eight hours. Well, Avhat did I find at the end 

 of the forty-eight hours ? Two dead drones, and 

 a dead queen besmeared in honey that had 

 dripped on the bottom. 



The next one in which I think I succeeded, is 

 this. I put three queens, just hatched, in three 

 of the small boxes above described, with about 

 one hundred workers in each. These I ]uit in a 

 dark room until the fifth day, Avhen I took out 

 all but five workers and then put five drones in 

 each. These drones ■^^ere so selected at one 

 o'clock, just as they were leaving the hive, put 

 in boxes back into the dark room (which was 

 also warm) for thirtj'-six hours ; at the end of 

 which time there two dead queens, and from one 

 to three dead drones, in each. I immediately 

 introduced the living queen, by means of tobacco 

 smoke, in a nucleus that had been queenless 

 for five days, and on the second day she was 

 laying. I was either successful in this case, or 

 the queen came out and met a drone the same 

 day that I intriduced her in the nucleus. 



In my correspondence with D. L. Adair, I told 

 him I had failed with Mitchel's plan. He 

 answered that he had too, but that he had no 

 trouble with one of his own ; and that if I 

 would trj' it, according to his directions, he would 

 send me one. I wrote, and got one in due time. 

 I thought it a very ingenious device, and that 

 it woidd prove successful. 1 immediately trans- 

 ferred bees and comb to it, sent for select drones 



