AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



463 



Tie Rearing of Good Queens. 



Written Jar the American Bee Journal 



BY DR. G. L. TINKER. 



Dr. Miller seems to think that a young 

 queen emerging from a cell not less than 

 ten days after the bees commence to 

 give it full attention, ought to be all 

 right, according to the observations of 

 Herr Reepen. It is true that they 

 should be all right since no doubt the 

 queen and worker larvae are fed upon 

 the same kind of food up to the fourth 

 day, and, theoretically, at least, they 

 should be as good, but practically they 

 are not. And here we have again an 

 illustration of the difference between 

 mere theory and practice. 



Dr. Miller seems to have quite over- 

 looked one very important item, and 

 that is the relative amount of food the 

 worker and queen larvae receive if de- 

 signed from the moment of hatching. A 

 queen-larva hatching in a queen-cell in 

 a colony making preparations to swarm, 

 is invariably flooded, so to speak, with 

 the royal jelly, while all larvte designed 

 for workers are invariably scantily fed 

 at the start, or for the first four days. 



Now my observation shows that the 

 most prolific, and especially long-lived, 

 queens were abundantly fed during the 

 first four days of the life of the queen- 

 ]arv«, and I think I will be fully sus- 

 tained in this observation by all experi- 

 enced queen-breeders. 



On the other hand, I never saw a good 

 queen that had not been properly fed for 

 the first four days of her life ; and I 

 think I was one of the first, if not the 

 first, to rear queens by transferring 

 small larva?, from 18 to 30 hours old, to 

 queen-cells well filled with royal jelly 

 after the removal of its occupant. These 

 queens would all hatch on the tenth day 

 after, and would often be large and fine, 

 to ail appearance. Still, I never reared 

 one in this manner that was extra pro- 

 lific and long lived, and hence I aban- 



doned this way of rearing fine queens, 

 because in developing a new strain of 

 bees, as I have been doing for the past 

 nine years, it became absolutely neces- 

 sary. The result has been an improved 

 bee, highly prolific, and great workers. 



Out of swarming time it is possible to 

 bring about all the conditions for rear- 

 ing perfect queens as follows : 



Catch and cage the queen of a strong 

 colony full of young bees, and take 

 away all of their brood and give them a 

 comb of honey and empty combs. Place 

 the caged queen upon the frame to keep 

 them quiet. 



At the end of three days take away 

 the queen in the evening, and the next 

 morning give them a frame of cells with 

 just-hatching larvte, on the Alley plan. 

 Not more than 20 larvse should be given 

 them. Now feed them well for five 

 days. Eggs may be given in the same 

 way, but they will not quiet the uproar 

 in the colony like the young larvfe, and 

 black bees have the singular habit of 

 eating all of the eggs, but will accept 

 the larv;^. 



Should a comb of just-hatching eggs 

 be given to the colony instead of the 

 15 or 20 cells prepared on the Alley 

 plan, it will be found in a few hours that 

 every larva in the comb will be swimming 

 in royal jelly, showing that all are fed 

 as if to rear queens, although but 15 or 

 20 queen-cells will be completed. 



Thus reared, I have many times got 

 queens that lived four years, and were 

 highly prolific to the last. With such 

 queens I have obtained the equivalent 

 of two 10-frame Langstroth hives full 

 of brood by the 10th of June, but the 

 ordinary queen would hardly fill eight 

 Langstroth frames under the same con- 

 ditions. 



Of late there has been some talk of 

 having two queens in a hive in the 

 spring to build up large colonies, but 

 from the above it will be seen that one 

 good queen is enough for any colony. 



New Philadelphia, Ohio. 



TremWing Disease ani Spring Dwindling. 



Written for the American Bee Journal 

 BY M. M. BALDRIDGE. 



One of my correspondents in Utah, re- 

 siding in Utah county, writes me, under 

 date of March 12th, substantially as 

 follows : 



lu the spring of 1892 1 had 200 colonies of 

 bees. About May 2Sth they got the tremb- 

 ling disease, and in about six days all the 



