THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



[July, 



near the entrance the queen will be soon found 

 and much waste tinie spared, which at other 

 times would be required to tiud her. 



If tlie r. aring of a queen has to be left to the 

 hive itself, then certainly the old queen can not 

 be removed at will. Sliould the removal be too 

 early, then the rearing of an entire generation 

 ot bees will be hinderd, which could be of 

 great use during the year, and after the lapse of 

 fourteen days au unwelcome afterswarm and 

 Cimsequent weakening of thu swarm may fol- 

 low. [Should the removal of the old queen be 

 postponed too long the troul)le to be fe-ared is 

 a want of drones or more especially tlie want of 

 a warm fine day favorable for the bridal flight 

 of the queen. This last condition will be worse 

 than the first, because an old queen still product- 

 ive, is belter than a young unimj)regnated 

 queen, wliich will lay nothing Imt drone eggs, 

 anei drones will never bring a stock to a high 

 state of profitablenCiS. 



With this regard one can count on the fertili- 

 zation of a queen, though born late in the sea- 

 s<m, if it be >trong and its wings free from any 

 defects, and the autumn affords a few fine day.s. 

 If there are in the neighborhood a nural^er of 

 stocks some drones will be met with, although 

 the bees may have destroyed the great majority 

 long before, ,so that the queen re2>eatedly flying 

 out and searching will chance to meet one. 



Besides, ht the pleasant and warm days of a 

 temperature of about 2n R, so favorat)le to the 

 fertilizing flight, pass unusedduring the summer 

 months, and they will become rarer and rarer 

 as autumn advances. During the entire month 

 of September, when our association met at 

 Graz, there was not a single favorable day on 

 which the queen could have made a successful 

 flight, although I had phnty of drones in my 

 apiary, yet on the 8th of uctober, a lovely fall 

 day, all were feriilizi d. An examination that 

 evening revealed the fact that each young queen, 

 heretofore unmated, bore the undoubted signs 

 of impregi ation. After such observation, (me 

 need have no fears; especially when he sees that 

 the body of the queen has swollen and that she 

 begins to lay eggs, winch unimpregnated queins 

 rarely or never do during the first fall of their 

 existence. But one must not judge the queen 

 unimpre'gnated because he tinds no eggs in the 

 cell, and the body of the queen remains lank. 

 Many stocks, with late reared queens often 

 hatch bro d (using their store of pollen) until 

 late in November and Deceml)er, alas, often to 

 their own und ling, yet not always. Others 

 place themselves in their natural fall nest, desir- 

 ing no broo<l, prepare no food for the brood, 

 nor feed the queen with any, so that her body 

 is not appreciably altered, and none but an ex- 

 perienced eye can tell whether she is impregna 

 ted nrnot, Unier such circumstances how shall 

 the tr til be discovered, so that an unimpreg- 

 nated worthless queen shall not be kept over the 

 ■wmter? Her ability to fly is one very good 



ground from which to judge. A laying queen 

 is somewhat disabled from flying. While ex- 

 amining a hive last autumn, the comb upon 

 which the fertile and laying young queen was, 

 accidentally fell from my hands. The scattered 

 bees returned to the hive, and cursory glancing 

 at the returning bees I was unable to distin- 

 guish one from another. About an hour after- 

 ward, noticing a restlessness in the bees, upon 

 examination 1 discovered that the queen was on 

 the ground in front of the hive making vain at- 

 tempts to re-ach the entrance. An unfertilized 

 queen on the other hand flies easily and nimbly 

 as a working bee ; a queen impregnated but a 

 few days, although not yet laying, flies with 

 difficulty and readies the entrance of the hive 

 only alter some exertion, should she be allowed 

 to fly before the hive. After the middle of 

 October when there is no further chance of fer- 

 tilization, the wing of a queen of doubtful fer- 

 tility may be clipped. The next stej? will be 

 to feed the bees at certain hours with somewhat 

 fluid honey, when the queen, if unfertile, will 

 fall to the ground anei the stock show signs of 

 queenliness. The situation will then be known 

 aid either a new queen be supplied or the stock 

 destroyed. 



The removal of aged queens is, alas, too often 

 delayed, because in stocks populous and filled 

 with honey it is a ve-ry difficult operation, and 

 further, by the hope that the bees will them- 

 selves renew their queen. The Italian bees, 

 whether full-blood or hybrid are very apt to 

 bring about such renewals. I have repeatedly 

 observed that even when the stock has a some- 

 what vigorous queen the bees will make prepa- 

 rations for a successor. With bees having but a 

 trace of Italian blood, we may note the removal 

 of their queen, without examining the interior 

 of the hive, by noticing the appearance of a 

 young generaticm of bees — lighter or darker in 

 color than the old bees. With young bees of 

 the unmixed race this distinction cannot be 

 made and hence one r^an not decide whether the 

 new or old queen still reigns. But this distinc- 

 tion can be adopted vnth certainty, when the 

 young queen of the bi "'k swarm is impregnated 

 by a pure Italian di.tie, as among the young 

 bees some will appear \-. 'th yellow bands. 



DiZIEKZON. 



Caulsmarkt. 



[For the American Bee Journal.] 



Jottings from the Apiary. 



Believing that each one of us, as we monthly 

 derive both instruction and profit from the 

 reading of the Journal, as we peruse the 

 thoughts of such a corps of contributors as 

 Lang^troth, Quinby, 'Novice," Gallup, Grinum, 

 and I might continue almost ad infiiiitvm, 

 are receiving much valuable information for 

 which we should render some small return, at 



