1894 



GLEANIN(;S IN BEE CULTURE. 



801 



BY G./^.DOOLITTLE.BOROOINO.N.Y. 



KEEPIN(i QUEENS. 



Questinti. — What is the best method of keep- 

 ing laying queens while not in use in colonies ? 



Ansiver. — There are only two reasons which 

 I know of, why a laying queen should be kept 

 outside of a colony of bees, except in the case 

 of shipping them, when' sold to a customer, or 

 transporting them from one apiary to another. 

 This exception is covered quite thoroughly in 

 all of our bee-papers, for there is scarcely a 

 month goes by but that some one has some- 

 thing to say in regard to sending queens in the 

 mails, etc.. telling of the best cage, the best 

 candy to use, the right number of bees to put 

 with the queen, and so on. With me, I use the 

 small lienton cages for the month of June, 

 July, and August, where the queens do not 

 have to go over 1000 miles, and invariably give 

 each queen ten bees to accompany her. In all 

 cages I use the Good candy, no matter where 

 sent. For spring and fall, and where queens 

 are going more than 1000 miles, but not farther 

 away than the United States or Canada, I use a 

 cage of the Benton pattern, but about three 

 times as deep, and with the queen I send six- 

 teen workers as companions. These workers 

 are bees from six to ten days old, or those 

 which have had their first cleansing flight, as 

 bees which have not flown to empty themselves 

 of the accumulations collecting through their 

 larval period are not in condition to endure 

 confinement to the best advantage. Worker- 

 bees are best caught and selected when they 

 have their heads in the cells taking honey, and 

 bees of the age spoken of above are far more 

 likely to take honey when the hive is being 

 disturbed than are those either older or young- 

 er, so if the operator takes the bees that have 

 their heads in the cells, loading with honey, 

 upon the removal of the frames from the hive, 

 he is not liable to be far out of the way in his 

 selection of bees to ship as companions with 

 a queen. Besides, such bees as have their sacs 

 well filled with honey seem to stand the jour- 

 ney much better than bees taken with empty 

 honey-sacs, as I have proven during the past 

 ten or twelve years. My way of accounting 

 for this is, that this honev taken with them 

 helps them to moisten the sugar in the candy, 

 so the candy is more readily used than where 

 they have no honey to moisten it with; for it is 

 a well-known fact with those who have fed 

 candy to bees for wintering purposes, that, so 

 long as honey remained in the hive, the candy 

 would be moistened and used; but when the 

 supply of honey gave out, the bees would often 

 starve with plenty of candy within easy reach. 

 Since I learned this fact, that bees filled witii 



honey, when put into the shipping-cage, were 

 more likely to go through in better shape than 

 were a promiscuous selection, I have lost very 

 few queens; and the past season has been one 

 of unusual success, as only one queen out of 

 every lt)4 sent out has been lost, so far as reports 

 have come in. For shipping to foreign coun- 

 tries, I am still "at sea " regarding just what 

 the cage should be. This year I have been 

 placing a piece of dry worker-comb in each 

 cage, from the fact that more queens are lost 

 by being drowned or daubed, with the feed 

 getting thin and running all over the inside of 

 the cage and occupants, than from any other 

 reason. This seems to come about by the 

 dampness which accumulates on the candy 

 while on the ocean, the mail -bags being crowd- 

 ed in some damp part of the ship. We all 

 know that, where the bees are " at home " in 

 their hives, they always store any sweet liquid 

 found loose anywhere about the hive, in the 

 combs; and as the queen and accompanying 

 bees soon establish a " home " in the shipping- 

 cage they are confined in, this dry comb will 

 give them a place to store the liquid produced 

 from the moisture coming in contact with their 

 candy. More than this, it will allow the bees 

 which have their saCs full of honey when put 

 into the cage, to store that honey in this comb, 

 instead of holding it in their sacs, and thus 

 they are placed in as nearly a natural condition 

 as possible while en route for foreign countries. 

 I put in 30 bees to accompany the queen to 

 foreign countries. But perhaps I have dwelt 

 too long on the exception part of this matter; 

 yet I did not see where to stop, and yet have it 

 plain to the beginner. One of the other reasons 

 for desiring to keep queens outside of the hive 

 is, where we wish to take the reigning queen 

 from a hive in order to introduce another, or 

 take one fi'om a nucleus to make room for cells 

 which must be taken care of before they hatch. 

 It is always well to preserve the old queen 

 when we are trying to introduce another in her 

 stead; for, should it happen that the queen 

 which we are desirous should supplant the old 

 one is lost in introducing, then we shall not be 

 obliged to leave the colony queenless, as we 

 have the old one on hand to give back to them; 

 or we can give one of those taken from the 

 nucleus, if preferred, to take the place of the 

 lost one, if all these have not been sent off to 

 customers. To keep such queens as last spo- 

 ken of, I use two methods. One is, to put them 

 in cages with accompanying bees, the same as 

 for shipment, placing the cage where a tem- 

 perature of from 60 to 70° can be maintained, 

 as nearly as possible, for this temperature is 

 conducive to the longest life of bees while in 

 confinement in a cage outside of a hive; and 

 the second is, to place the queen in a provision- 

 ed cage without any worker-bees with her, 

 placing the cage over the frames of a nursing 

 colony; or, where several are thus caged, by 



