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THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL, 



J\lov. 18, 



hives endure the rigors of the most severe climates that will 

 permit the bees to pass without chill or death. 



The wee bee-moth figured on page 413 of my "Bee- 

 Keepers' Guide, or Manual of the Apiary," is not very com- 

 mon or injurious. The other destroyers are the Bacon bee- 

 tles, Tedc/jrio mo(etor, and the common Dcrmestes lardnrius. 

 All are described in my book. The full description of the bee- 

 moth with excellent illustrations are also found on page 409. 

 Every bee-keeper should know the full life history of this in- 

 sect. All know that the bee-moth will do little harm if the 

 bee-keeper knows his business and is prompt to do as its needs 

 require. Los Angeles Co., Calif. 



Rearing Queens — Wintering — Laying Workers. 



BY EDWIN BEVINS. 



Somebody keeps punching me In the ribs, or somewhere, 

 so that I find it impossible to get that 20 years' nap which I 

 had concluded to take when I bade the readers of the Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal farewell, in August. 



Dr. Gallup wakes me out of a comfortable snooze with 

 his remarks about " Establishing a Standard for Queens." 

 The Doctor has a pretty good idea of what a queen ought to 

 be able to do, but I am considerably riled because he did not 

 tell us how he rears such queens as the one he sold to 

 "Arthur." I hope the Doctor will not go dead till he has 

 made the matter as plain as a b c — and not for a long time 

 after. I mean to try my " prentice" hand at rearing a few 

 queens myself, next season. 



Then that South African Deacon could not be content till 

 he had gotten everybody to guessing why Doolittle, Heddon, 

 Slmmins, and the rest, tell us to take away all of the brood 

 when we give a colony a batch of cell-cups. I can only guess 

 that they tell us to take away all of the brood because of the 

 possibility that we may leave some unsealed brood, and that 

 the bees may neglect the cups and endeavor to rear queens 

 from it. But then I do not pretend to know anything about 

 it. The queen-rearers named are of age, and will, in due 

 time I presume, speak for themselves. 



A third prod with another stick in the hands of C. P. 

 Dadant waked me up some more. I have wintered my bees 

 for several years very much in the way recommended by him, 

 and with perfect success. It will be observed that I am in 

 about the same latitude. Instead of the lattice made of lath 

 and strings, I make outside cases of boards removable in sum- 

 mer. Mr. Dadant objects to these on account of their cost 

 and the room required to store them when not in use. I do 

 not consider them very expensive where lumber good enough 

 can be bought, as here, for one cent per square foot. Any- 

 body can make them who can use a handsaw and hammer. I 

 would not hesitate to use them to the extent of two or three 

 hundred. One can store them in the apple orchard or the calf 

 . pasture, with the sky for a covering, and they will keep just 

 as long as unpainted hives which a good many use, and some 

 prefer to use. But if I were to make many more than a hun- 

 dred of them, I would make them so that the two sides and 

 the one end would be easily separable, and then they could be 

 stored in little space. 



I use the covers to theso outer cases for shade-boards to 

 my hives in hot weather. 



Again am I called upon to dispose of a laying worker. He, 

 she or it has been numerous with me this season. But I have 

 found a way at last to beat him or her or it every time. I had 

 some colonies that failed to develop queens after swarming. 

 Then I tried giving a laying queen in the usual way, but they 

 were not accepted. Then I gave frames of unsealed brood, 

 and the bees would not rear a queen. Then droue-brood be- 

 came quite plentiful in the hives, and the bees seemed to bo 

 masters of the situation. Then I made some two-frame 



nuclei, gave each a good laying queen, and set the hives down 

 close by the hives containing the laying workers. Occasion- 

 ally I take a frame from the laying worker hive and put it 

 into the nucleus hive. Whin about half removed, I set the 

 laying-worker hive over the nucleus hive with a newspaper 

 The thing works like a charm, and I go to oed nights now 

 feeling that I am master of the situation. 



But what does all this hullabaloo about bees and honey 

 amount to when the comb honey producer has to take less 

 than 10 cents a pound net for his product? 



Decatur Co., Iowa, Oct. 3. 



More About Improved Queens. 



BY DR. E. GALLUI'. 



Now, then, Gallup has something about queens. Here In 

 California many of the people hive a small swarm that they 

 pick up in a retail cracker-box. It is 9 inches wide, 9 inches 

 high, and 10 inches long, inside measure. Now you can 

 readily see that in a series of years or generations of bees 

 kept ou that line we have cracker-box swarms, cracker-box 

 queens, and a cracker-box is the full capacity of such queens. 

 What I wish to know is, are you fully satisfied with that class 

 of queens? Now, if in a series of generations you can deter- 

 iorate or run down to said capacity, are you sure that if you 

 adopt a different policy you cannot in a series of generations 

 increase the longevity of both queens and bees until they 

 have a capacity to fully occupy a common barrel instead of a 

 cracker-box ? I, for one, know it can be done. I am using S- 

 frame Langstroth hives because bees in them will sell just as 

 readily as larger hives. 



Now, when I have a queen that will fully occupy 16 

 combs in 21 days, you can readily see that we have to run 

 that hive at least 4 stories high in order to give the bees any- 

 where near room enough. When we get one queen of that 

 class cannot we rear another one like her? We certainly 

 can, if we go to work in the right direction. But I would not 

 wish to start with a cracker-box queen. I would prefer to 

 start with a queen from a man that advocates and uses large 

 hives ; and then in a few generations we could reasonably ex- 

 pect improvement instead of deterioration. 



September 20 I had a small cracker-box swarm come to 

 me, and on the 21st another. lean make good colonies of 

 them by giving sealed brood and a good queen. All the 

 swarms that have come to me (some 10) have been exceed- 

 ingly small, only from one to three quarts of bees — cracker- 

 box swarms — wiih the exception of one Italian swarm, and 

 that was a good one, and had a 16-frame queen. She filled 

 16 frames in the 21 days, and the bees built all the combs in 

 that time except one frame of foundation. I have queens of 

 ray own rearing every whit as good, but not quite as beauti- 

 fully markt Albinos. I was from home when they came, and 

 the boys said they came out of one of the Albino colonies, but 

 on examination I found that they did not; neither did they 

 come from any other colony in my yard, so I was puzzled to 

 know where tuey did come from. But afterwards I found 

 that a neighbor two miles north, lost an Italian swarm about 

 that time. He obtained the queen from a man in Michigan, 

 whom all know, so you see others besides Gallup rear prolific 

 queens, and the bees are extra-good honey-gatherers. 



This man, Mr. Paxton, uses small hives. The bees 

 swarmed out and he hived them and set them in the hot sun ; 

 In a couple of hours they came out and he hived them 

 again, and on going to look at ti.em at night they were 

 gone. He then went and lookt at the old hive, found about a 

 pint of bees, a small patch of brood about as large as his 

 hand, and the balance of the combs filled solid full of honey. 

 Here was a case where a queen was compelled to leave for 

 want of room. There were no queen-cells or unsealed brood. 



