July 3, 1902. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



423 



No. 3.— Rearing Long-Lived Queens and Bees. 



H\' IIH. Ji. i;ai,].i:i'. 



Dcffencralioii is, fjrowiii^f worse, or a losiiifj of j^uod 

 qualities; a decline from the virtue and worth of ances- 

 tors ; a decay of the natural f^ood (jualities of the species ; a 

 fallinj;- from a more excellent state to one of less worth. 

 The thing- dej^enerated. 



Now, I am poinff to call those queens that breeders arc 

 sending- out, " begenerates." For the majority of them 

 have degenerated to a remarkably low state of worthless- 

 ness ; so worthless that they will ruin any good colony that 

 they are introduced to. 



Now, the question is, What are we going- to do to renew 

 our stock again? "Why," one says, " send to Italy and 

 get fresh stock again." Well, let us see how that works. 

 A number of years ago A. I. Koot ordered and received 

 some SO qufens in the fall. The following spring he offered 

 them for sale. I ordered two, received tliem some time in 

 May, introduced them to strong colonies successfully, and 

 about the middle of June I thought I would rear some 

 queens from them ; on examination I found but very little 

 brood in each hive, and both queens superannuated and 

 worthless, and colonies very much reduced in numbers, etc. 

 Now, those (lueens I have not the least doubt were degen- 

 erates ; reared on the nucleus plan, for lots of the queens 

 we get die the first winter, and nearly all of the balance die 

 the following season. The Italian breeders have "caught 

 on " to our methods of rearing degenerates. 



Mr. Adam Grimm personally went to Italy and selected 

 his own queens from colonies that had cast natural swarms 

 that same season. Consequently he got all young, vigor- 

 ous, prolific, and long-lived queens. He was well informed 

 how to keep his stock up to the standard. When he shook 

 hands with me and bade me good-bye at the Cincinnati con- 

 vention, he said, "Gallup, I will send you a queen next 

 summer that is a. queen." The following June I received 

 the promised queen. She lived to be six years old, and kept 

 up her prolificness without one particle of diminution until 

 the sixth season. She was one of the very best queens I 

 ever received from anyone. I reared my Iowa stock from 

 her. The queen whose bees produced upwards of 700 pounds 

 of surplus honey in one season was the mother of that 

 colony. 



The swarm was put into the hive on May 10, and never 

 received any help from other colonies except filling out the 

 balance of the hive (as soon as the bees commenced build- 

 ing drone-comb) with empty ready-made worker-combs. 

 The hive contained 48 Gallup frames, all on the ground 

 floor. That queen and progenitors had never been degen- 

 erated, consequently her workers were long-lived, and they 

 did work, too. But according to Dr. Miller and Mr. Dadant 

 they ought to have worked their lives out in short order. 

 Work does not make short-lived bees by any means; it is 

 the long-lived bees that do the most work, every time. 



I now have one of those degenerates of last season's 

 rearing, at least I ordered her untested, and I do not dispute 

 it, for her workers are so short-lived that the colony can not 

 get on at all, and the queen is now failing. The bees are 

 dying off with old age so rapidly that the ground is con- 

 tinually specked with dead bees, so that I sweep them up 

 every day, and there are from SO to 100 dead bees pushed 

 out of the hive in front of the bottom-board early every 

 morning. It is your spring dwindling, only here it is sum- 

 mer dwindling. There is no disease about it. It is simply 

 degeneracy of the worst kind — for breeding for fancy color, 

 as the bees are beauties. I prefer bees for profit, not fancy. 



Now, you fellows that wish for a strain of bees that do 

 not swarm, and wishing for some one to breed out the 

 swarming habit, just send to that breeder for your queens. 

 He will certainly satisfy you. But your non-swarmers will 

 produce rio profit. It makes no difference if their tongues 

 are six inches, or even a foot long, if they have not the 

 strength, longevity or vitality to handle that long tongue 

 where is the benefit coming in ? I have not the least doubt 

 but the longevity of that class of bees is only about 30 days, 

 and the longevity of the Grimm queen's workers were at 

 least 90 days in the height of the working season. I have 

 had them — at least a portion of them — live from the first of 

 May until the first of September, and they did not sit 

 around doing nothing, either. 



Some of the bee-keepers here are in the habit of re- 

 queening with untested cheap queens from the South every 

 spring. I am aware that many of those cheap degenerates 

 start out quite well the first season, but if they do not die the 

 first winter they dwindle so low in numbers that we lose 



the orange-blossom How entirely, which in quite an item 

 here in the valley. 



To illustrate : I obtained a small, Htarved-out black 

 colony last fall, but they had a natural queen, and they filled 

 the hive and two supers with combs, honey, etc., and are 

 now a rousing colony with lots of bees from bottom to top, 

 and 1.5 Langstroth frames \vell tilled with brood. 



Now, here is another fellow who jumps up and says, 

 " Didn't I tell you so ' The blacks are the best bees for 

 me." Don't you know that one swallow does not make a 

 spring ? I have seen him try to do it in Canada, but he 

 froze to death in the attempt. 



We have had three days of cool, dry northwest wind 

 which stopped the honey-yield, and those blacks have to 

 fall back on the stores, and so do the Italians from my pur- 

 chased queens. I have two queens of my own rearing that 

 have been in their hives long enough to have their workers 

 old enough to work outside, and llicy keep right on working, 

 and are storing more than they consume. It is just fun to 

 see them work late and early, while the others are sitting 

 around doing comparatively nothing. This black queen 

 was reared at natural-swarming time. My purchased 

 queens are all degenerates, even a long-tongued one pur- 

 chased this spring has, by coaxing, filled just two combs 

 with eggs in the same time that my own queens have filled 

 nine each. 



I am not satisfied that I can rear the best of queens 

 from these degenerates, either in the first or second genera- 

 tion. Now rear your black and Italian queens under the 

 same conditions and then you will be a better jury-man to 

 decide the case. 



I have seen seasons when the blacks would starve to 

 death and the Italians would make a living and store some 

 surplus. Degenerate your blacks in the same manner that 

 the Italians have been, and see where you come out. 



Orange Co., Calif. 

 (Contmued next week.) 



The " Singing " or " Piping " of Queens. 



BY G. M. DdOLITTLK. 



" I have something strange to tell you. I have soiiiething in the 

 way of queens which I never heard of before, although I have de- 

 voured everything I could tind on bees for several years. I have an 

 Italian queen that sings like a hen. 8he sings when moving among 

 the bees as well as when still, and so loudly that she can be heard live 

 feet away when the hive is closed. The day before I heard this 

 strange noise I cut out all the (lueen-cells, but could not find the 

 queen. The next day I resumed the search for her, and very soon, 

 upon opening the hive, I found her singing as happy as a lark. It 

 was not a piping noise, but a regular singing, something like a laying 

 hen; and. besides, it was an old queen; and, as I read, it is only 

 young or virgin queens which pipe. What do you think is the cause 

 of it V 



I am inclined to believe tliat it was what is called the 

 "piping of the queen" which our correspondent heard, 

 and nothing else, notwithstanding that he says, " It was 

 not a piping noise " which he heard. I believe it amis- 

 taken idea which many adhere to, that virgin queens are 

 the only queens that pipe ; for I have heard queens two and 

 three years old pipe many times, although the noise made 

 by them is not quite so sharp, or so shortly cut up as that 

 of the virgin queen, where there are rivals in the several 

 queen-cells still remaining in the hive. There seems to be 

 more intense hatred toward rivals on the part of a virgin 

 queen than with laying queens, but, when thwarted in her 

 purpose, a laying queen will resent it as well as a newl3'- 

 hatched virgin. 



I think I am justified in saying that there are few 

 queen-breeders who have not heard laying queens pipe, or 

 call to each other, where a number of cages containing 

 queens ready for shipment were placed near together and 

 left thus for a short time, although I have never heard any 

 breeder say so, or talked with one regarding this matter. 

 And I-doubt not but that very many who are not queen- 

 breeders, who have ordered several queens so that they 

 have received them at the same time, and have left them 

 near each other preparatory to introducing them to differ- 

 ent colonies, have heard this piping or singing noise pro- 

 duced by said queens while in tlie confinement of their 

 cages. I have heard it hundreds of times with laying queens 

 when preparing them for shipment, and many times from 

 the cages of those I have received. Our postmaster often 

 remarks about how the queens I put in the office " sing, " 

 and, only a few days ago he said in handing me some which 

 had come in the mail, " This is a singing lot. They have 

 kept it up ever since I opened the mail-bag thej' came in." 



Anything which enrages queens and causes them to 



