Sept. 11, 1902. 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



583 



Contributed Articles. 



Forming: Nuclei— A Review and Comment. 



BY DK. C. C. MII.LKK. 



In the American Bee Journal for March 30, l.S<)>), paf,'c 

 198, a questioner proposed to make a nucleus by taking a 

 frame of brood and eggs and one of honey, and asked 

 whether a pint or .so of bees would do. I replied : 



"They may protect themselves against robbers, and 

 they will be pretty sure to rear a tjueen, but the chances are 

 that the queen will be a very poor all'air." 



On page 370 of the same volume, Mr. Doolittle objected 

 to my answer, and said : 



" \f four ijuarls of bees are taken from any colony of 

 the 14 our questioner says he has, and said 14 colonies are 

 all in the same apiary where he is forming his nuclei, as it 

 will be reasonable to infer, said four quarts will not be 

 enough to make a decent nucleus of those two frames, pro- 

 viding no precautions are taken to make that four quarts of 

 bees stay in that hive, for all but the very youngest, fuzzy 

 ones vrill go back home, and the fuzzy fellows run out in 

 the grass and all about the outside of the hive, where they 

 will perish." 



That statement surprised me very much, and I said on 

 page 788 : 



" If I should take four quarts of bees without any pre- 

 caution, and put them on a frame of brood and one of 

 honey, I think enough would remain to make a fair nucleus ; 

 but as I have not actually tried for years taking bees from 

 a hive with a laying queen to form a nucleus, I am not posi- 

 tive about it." 



On page 484, Aug. 3, 1899, Mr. Doolittle was still more 

 sweeping in his statement, where he said : 



" As it is stated that ' Iowa ' intends to take the bees 

 which he is to use in forming his nuclei ' from the colonies 

 with laying queens, shaking the bees from the combs and 

 giving them directly to said nuclei,' I would reply that un- 

 der such conditions all the bees there were in any one col- 

 ony from which thej' were taken would not be sufficient to 



form a decent nucleus The proposition does not even 



hint at any precautions being taken to keep those bees in 

 the hive with the comb of brood and honey, and unless such 

 precautions are taken, there will not remain bees enough in 

 that hive to make a decent nucleus 24 hours later, no mat- 

 ter if two bushels are put in by the plan proposed ; for what 

 can not get back home again will run out of the hive and 

 scatter over the ground, through the grass and anywhere 

 but stay with those two combs in that hive. I know what I 

 am talking about, for I have tried it many times, even put- 

 ting them in just at dark, only to find them scattered all 

 over everything surrounding the hive early the next morn- 

 ing, with scarcely a bee inside on the brood and honey." 



In a nutshell, if I understand him correctly, Mr. Doo- 

 little teaches that if bees and brood are put on a new stand, 

 the bees having been taken from laying queens in the same 

 apiary, they will in no case remain where put unless pre- 

 viously imprisoned. 



It would not be a very difficult thing to ascertain from 

 the bees themselves whether Mr. Doolittle is correct or not, 

 and yet, being very much occupied, I never made any direct 

 experiment in the matter until recently. August 1 I formed 

 two nuclei by giving to each of them three frames of brood 

 with the usual number of adhering bees, the same being 

 taken from normal colonies in the same apiary without any 

 precaution whatever. 



I may say by way of parenthesis, that I am not in the 

 habit of making nuclei so strong as this, because I either 

 use queenless bees or imprison the bees in the nucleus hive 

 for a day or more. This time, however, the bees were not 

 queenless bees, and no precaution whatever was to be taken 

 to make them stay, and I thought a larger number of frames 

 of brood and bees would be more successful. 



I did not look at the nuclei till three days later, when I 

 found a plenty of bees remaining to cover well the frames 

 of brood. 



Then I thought I would try having about the conditions 

 that had been speciall5' mentioned. I took a nucleus hive 

 having three compartments, the two outside compartments 

 large enough to contain three frames each, and the middle 



compartment large enough to contain one frame. In the 

 central compartment I put a frame of brood, and in 

 each of the other two compartments a frame of brood and 

 and one of honey, and a dummy, all bees being brushed 

 from the combs. Then I put thu hive an a pair of scales, 

 and after taking the weight, brushed upon the combs 2?^ 

 pounds of bees, allowing the bees to distribute themselves 

 over the combs. Then covering up al', I put the hive upon 

 an unoccupied stand and left it to its fate. Two days later 

 I found all three nuclei robbed out, not a drop of honey re- 

 maining. Notwithstanding that, two of the nuclei had a 

 sufficient number of bees remaining to make satisfactory 

 nuclei (the central and one of the outside ones), while the 

 third nucleus was deserted. I gave some honey to each of 

 the two nuclei, stopping the entrances for a day or so, so 

 that robbers could not enter, and they have held their own 

 against the robbers since. 



In this case it will be seen that there were less than a 

 pound of bees to each nucleus, much less than "four 

 quarts," to say nothing about "two bushels," and, accord- 

 ing to Mr. Doolittle's assertions, they ought not to have 

 stood a ghost of a chance for existence, and yet they did 

 exist, and that after having all their honey taken away by 

 robbers, and to-day — 1.5 days after the formation of the 

 nuclei — I find plenty of bees present in each of the two 

 nuclei. 



I do not want it understood that I advise forming 

 nuclei with bees that are not queenless without taking any 

 precaution against desertion, but I think I have proved that 

 in this locality, and with my bees, there will not in all cases 

 be such wholesale exodus as Mr. Doolittle speaks of. I pre- 

 fer queenless bees for forming nuclei, as such bees will 

 " stay put " more contentedlj-, but within the past two years 

 I have formed many nuclei by taking them from colonies 

 having laying queens, and imprisoning them in the nucleus 

 hives for a day or more by stuffing green leaves into the 

 entrance (green grass will not answer as well). I think 

 they are thus safer from robbers than if first imprisoned 

 after Mr. Doolittle's plan, and it is a good deal less trouble. 



But I have lately formed new colonies (not nuclei) by 

 simply taking brood and bees from laying queens, putting 

 them in a hive on a new stand without any precaution 

 whatever, and so far I rather like the plan. On the 8th of 

 the present month of August, at the Hastings apiary, I put 

 three hives on new stands, each containing four or five 

 frames of brood and adhering bees taken from colonies 

 with laying queens, and put in each hive a caged queen. 

 Yesterday, Aug. Is, I was again at that apiary, and I found 

 each of the three new colonies well stocked with bees, a 

 moderate force of field-workers flying, and in each hive 

 plenty of young brood and eggs. I do not believe they 

 staid any better for the presence of the queen, for she was 

 a stranger to them. 



I wish Mr. Doolittle would try the experiment of put- 

 ting in a hive four frames of brood with adhering bees, so 

 as to see whether they would desert in his localitj'. 



Why Mr. Doolittle's experience should be so different 

 from mine I do not pretend to explain. The kind of bees 

 may have something to do with it ; but 1 am inclined to 

 believe that for the majority of bees and the majority of 

 places my teaching upon the subject has been sound. 



McHenry Co., 111. 



Commercial Queens— Amount of Brood in 



Large Hives— Age of Workers at 



Different Seasons, Etc. 



BY F. GKEINKR. 



In the series of articles on queen-breeding, written by 

 Dr. Gallup, the contention is that queens reared by arti- 

 ficial methods are greatly inferior to those reared naturally. 

 The Doctor cites many instances to prove his position. He 

 has had a most exceptional experience with bought queens. 

 I have not had such disastrous results. These things are 

 absolutely not true with the queens I have bought. The 

 very worst case I have had was with six very yellow queens 

 which did not go through the winter, and one other queen 

 which laid only "dead" eggs, or such as would not hatch. 

 Nearlj- all others were prolific enough to keep the combs of 

 a 10 frame hive well filled with brood, and attained the age 

 of three years. 



It would not be fair to condemn all queens reared from 

 worker-larva; because Dr. G. has had such a singular 

 experience. He says his bought queens would not lay 



