542 



June 20. 1907 



American Bee Journal j 



to introduce them, remove the old queen 

 from the hive and let the queen free 

 immediately; and, as Mr. Abbott has 

 said, you do not then stop the produc- 

 tion of bees in the hive. The old queen 

 goes on laj-ing all the time up to the 

 very moment of her exclusion from the 

 hive, and the new queen takes her 

 place. I think it is the best method 

 I have ever known. 



Mr. Wilcox— If you could not place 

 her over the colony, would you place 

 her between the combs? 



Mr. Whitney— Yes, you might do 

 that; but I have placed the cage at the 

 entrance of the hive. My hive-en- 

 trances are wide, but just about high 

 enough. 



Dr. Miller- You could not do that 

 in cool weather. 



Mr. Whitney — Not very cool weather, 

 no. I would not do it in cool weather. 

 But I merely mention that I have done 

 it in_ warm weather, but with my kind 

 of hives there is scarcely any necessity 

 for it. 



Mr. Wheeler — What do j'ou do with 

 the attendant bees — bees that are with 

 the queen? Do you kill them? 



Mr. Whitney— O, they take care of 

 themselves, or the other bees will take 

 care of them. I don't pay any attention 

 to them at all. 



Mr. Abbott— Let them alone. They 

 will do no harm. 



Mr. Kimmey— You say turn the queen 

 loose immediately; make the opening so 

 that she can walk right out? 



Mr. Whitney— Yes; run a pencil 

 through and puncture the queen-candv 

 and let the queen out. She will usually 

 remain in the cage for several hours, 

 and the bees will go in. They do not 

 often run out immediately, but I will 

 let them free and turn them right out. 

 Ordinarily they remain in the cage for 

 several minutes, or hours, possibly. 



Mr. Hutchinson— I think that the idea 

 of letting the queen free at once without 

 leaving the colony queenless until they 

 find out they are queenless is probably 

 all right. The only reason that I could 

 see in keeping a queen caged 2 days 

 or more before letting her out is that 

 sometimes it seems as though the mood 

 of bees changes. You will come to a 

 hive sometimes with a queen-cage in it, 

 and you will find bees sticking right 

 over the cage like so many burdocks, 

 and perhaps the next day they have 

 changed their mood and are walking 

 peacefully over the cage. If you re- 

 lease the queen when they are inclined 

 to bother her, they might kill her. I 

 think it is much better never to let a 

 colony know they are queenless. Don't 

 leave them queenless long enough so 

 that they find it out. I introduced a 

 queen last fall after the honey-flow had 

 ceased, when it is somewhat different. 

 I went over the hives and found the 

 queen. As soon as I would find the 

 queen I would kill her and open that 

 cage at one end and fill it perhaps an 

 inch or an inch and half with sugar 

 candy, and put it back in. I do not sup- 

 pose those bees knew they had a new 

 queen, and out of the 40 I lost 2 queens. 

 Those were strong hybrid colonies. 



Mr. Moore— Mr. Hutchinson, what 

 would you do now to save the queens 



to those 2 strong hybrid colonies, in 

 addition to what j'ou did before? 



Mr. Hutchinson — I don't know that 

 I could do anything. 



Mr. Whitney — I have introduced a 

 strange queen to a queenless colony and 

 she was accepted immediately. There 

 would be a buzz of bees all over the 

 frames and down through the hive the 

 moment she struck the top. An ex- 

 ception, of course; that would seem to 

 be a sort of freak of the bees. I don't 

 know why they accepted her so sud- 

 denly or willingly, but they did. 



Mr. Taylor — They will almost invaria- 

 bly do that in the spring. 



Mr. Abbott — Never turn a queen free 

 if you have one or more cages, if the 

 bees are not walking around naturally, 

 no difference whether they have been 

 on there i day or 3. Never turn a 

 queen free under those circumstances. 

 Simply close up the hive. You have 

 the old queen laying. That is the ad- 

 vantage of having a queen on top. To- 

 morrow, if all is quiet, and they are 

 walking around naturally, hunt out the 

 old queen. If they have had 48 hours 

 and have started queen-cells, then if 

 you can't put her in, it leaves another 

 day to work on the cells. 



Dr. Miller — I want to say just a word 

 on introducing as Mr. Abbott advises. 

 I think I objected at one meeting here 

 that there was some delay in doing that 

 way, but a good deal of experience since 

 has made me appreciate very much the 

 advantage of having a queen in the hive 

 some time — that is, the new queen in 

 the hive — some time before the old one 

 is removed. As probably all here know, 

 it is not an easy thing to introduce a 

 virgin queen, and since that time I have 

 introduced a good many virgin queens, 

 using simply the advantage that Mr. 

 Abbott speaks of, of allowing that there 

 is just a little advantage in having the 

 new queen get acquainted while the old 

 queen is in the hive. When you take 

 away the old queen you are throwing 

 them into an abnormal condition and 

 they are likely to show fight. When 

 she is put in the hive beforehand, 

 they are indifferent to the new queen. 

 I don't know if it is because she gets 

 the scent of the hive, or for any other 

 reason, but I do know that a virgin 

 queen, or any other queen that has 

 been imprisoned in the hive for some 

 time while the old queen is present, will 

 be accepted kindly if freed by the bees 

 a short time after the old queen is re- 

 moved. 



Requeening or Superseding Queens. 



"Shall we requeen colonies having old 

 queens, or let the bees do the work 

 of superseding?" 



Dr. Bohrer — It is questionable when 

 a queen may be considered old. I have 

 had queens 4 years old that were very 

 prolific and laid as many eggs as any 

 queen I have, and I think it would be 

 policy for a bee-keeper to . watch his 

 queens and see what they are doing. 

 If, for any cause they do not seem to 

 lay the requisite amount of eggs at any 

 age, I would supersede them ; but as 

 long as the queen is fertile and in good 

 condition, keeping the colony up, I 

 would not molest her, even to 3 or 4 



years old, because from my observation 

 they will lay eggs until they are that 

 old; so that there is no fixed rule about 

 that, perhaps. 



Mr. Whitney — I suppose that when 

 one discovers drone-larvae in worker- 

 cells it is a pretty good indication that 

 the queen ought to be superseded, 

 whether she is old or young. Usually 

 you may find those in a colony where 

 there are old queens, but I have a case 

 which I have written up twice, and some 

 people questioned my accuracy. I had a 

 queen that I found in the spring laying 

 drone-eggs in worker-cells. She was 

 only a year old. I thought very much 

 of her. She was the daughter of the 

 old queen that so much has been said 

 about, and she looked very poor. She 

 came out poor in the spring. I com- 

 menced feeding her bees with good, rich 

 honey, a little at a time, each night, 

 and within 2 weeks she was laying 

 worker-eggs in worker-cells, and dur- 

 ing that summer I made 4 colonies of 

 bees from that queen. 



Dr. Miller— Does Mr. Whitney think 

 that an exceptional or a usual case? 



Mr. Whitney — It was the first I ever 

 knew, or ever heard of. 



Dr. Miller — It is the last you will ever 

 know of. 



l\Ir. Whitney — Some say, "You must 

 have been mistaken; it must have been 

 a young queen that superseded the old 

 one, and you thought it was the same 

 old queen." The fact is that queen was 

 clipped soon after she commenced lay- 

 ing, and I watched her from that time 

 until she died, and it was the same old 

 clipped queen. A doctor in Switzer- 

 land has taken the question up and 

 asked me whether I was certain it was 

 that queen. He said it was a very un- 

 usual thing, and something he never 

 heard of. But 2 of my old bee-keeper 

 friends were there when I took the 

 frames out of that hive, and showed the 

 worker-comb full, or two-thirds full, of 

 drones, and they said, "Isn't that too 

 bad?" Well, I thought so. I expected 

 to have to supersede the queen, but I 

 did not. I kept her that summer and 

 made 4 good colonies of bees from that 

 queen by feeding. She was a young 

 queen, though. I would say that an old 

 queen should be superseded, but the 

 question is. What is an old queen? Some 

 queens are old at -a month, and others 

 not old at 2% years. It depends upon 

 how hard the queen has been worked. 

 A good queen you might keep 2 or 3 

 years, and with a poor honey-flow she 

 would not exhaust herself for 3 or 4 

 years. 



Mr. Hutchinson — What I want to 

 know is, shall we do this work, or shall 

 we leave it to the bees to do it? Who 

 has been at work superseding the queens 

 themselves? Mr. France, do you super- 

 sede the queens or let the bees do it? 



Mr. France — As a rule, I supersede 

 them. 



Dr. Miller — Does a queen do better 

 work, as a rule, in her first or her sec- 

 ond year? That will help us a little 

 in deciding, if we can get some testi- 

 mony about that. 



A Member — The best queen I had last 

 year was 3 years old. She made the 

 record of the yard. 



