VOL. LX— NO. 6 



HAMILTON, ILL., JUNE, 1920 



MONTHLY, $1.00 A YFAR 



SELECTION OF BREEDING QUEENS 



IN the American Bee Journal for 

 July, 1919. page 244, and in Sep- 

 teniper, 1919, page 310, some dis- 

 cussion is given to the matter of se- 

 lecting best queens as breeders. The 

 beginner who wants to improve his 

 stock by breeding from the best is 

 supposed to have given a careful 

 reading to those two articles, and to 

 have kept a careful record 'of every 

 pound of honey taken from each 

 colony, as also of each frame of brood 

 taken or given, provided brood is 

 thus taken or given for the purpose of 

 equalizing colonies. He may also have 

 kept track of the killing of queen- 

 cells. 



The thing to do now is to assemble 

 the items in a table something like 

 the one that follows: 



BY C. C. MILLER 



The number of each colony will be 

 found in the first column. 



In the second column will be found 

 the date of the queen's birth, 17, 18, 19 

 standing, respectively, for 1917, 1918, 

 1919. In this column may also be 

 found any peculiarity, such as being 

 ofT. color or temper, and in case of 

 comb honey the appearance of sec- 

 tions with watery cappings. 



The third column shows the num- 

 ber of brood, if any that are taken or 

 given in equalizing. If one frame of 

 brood is taken "tl" appears in the 

 column, and if twio or three are taken, 

 then "t2' 'or "t3" appears. Similarly, 

 if one, two or three brood are given 

 to a colony, "G-," "g2" or "g3" ap- 

 pears. 



In the fourth column "keg" means 

 that eggs were destroyed in queen- 

 cells at one visit, and "kc" means that 



Dr. Miller at home 



larvas were destroyed. If eggs or lar- 

 vae were destroyed at subsequent vis- 

 its, additional entries show it. 



The fifth column shtows the amount 

 of surplus honey taken, and then 

 comes the sixth column, the most in- 

 teresting of all, made up from the 

 fifth as modified by the third and 

 fourth. 



If a frame of brood is taken from 

 a colony, it is counted that it will give 

 10 pounds less of honey, and if this 

 brood be given to another colony its 

 yield will be increased by 10 pounds. 

 So, to make a fair game of give and 

 take, if you take brood you must give 

 honey, and if you give brood you 

 must take honey. It is undesirable to 

 have cells started for swarming; so, 

 if "keg" is found in the fourth col- 

 umn it is counted the same as 3 

 pounds less of honey, and "kc" is as 

 bad as S pounds less honey. 



Colony No. 1 has given 88 pounds of 

 surplus. But 2 frames of brood were 

 given to it and, for each of these, 10 

 pounds of honey must be taken. Tak- 

 ing 20 pounds from 88 pounds leaves 

 68 pounds. No. 1 must also be penal- 

 ized 3 pounds for the "keg" that ap- 

 pears, and taking 3 from 68 leaves 65 

 as the true rating of No. 1, which 

 rating appears in column 6. 



To get the rating of No. 2 we add 10 

 for the "tl" and deduct 10 for the "kc 

 kc," leaving 100 as the ra'ting. 



When we come to colony No. 3 we 

 I'lnd that the queen was born in 1919. 

 The 110 pounds of surplus stored by 

 the colony was probably due mostly 

 to the worker progeny of her prede- 

 cessor, and we shall not want to 

 breed from the present queen, if ever, 

 until a full year's crop stands to the 

 credit of her worker progeny, so it is 

 not worth while Lo put anything in 

 lolumn 6 for colony No. 3. The same 

 may be said of No. 7 and the others 

 iliat have 1917 queens. Neither would 

 ue want to breed from bees off color 

 iir temper, so we don't do any figur- 

 ing on No. 4 or No. 18. 



We are now ready to make a list of 



