VOL LX— NO. 9 



HAMILTON, ILL, SEPTEMBER, 1920 



MONTHLY, $1.50 A YEAR 



Requeenin^ and Preparing for Winter 



By C. P. Dadant 



IF we have not done it earlier, Sep- 

 tember is a good month to re- 

 queen the colonies that have old 

 queens. At this time, queens may be 

 liought cheaper than at any other 

 date during the entire honey season. 



Some beekeepers advise requeening 

 every year. I do not. I believe a 

 queen is better in her second year, as 

 a rule, than in her first season. If 

 she was not good in her first year, she 

 should have been replaced at once. 

 But I would not have the heart to kill 

 a queen, a year old, that was heading 

 a strong colony. I could probably not 

 do better by replacing her, then, and 

 I might do worse. 



Removing a queen to introduce an- 

 other is considered a great task by 

 some beekeepers. A French apiarist 

 describes what he calls "the automatic 

 finding of the queen." This consists 

 in driving the bees into an empty up- 

 per story. When they are all there, 

 he puts an excluder between the up- 

 per and lower stories and drives the 

 bees back. The queen and the drones, 

 of course, remain in the upper story. 

 This will work and may be used in 

 extreme cases, or with immovable 

 combs, skeps, bo.x hives or gums. But 

 with a little care, the queen may be 

 found, nine times out of ten, without 

 so much disturbance. Snioke the bees 

 sparingly, just enough to keep them 

 from stinging; remove one of the 

 outer combs to have plenty of room, 

 put it away out of the reach of rob- 

 bers, then lift the combs one after 

 another, examining each comb first 

 on the side away from you. The queen 

 dislikes light and usually hurries to 

 the other side of a comb as soon as 

 exposed to the light. With a little 

 practice, queens may be found in 

 from 5 to 10 minutes. Italian bees 

 are much better than common bees in 

 this respect, since they do not rush 

 from one comb to another as many of 

 the blacks do. But the practical api- 

 arist aims to keep only Italian bees .It 

 is certainly profitable to do so. 



To have good colonies for win- 

 ter, we must have plenty of young 

 bees. This is a requirement recog- 

 nized by all teachers. September is 

 the month in which to rear them. If 

 we have a sufficient amount of super 

 room and a vigorous queen, with the 

 usual amount of harvest, there will be 

 no trouble in having plenty of young 

 bees. There are, however, two possi- 

 bilities — too much or too little honey 

 in the brood-chamber. 



A crowded condition of the brood- 

 chamber with honey, may not leave 

 enough room for the queen to breed 

 sufficiently. This happens often in 

 the production of comb honey, espe- 

 cially when the month is cool. The 

 bees have a tendency to crowd the 

 cells with supplies. Then it is advis- 



W. S. Pender, editor ot "Australasian Bee- 

 keeper," of West Maitland. New South 

 Wales, whose visit to Hamilton was men- 

 tioned in the July number of this Journal. 



able to remove one or two of the full- 

 est combs and give the colony some 

 combs from weaker and less supplied 

 hives. We may have divisions or 

 colonies which were left queenless 

 late, that need help. We will kill two 

 birds with one stone by making the 

 exchange. 



Too little honey in the brood-cham- 

 ber, in September, is often a charac- 

 teristic of extracted honey production, 

 with large hives. The colonies are 

 strong, they are supplied with ample 

 supers. They leave to their queen all 

 the room she needs and, not foresee- 

 ing their owner's greed, they put all 

 their honey in the supers. When the 

 supers are removed, if we are not 

 careful, we leave the brood-chamber 

 with brood mainly, but with insuf- 

 ficient stores. To prevent this, in 

 anticipation, we should crowd the 

 colony a little for room, giving them 

 a decreased amount of super room. 



The novice will understand, from 

 the above statements, that in any case, 

 we must examine our hives previous 

 to the end of the crop and supply 

 them with whatever they appear to 

 need. Even our most practical men 

 are likely to neglect this work, think- 

 ing that, at the end of a good sea- 

 son, the bees will be sure to thrive. 

 It is a matter upon which I cannot too 

 much insist, for my bees have occa- 

 sionally suffered from both extremes, 

 too much wealth or too little. 



In mentioning this matter, I am not 

 speaking of the condition of abnor- 

 mal colonies, which, of course, we 

 would expect to look after, whether 

 they had lieen queenless or had a bad 

 queen, or had furnished bees or 

 swarms. I am speaking of the usual 

 average of good, honey-harvesting 

 colonies, that would be generally ex- 

 pected to take care of themselves. 

 Modern methods demand that we pay 

 close attention to our bees, if we are 

 to derive constant profit from them. 

 The old let-alone ways will not prove 

 profitable. 



