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AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



March 



bees had all left her over Sunday and 

 gone out through the bee-escape over 

 the window. She was returned to the 

 hive bearing the number on the su- 

 per tag. 



Another advantage lof those tags is 

 that I can credit each colony with 

 the number lof sections it has finished 

 during the season. Thus I find which 

 are the best to breed from the fol- 

 lowing year. 



Calit'ornia. 



LUMBER CONDITIONS IN THE 

 UNITED STATES 



I have before me copy of an ad- 

 dress given by Mr. Edward Hines, 

 the celebrated lumberman of Chi- 

 cago, and who handles in the neigh- 

 borhood of one billion feet of lumber 

 yearly, as delivered before the Fifth 

 Annual Convention of the National 

 Association of Purchasing Agents at 

 Chicago. Hines, in the course of his 

 remarks, gave statistics on the 

 amount of lumber available in this 

 country, as follows : 



Fir 762 billion feet 



Yellow pine 312 billion feet 



Western pine 246 billion feet 



Redwood : 74 billion feet 



Cedar 62 billion feet 



Hemlock 37 billion feet 



Hardwoods 39 billion feet 



Spruce 35 billion feet 



White pine 28 billion feet 



Cypress 23 billion feet 



Miscellaneous 341 billion feet 



This shows that the amount of 

 white pine and cypress available is 

 very small as compared with the 

 harder woods, which so far have 

 been deemed unsuitable for use for 

 beehives. 



Mr. Hines gives figures to show 

 that we use in this country from is 

 to 45 billion feet of lumber yearly. 



But he further states that the 

 United States owns publicly about 

 200 million acres of forest lands and 

 that if this amount was doubled the 

 Government would own practically 

 enough timber to supply the needs 

 of the country in perpetuity. 



Mr. Hines contends from his fig- 

 ures and from his experience that 

 the price of lumber cannot drop ma- 

 terially, in fact, he says he expects 

 to see lumber prices hold practically 

 to where they are at present. Of 

 course, his ideas should be shaded 

 somewhat, but it remains to be seen 

 whether or not his predictions are 

 true. However, the figures given 

 above as to lumber available and 

 lumber used yearly are authentic and 

 we believe will be of interest to our 

 readers. 



SOME QUEEN EXPERIENCES 



By Allen Latham 



The past season has been unusu- 

 ally prolitic in its yield of happenings 

 in the queen-bee world of the unex- 

 pected and even abnormal. It is be- 

 cause these happenings interested the 

 writer that he is now offering them 

 to the readers of the American Bee 

 Journal. 



Twice during the summer of 1920 

 have I found while cutting out queen- 



cells, the occupant with its head to 

 the base of the cell. One of the won- 

 derful instincts of insect life is the 

 ability of the caterpillar before en- 

 tering the pupal stage to take its 

 posture with head towards the end of 

 the cocoon which has been prepared 

 for the exit of the moth. So the 

 queen-bee larva, after it has spun its 

 imperfect cocoon, assumes a position 

 in which the head is adjacent the ex- 

 ternal end of the cell. Why did the 

 tW'O larvas mentioned above fail in 

 this instinctive procedure? Does this 

 offer only another example of the 

 "survival of the fittest"? 



Once this past summer I opened an 

 artificially reared cell in which were 

 two occupants. These two qween pu- 

 pae were not of the same age, one be- 

 ing about 3 days older than the other. 

 1 believe, as a rule, that when by mis- 

 take a queen-breeder puts two larvae 

 into a queen-cup the bees afterwards 

 remove one of the two. That they do 

 not always do so I have had occasion 

 to verify upon two cr three occasions. 



Ihe past summer has given stronger 

 belief in the theory that queens have 

 an antipathy for one another only 

 for a brief period, or periods, of their 

 lives. This antipathy is in evidence 

 even before the queen emerges from 

 the cell and lasts for several days, and 

 in some instances much longer. Gen- 

 erally, however, it disappears as soon 

 as the young queen becomes pregnant 

 and lieavy with eggs. After that it is 

 only slightly in evidence, and is often 

 so quiescent that a queen will not tear 

 down unguarded cells. The following 

 experience will illustrate my point : 



Colony 34 was dequeened and pre- 

 pared for cell-buildmg by the removal 

 of brood and the giving of cups. The 

 cups were accepted and a fine lot of 

 cells were developed and capped. 



A day or so before the cells would 

 normally be removed, the hive was 

 opened to see how many cells would 

 be available. A third or half of the 

 cells were torn down, and a search re- 

 vealed a queen nearly ready to lay. 

 The cells were removed and also the 

 queen, and a new set- of cups were 

 given, as the colony had a large force 

 of good nurse bees. Upon opening 

 the hive the following day to gratt 

 the cups given early that morning, 

 the cups were found rather mutilated 

 and evidence suggested a laying 

 queen. The removal of the next comb 

 showed a patch of some thousands of 

 eggs freshly laid. Search revealed a 

 beautiful young queen heavy with 

 eggs. 



It is difficult to explain with any 

 certainty the presence of these two 

 yo'Ung quieens in that co/lony, but there 

 is every reason to believe that both 

 were there at tile same time and there 

 with those queen-cells. W'liy had tlicy 

 not fought, and why liad they not cut 

 down every cell ? 



One day this past summer, while 

 taking up queens from the mating nu- 

 clei, I found one in which the bees re- 

 vealed restlessness. The queen was 

 lightly balled, but unharmed, and I 

 caged her with attendants. I gave an 

 other look into the hive and there was 



another loose ball of bees. In this 

 was a second fine looking queen, 

 which I also caged. Probably the ex- 

 planation here is that one nucleus 

 had recently swarmed out and that 

 the queen had entered this other one. 

 Up to that time the bees had not al- 

 lowed the two to get into mortal com- 

 bat. 



It is my custom to cage the old 

 queen when introducing a new one, 

 and to set lioth queens side by side 

 for two days or so. The old queen is 

 then removed. Sometimes, in the 

 hasty picking up of the old queen, she 

 is injured, no special care being used. 

 Even if killed she is put into the cage 

 beside the caged new queen. Upon 

 one occasion, in September, an old 

 queen was so severely pinched in 

 grabbing her from a mass of bees into 

 which she was scurrying, that a por- 

 tion of one of her ovaries was ex- 

 uded; the exuded mass was about the 

 size of a large radish seed. The queen 

 was caged with the expectation that 

 she would soon be dead. Two days 

 later, as she appeared as lively as a 

 cricket, she was given some escorts 

 and plans were made to introduce 

 her into a home colony to see 

 whether she would ever prove useful 

 again. I regret to state that she died 

 about the tenth day. It seems re- 

 markable that she could have lived 

 even that long, and the fact that .she 

 did may help to explain why queens 

 survive their trips through the mails 

 as well as they do. 



One day, while catching a queen, 

 the wing which was grasped came off 

 and the queen hustled along the comb 

 apparently unharmed. This sug- 

 gested a new way of clipping a queen. 

 Grasp one large wing with thumb 

 and finger of one hand and the other 

 large wing with thumb and finger of 

 the other hand. Give a quick jerk of 

 the hands apart. One wing will be 

 yanked ofT, the other is usually un- 

 injured. I tried this with a number 

 of queens, and so far as I observed 

 no harm resulted. In one case a 

 small drop of liquid appeared at the 

 spot where the wing was attached to 

 the body. I regret to state that 1 

 did not keep track of this particular 

 queen and cannot say now whether 

 she suffered permanent injury. I do 

 not recommend this method of clip- 

 ping with valuable breeding queens, 

 but can recommend it for the run of 

 queens, because of its ease of car- 

 rying out. One's tools for such a 

 procedure are always to be found. 

 Queen ants, soon after mating de- 

 liberately get rid of their wings. 



Difring the height of the honey 

 flow last summer 1 could not at once 

 take care of several hundred virgin 

 queens. It is my custom to give vir- 

 gin qu«ens, very soon after their 

 emergence, to the mating nuclei, but 

 for two weeks last summer I prac- 

 ticed caging them with attendants 

 and giving them to nuclei as soon 

 thereafter as i>ossil)le. It was while 

 caging some 70 virgins one day that 

 I had a surprising thing happen. To 

 cage the virgin 1 allowed her to lie 

 in my closed fist and ran her into 



