102 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



March 



contrast with the crude methods of 

 early experimenters, who impris- 

 oned or removed the laying queen. 

 It remains to be seen whether or not 

 it is possible to create hive conditions 

 that will cause the supersedure im- 

 pulse to remain more powerful than 

 the storing impulse during a heavy 

 flow of nectar. Both have the same 

 ultimate purpose, the continuoillsly 

 projected life of the community, that 

 insistent, imperative that drives the 

 bee to work or sting itself to death. 

 Any sign of failure on the part of the 

 queen has the more immediate effect 

 on the well-being of the colony, and 

 one would argue that an impulse 

 founded on this condition must take 

 priority; but bees become victims of 

 a hoarding mania — for us a benefi- 

 cent mania — creating the honey sur- 

 plus far greater than their needs. 

 During the height of a flow this col- 

 lecting fury remains dominant. What 

 is the puzzled breeder to do? 



Let him locate in a neighborhood 

 blessed with a steady succession of 

 moderate flows, without too much of 

 anything, not cursed with alternate 

 feasts and famines, where there is 

 always a taste of something to be 

 had, where throughout July and Au- 

 gust the hives do not "grow beards," 

 as the French say. Let him experi- 

 ment with incubation. Let him de- 

 velop strains which show constancy 

 in cell feeding. (Is it possible to 

 breed in the marvelo'US cell-building 

 qualities of Carniolans and breed out 

 the swarming habit? Are these at- 

 tributes complementary and insep- 

 arable ? ) 



These are the best suggestions I 

 can offer. What advice have others 

 to give? 



Rustburg, Va. 



Our witty contributor has given us 

 a problem indeed. But it is one of 

 those that do not worry the bee- 

 keeper much, even when he tries to 

 rear queens, for queens reared in 

 such rare conditions are successful 

 enough to make up for the little 

 trouble of an extra storing of honey. 

 — Editor. 



FIVE QUEENS IN ONE HIVE 



In company with Mr. Frank I^ills- 

 bury, Secretary of the Monroe 

 County Beekeepers Association, I 

 was examining some very strong 

 hives of bees in one of my yards and 

 was very much surprised to find two 

 queens apparently living in harmony. 



As we further examined the hive 

 we found three others apparently 

 working and contented, and there 

 were sixteen queen-cells which had 

 not been torn or touched. Mr. Pills- 

 bury, who is an old, experienced bee- 

 keeper, declares that he never before 

 saw any such thing, and he does not 

 understand it, and neither do I, nor 

 any others whom we have made in- 

 quiry of, and there are some ex- 

 perienced beekeepers in this part of 

 the country. 



The five queens that are working 

 in the hive, which is a Jumbo hive, 

 are apparently contented and happy, 

 and the hive is full of larva; and 



brood. Did you ever hear of any- 

 thing like this, or has any one of 

 your acquaintances ever heard of a 

 .similar occurrence? 



J. S. BRYAN. 



Rochester, N. Y. 



Answer. — Yes, we have heard of 

 such happenings, but mainly in 

 swarming time, and never in October 

 or after the season was ended. A 

 few of our leading beekeepers have 

 held that several queens could be 

 kept in one hive. I3ut when all is 

 said, the queens disappear, all but 

 one, when the beekeeper thinks he 

 has succeeded in this wonderful 

 achievement. 



I would venture the assertion that, 

 before spring, all will have disap- 

 peared but one. However, we have 

 seen an old queen and her daughter 

 quite a while in the same hive, the 

 old queen evidently being tolerated 

 because .she has lost her queenly dis- 

 position. As Huber writes : "Would 

 you readily believe that an insect, 

 a simple bee, be susceptible to jeal- 

 ousy? Yet you must accept this 

 statement, for nothing is truer. . . ." 

 Jealousy of each other causes queens 

 to light one another. In your case, 

 by some unaccountable cause, those 

 queens are not susceptible to jeal- 

 ousy. It is a freak. 



We will be glad to have further 

 statemerts from you after winter. — 

 Editor. 



tice can make an honorable demand 

 for the title of bee-master. — Dr. 

 Dzierzon (Unedited letter translated 

 from original manuscript by C. W. 

 Aeppler.) 



THEORY AND PRACTICE 



Berlepsch wrote: "Learn theory, 

 otherwise you will be bungling all 

 your life." Indisputible is also the 

 proposition: "Experience is the bcs 

 teacher." Theory and experience 

 must go hand in hand completely and 

 correctly if perfection in anything is 

 is to be attained. "The keeping of 

 bees according to the principles of 

 theory and experience" is, therefore, 

 the title of the latest edition of the 

 work written by the above genius. 

 Only he who is well conversant and 

 harnessed in theory and who can look 

 back upon a long and extensive prac- 



DIFFERENT RACES OF BEES 



"I do not know Apis Indica in In- 

 dia itself, where I understand there 

 are two varieties, yellow in the 

 plains and black in the hills; but I do 

 know it well in Ceylon, where only 

 the black variety is native, and where 

 A. Dorsata and A. Florea are also 

 found. It is quite black and about 

 two-thirds the size of the German 

 bee (common bees). Its drone-cells 

 are exactly the same size as the Ger- 

 man worker-cells and, so far as I 

 remember, its worker-cells run 

 rather less than 6 to the inch. My 

 experience is that it is good-tem- 

 pered and an energetic worker, but 

 rather prone to the production of fer- 

 tile workers. 



A. Florea is about half its size (or 



rather less), black-brown, with very 

 pronounced white stripes. It builds 

 in the open, usually choosing the 

 middle of a dense bush. It is fairly 

 gentle, and I think its poison must be 

 of a different composition from that 

 of A. Mellifica, as it does not seem 

 to act so quickly on the blood. 



A. Dorsata is a handsome yellow 

 bee about the size of a hornet, and is 

 a perfect devil. I undeTStand Mr. 

 Benton handled it with comparative 

 impunity; but my experience was 

 that, even- when clustered in a swarm, 

 it is dangerous to approach. It builds 

 a single comb, 5 or 6 feet in diame- 

 ter from the branch of a tree, and 

 migrates to follow the flowering of 

 the "nillu" (a species of balsam), de- 

 serting its nest completely and 

 frightening away large mammals, in- 

 cluding the elephant." — H. Campbell 

 in the June-September Bee World. 



We do not think that either of 

 these bees can ever be acclimated, 

 in the United States, but the matter 

 is interesting. 



(T 



THE EDITOR^S ANSWERS 



=^ 



Questions are answered in order re 

 than we can answer i^i space available, 

 ]>cfore answers appear. 



Queen Rearing 



I am trying to go into the business of rais- 

 ing queens next spring. I was thinking of buy- 

 ing some good Italian queens direct from Italy, 

 which I saw advertised in the bee papers. 

 Would you advise inc to start my business that 

 way? Can you k-t iiic know of several good 

 queen men, where I can get some good breed- 

 ing stock? I have been in the bee business for 

 10 years, but for extracted honey only. 



VIRGINIA. 



Answer. — Since the world war, it has been 

 very diffii-ult to secure queens from Italy, ow- 

 ing to the slowness of the mail, both in this 

 country and in Europe. We ourselves im- 

 ported queens from the well-known Italian 

 breeder, Enrico Penna, and have received but 

 very few alive. On the other hand, if you 

 wait until you receive queens from there to 



J 



ceived. As we receive more questions 

 two or three months so!?ietimes elapse 



breed from them, you will find yourself de- 

 layed so that it will be next to impossible for 

 you to rear any queens for salp the same sum- 

 mer. It is very necessary that the queens 

 from which you breed should be tested for at 

 least one summer in order to make sure of the 

 honey-producing qualities of their workers. 



So, if you decide to import, we would ad- 

 vise you to wait until the following year to 

 try to rear queens for sale. 



Otherwise there is no doubt that it is pref- 

 erable, if possible, to breed from imported 

 stock. Mr. Gaetano Plana, of Castel San Pie- 

 tro, Bologna, is a very reliable breeder. 



Situated as you are, I doubt -whether you 

 will find it as profitable to rear queens for sale 

 as to produce extracted honey. The South is 

 the most suitable section for queen-raising. 



