184 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



May 



by shaking. We are assuming that 

 the beekeeper does not hand the dis- 

 ease around by changing combs. 



The beekeeper must buy some 

 queens, and as most of the queen- 

 breeders are in clean territory and 

 have not had the chance to select bees 

 along this line, their queens are not 

 usually as good along this line as bees 

 the beekeeper could select. In other 

 words, a larger per cent of colonies 

 with queens from a healthy district 

 will get American foulbrood from a 

 given source of infection than colonies 

 of our native Italian stock. This is a 

 big chance for some queen breeder 

 who has had to discontinue selling be- 

 cause of American foulbrood. 



Great progress will never be made 

 along most lines without selection for 

 that particular quality. Bees that are 

 good in some respects are not neces- 

 sarily good in every respect, espe- 

 cially if they have never been selected 

 along those lines. 



To reduce the number of colonies 

 that would get American foulbrood 

 from any unknown source would be a 

 great help where the disease is com- 

 mon. This can be accomplished by 

 selection. Selection will not keep the 

 colony from having the disease after 

 it has been brought in and fed to the 

 brood. Neither will it help to cure 

 American foulbrood. Shaking is the 

 remedy after the disease is estab- 

 lished in a colony. But prevention is 

 better than cure. Selection with this 

 quality in mind will bring results 

 worth while. 



Idaho. 



EFFECT OF SHIPMENT ON 

 QUEENS 



By C. P. Dadant 



Is the shipping and mailing of 

 queens injurious to them? This is 

 an important question which I dis- 

 cussed with Mr. Elton Warner, while 

 visiting him in January last. As I 

 stated elsewhere, Mr. Warner trans- 

 ported hundreds of queens to and 

 from Porto Rico, and thousands from 

 one apiary to another in Porto Rico 

 (in some eases distances of over 50 

 miles) and from his South Carolina 

 apiaries to his apiaries in western 

 North Carolina, a distance of 200 

 miles. Since nearly all of these 

 queens were of his own rearing, his 

 opinion on the decreased value of a 

 queen, owing to transportation, is of 

 some weight, for most of us either 

 ship or receive queens, but rarely 

 do both. 



If we take up Doolittle's "Queen 

 Rearing," chapter 21, we find some 

 interesting statements concerning the 

 decrease in value, as to prolificness, 

 of some queens, after a sudden trans- 

 lation from a populous hive to a small 

 cage and confinement in a small space, 

 with additional rough handling, at a 

 time when the queen is heavy with 

 eggs. Doolittle also quotes Alley's 

 "Handy Book," which is no longer to 

 be purchased. Both of these men, 

 ■who were authorities on queen rear- 

 ing, agreed in stating that when a 



queen's laying is suddenly inter- 

 rupted, she is likely to suffer in her 

 future prolificness. Mr. Warner's 

 opinion is that a queen which is long 

 confined in a cage may be injured as 

 to her prolificness, especially if she 

 was laying abundantly when taken. 

 Such a queen may be permanently in- 

 jured, as far as her personal worker 

 progeny's numbers are concerned, 

 though as a mother, of other queens, 

 she would transmit the qualities 

 which she possessed before her con- 

 finement. This agrees so fully vdth 

 the writings of the experts above 

 mentioned, and with my own past ex- 

 perience that I feel sure there is 

 some truth in it. 



The additional experience of Mr. 

 Frank C. Pellett may be quoted on 

 this matter. Mr. Pellett, in his 

 "Practical Queen Rearing," wrote: 



"Much dissatisfaction arises from 

 the sale of breeding queens at high 

 prices. The buyer who pays $5 or 

 $10 for a breeding queen will too 

 often expect too much of her. 

 Queens that have been laying heavily 

 suffer seriously from the confinement 

 in a small cage and the journey 

 through the mails. 



"Buyers should bear in mind that 

 old queens which have laid heavily, 

 for one or more seasons, cannot be 

 expected to repeat their former per- 

 formances after a journey by mail. 

 Such queens can only be shipped 

 safely on combs in a nucleus, where 

 they can continue laying lightly for 

 some time. Someone has compared 

 the sudden checking of the work of 

 a laying queen with the shipment of a 

 cow, which is a heavy milker, without 

 drawing her milk for several days. 

 Neither can be expected to be as 

 good again." 



To ship a valuable queen, Mr. 

 Warner would forward her in a nu- 



Elton Warner- 



cleus, in which she could continue 

 laying to a certain extent. Starting 

 from this, since it is the sudden in- 

 terruption of heavy laying which is 

 objectionable, it follows that there is 

 less danger of injury to a young 

 queen which has not yet extended her 

 laying to its full capacity in a colony. 



Warner says, and the experience 

 of leading men strongly supports his 

 statement, that the shorter the con- 

 finement, the less difficulty there is 

 in introduction. Evidently the bees 

 are better able than we are to know 

 whether the queen given them is in 

 good shape. "That is why queens that 

 are just exchanged from one hive to 

 another, in the same apiary, may be 

 introduced safely by methods, such 

 as the smoke method, which fail ut- 

 terly in the introduction of queens 

 that have been confined a week or 

 more. In the one case their lajring 

 capacity is absolutely uninjured ; in 

 the other case, the queen may seem 

 at first as unable to lay as an old 

 worn-out queen, even though she 

 would be quite likely to recuperate 

 promptly. That is why we sometimes 

 see the bees preparing to supersede a 

 queen which has just been given them 

 and which has been, perhaps, recom- 

 mended as an extra-prolific queen. In 

 other words, a queen which is able to 

 lay eggs immediately upon introduc- 

 tion, in liberal numbers, is more cer- 

 tain of safe introduction than one 

 which is fatigued and slow to lay, at 

 first. 



This experience, which tallies with 

 that of the three master breeders al- 

 ready mentioned, also tallies with my 

 personal expriences. Let me recall 

 something which I have mentioned 

 before in this inagazine: 



It is a commonly accepted opinion 

 that it is impossible to succeed in in- 

 troducing a laying queen to a colony 

 with drone-laying workers. Yet I 

 have never failed in doing so. But, as 

 such an introduction is well-nigh un- 

 desirable, owing to the worthlessness 

 of the drone-laying colony, I never 

 risked any valuable queens in this 

 operation. When receiving queens 

 from Italy and using them to super- 

 sede hybrid queens or queens of 

 common stock, if I had a drone-lajdng 

 colony, I would select the best, 

 among those queens to be killed, and 

 introduce her to this worthless stock. 

 The queen, fresh from a full colony, 

 and in fine laying condition, would 

 at once go to work and the bees evi- 

 dently respected her for that reason. 



Let it not be understood that travel 

 and confinement always damage valu- 

 able queens, but such confinement 

 and subsequent travel are not desir- 

 able. A good way is to confine such 

 a queen to a small colony, for a few 

 days previous to shipping her. But 

 as a rule, young queens, whose laying 

 capacity is not yet fully developed, 

 are less likely to be injured by travel 

 than a queen which is heavy with 

 eggs at the time of shipment. 



This may be also the reason why 

 the queens which we used to import 

 from Italy in small boxes, with two 

 combs a few inches square and a 



