1884 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUllE 



591 



home. A friend hived them back into the old hive, 

 but did not cut out the queen-cells. The next day 

 they swarmed again. I moved the hive to a new 

 stand, cut out the (jueen-cells, hived them back, 

 putting? a nucleus in their place on the old stand. 

 They filled one crate of :il two-pound boxes before 

 they swarmed. I removed these and put on two 

 crates of two-pound boxes (42 boxes in all), and they 

 are now working in nearly every box. 



BEES TH.AT " DROP." 



In Aug. GT-EANixas, page 524, friend Rarber says 

 that he wants a strain of bees that "drop." Our 

 bees are working on buckwheat; and as thej' 

 liave an abudance of pasturage, and the weather is 

 favorable, they are just " dropping " all the while, 

 day after day. I never saw bees come in with such 

 loads of honey; the ground in front of the strongest 

 colonies will be covered with bees, " puffing awhile 

 until they get breath enough to go in on foot." 



O. G. Russell. 



Afton, N. Y., Aug. 18, 1884. 



We liave tried your plan a s^'od many 

 limes, friend E., of returning a swarm tothe 

 liive they issued from, after having- removed 

 a part of the brood-coml)s; but we liave not 

 yet succeeded very well unless we 'at the 

 same time gave the old hive a new location. 

 —I am glad to hear that some of the friends 

 have bees that '• drop." We have had them 

 do it recently when bringing in honey-dew. 

 although they did not drop in such great 

 numbers as they often do when bringing in 

 basswood or clover honey. 



VARIOUS MATTERS. 



FRIEND DOCLITTLE THROWS LIGHT ON SOME OB- 

 SCURE POINTS. 



T SEE by page .517 of Gleanings, that friend Root, 

 /aP at least, fails to comprehend the object I have 

 ^l in view in doubling up those weaker colonies 

 "■^ about the middle of June, or as soon as I can 

 get five frames full of brood in each hive. To 

 make all plain, if possible, I will state that our main 

 honey-harvest is from basswood, which commences 

 to bloom from July 1st to 16th, according to the sea- 

 son, averaging about the 10th. Now, if I tried to 

 build these five-frame colonies up to full stocks, 

 and still work them for section honey, they would 

 be sure to swarm about July 1.5th to 20th, just as the 

 honey-season was at its best. This would spoil the 

 whole thing, as a colony having the swarming fever 

 will do little, if any thing, in the sections; and if I 

 hive the new swarms I shall have no honey as a re- 

 sult. To avoid this I double two of these five-frame 

 colonies, as I have told you, and by this means get 

 one colony so strong that it will send out a rousing 

 swarm about June 28th to July 1st, which swarm 

 comes just in the right time, so that both the old 

 and new colony Avill work with a will all through 

 the honey-harvest, thereby giving me a large yield 

 of honey. By adopting the plan I give, I have in 

 the fall two good colonics for winter, from 100 to 

 1.50 lbs. of nice section honey, and a profit of from 

 $3.00 to $5.00 from the nucleus 1 made at the time of 

 doubling up, all of which I told you about. By let- 

 ting the two weak colonies build up to full colonies, 

 as friend Root thinks would be a better plan, 1 

 should simply have 4 colonies in the fall, with noth- 

 ing to show for the season's labor, except the two 



Increase. Does friend Root now understand, or is 

 it still " a good deal mystified "? 



SWARMS AVITHOUT A QUEEN. 



On page 517, Jas. Hutfman seems to doubt that 

 bees ever swarm without a queen, and the editor is 

 '• inclined to agree." I have often lost a queen out 

 of a swarm of bees, and hived them the way Mr. H. 

 speaks of; and had I never had any further experi- 

 ence in the matter, I might doubt, as he does, that 

 a swarm ever issues without a queen of some kind 

 in the hive at the»time of issuing. But in 18761 had 

 colonies and nucleus swarm, when I positively knew 

 they had no queen, for I had removed such queens 

 from one to six days previous, and an examination 

 showed no eggs in the hive, when the queen had 

 been removed moi-e than three days previous. 

 However, such queenless colonies always sent out a 

 swarm under certain conditions, which were always 

 alike; namely, only when one or more swarms of 

 bees were in the air, and said swarm or swarms cir- 

 cling close to the queenless colonies. The swarm- 

 ing mania ran so high that year, that there was 

 scarcely a day for nearly a month but that there 

 would be from two up to ten or more swarms in the 

 air at a time every day. Since then I have had no 

 excessive swarming, nor known a queenless colony 

 to swarm. 



BEES SUPERSEDING QUEENS. 



Se%'eral years ago, two laying queens in ahiveatlhe 

 same time was considered quite a curiosity; but it 

 soon became apparent that such a state of afl'tiirs oft- 

 en existed is cases of the supei-sedingof an old queen. 

 Now the question comes, "Are queens superseded 

 only when they are failing?" (see page 518). Mr. 

 Eastman gives some facts which bring to mj' mind 

 a case quite similar to his, which goes to prove that 

 the bees often supersede good prolific queens. In 

 1871 1 purchased mj' first Italian queen. From her 

 I reared a fine queen the same season; and just be- 

 fore swarming time the next year I found a dead 

 young queen in front of the hive containing this 

 Italian queen, less than a year old. Upon opening 

 the hive I found this queen all right, busily engag- 

 ed laying eggs, while on another comb I found 

 a young queen roaming about as free as she would 

 have done had her mother not been present. I left 

 them thus, and in a week more both were deposit- 

 ing eggs side by side on the same comb. 1 now 

 took the older queen (she having a wing clipped, so 

 I knew her), together with a frame of hatching 

 brood, and formed a nucleus where the queen laid 

 all she had room for. In about a week a friend liv- 

 ing a few miles distant came along, and wished to 

 purchase this queen. After telling him all about 

 her, a bargain was struck, and he took the queen 

 home with him, introducing her into a full colony, 

 where she did splendid work for two years, leading 

 out a large swarm each year. The next spring she 

 was lost in his trying to introduce her into another 

 colony. I saw her three times in his yard, so I 

 know it was the same queen. Again, in the fall of 

 1881 1 found two laying queens in a hive, the old one 

 being two years old, and having her wings clipped. 

 I allowed the two queens to remain; and in the 

 spring both queens were still alive, and doing duty as 

 good queen-mothers should. This they continued to 

 do till the last week in May, when the bees killed 

 the young one; or she died, for I found her in front 

 of the hive dead, and the old one still doing good 

 work. She came out in June with a large swarm, 

 and kept her colony prosperous til! Sept., 1882, 



