1884 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUKE. 



601 



CAUTION IN INTRODUCING QUEENS. 



The select queen is all rig'ht. Her young- came 

 out to-day to play; they look very fine. The dollar 

 queen is lost. I got the old queen I took out of the 

 hive, and she g-ot away from me, and I suppose she 

 was lost. I put in the dollar queen, which I should 

 not, until 1 was sure she was lost, and in three days 

 I looked into the hive again, and found the old 

 queen there, and the dolhir queen g-one. 



To be sure, friend K., you should have ex- 

 amined her hive as soon as tlie old queen got 

 away from you , for they will almost invariably 

 go straight back, even though a year or two 

 may have elapsed since they were outside of 

 the hive on their wedding-trip. 



MEETING BETWEEN THE DRONE AND QUEEN: AN- 

 OTHER WITNESS OF THE OPERATION. 



I am now 63 years old and have kept bees almost 

 all my life, and my father did before me. I never 

 saw a drone meet a queen, except once, and that 

 was on a board before a hive that I was trying to 

 get a swarm in. There were three queens with this 

 swarm; the drones were very thick all around the 

 hive, and I could see the queens running in every 

 direction, and drones running all over the hive. 

 One drone came to one of the queens, and clinched 

 as if they tried to sting each other, and soon the 

 drone fell back, and the queen was dragging the 

 drone on the board, and soon they parted, and the 

 drone was dead, and the queen wont into the hive, 

 and the swarm went with her. 



Many thanks for tlie interesting fact you 

 give us on the above subject. So it seems 

 tliat queens are sometimes fertilized on tlie 

 alighting-board or near the entrance. In 

 some of our back vohmies something similar 

 has been mentioned, proving that a queen 

 with crippled wings uiai/ be fertilized in 

 front of the hive, where "drones are plenti- 

 ful. 



SOMETHING ABOUT OUR OLD FRIEND MR. QUINBY. 



Those bees came from a queen that I had of 

 Quinby. I had some very nice queens of him when 

 he was living. He was a very fine man, and could 

 always be depended on. I saw him in his last sick- 

 ness, and ho talked about bees almost all the time I 

 was there. My bees are almost all hybrids. 



G. D. Kentner. 



Turin, Lewis Co., N. Y., Aug. 11, 1884. 



HOW OLD DO queens USUALLY BECOME? 



How many years will queen-bees be of good ser 

 vice? and when they begin to fail, how are we to 

 know it, so we can replace them with fresh egM's, 

 queen-cells, or young queens? 



I inclose an order for a lot of smokers. I notice one 

 important feature in using them is, to empty all 

 the ashes and unburnt material out before refilling. 

 This prevents ashes being thrown in the honey, and 

 the fire that is emptied out, when replaced, starts it 

 going again. 



Another invention of mine, although Huber, 

 whose book I have not read, may have practiced It, 

 is, when hiving a swarm of bees, to put in and space 

 all the frames, then use the top-box as a funnel to 

 shake the swarm in. After they are driven down it 

 can be taken off again. T. B. Clark. 



Farmington, Utah, Aug. i;}, 1884. 



Friend C, you will tindthis question pret- 

 ty fully discussed in the A B C book. A 

 ^ood many queens livp to be two years old, 



and occasionally one three, while perhaps 

 half of them die when a year old or a little 

 more, and a good many at from « months to 

 a year. After having noticed the matter 

 pretty closely. I can not see that it makes 

 very much differenct' liow they are raised, 

 in regard to their longevity, whether under 

 the intluence of natural swarming or other- 

 M-ise. It is an easy matter to tell when a 

 queen should be replaced. Just look through 

 the hive, and see how much brood she has 

 —that is, when honey and pollen are coming 

 briskly. If her colony is small, when she 

 has had a fair chance, you had better replace 

 her, no matter what her age is; or whenever 

 you find any (lueen with less brood than she 

 ought to have, all the circumstances being 

 favorable, better let a good one take her 

 place.— Your idea in regard to shaking all 

 the ashes out of the smoker is a pretty good 

 one, although by shaking the dead embers 

 thoroughly, and then puffing briskly on the 

 smoker, you can generally get out" most of 

 the ashes without throwing out the contents. 

 —Setting an tipper story temporarilv on the 

 hive when you want to shake a swarm on 

 top of the frames is a common way of doing, 

 I believe. 



TWO QUEENS IN A HIVE, AND BOTH GOOD ONES. 



Last February I was looking over a hive of Ital- 

 ians with Mr. J. M. Kellough here, and each of us 

 found a queen, both laying in the same hive, and 

 undoubtedly had wintered together. They had so 

 unusual a quantity of brood, we made two colonies 

 of it. One of them cast the first swarm, and both 

 made the most powerful colonies early. One was 

 lost— went ott- with swarm; the other was super- 

 seded. I have some of the daughters, big, fat, and 

 yellow, like the twin mothers. 



RUBBER MATCH-BOX GUN. 



I don't think Mr. Root ever found out the sfmuse- 

 ment there is in his hard-rubber match-boxes for 

 children, or he would have printed it. Matches are 

 nice arrows. Have the box empty, open one end 

 clear up, the other half way, so it will stand as a 

 trigger. Now hold it with the scratehing-place up; 

 put a match in just so it will stick out toward you a 

 little, with the torpedo end ahead to strike the tar- 

 get, and fire! To prevent accidents, and make it 

 ever new, put box and all the arrows in your pocket, 

 and not leave them with the children. A. W. B. 



San Marcos, Tex., Aug. 5, 1884. 



Thanks for your fact communicated, friend 

 B. Where there are two queens in a hive, 

 we generally suppose that at least one of 

 them is poor.— Your idea of the match-box 

 for a toy gun is tiptop; but it seems to me 

 that matches are not just the thing to shoot 

 around the house. IIow would a wire nail 

 do, shot head first? 



A G()(JD REPORT FRO.M KANSAS. 



As this is my first attempt to write to you, 1 sup- 

 pose it is not best to say much, or the readers might 

 say that " another cabbage-head busted." 1 have 14 

 colonies in good condition,}) light, three-banded, and 

 good workers; the other five are dark, or leather- 

 colored, like the light. The best, I intend to make a 

 change with this fall, as there is no clover in this vi- 

 cinity for bees to work on; so after the spring flow- 

 ers are over, they are idle till fall. My bees did well 

 the past spring, and are getting ready for fall work. 



