GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



May 15. 



on another chamber in the place of the one 

 removed, or not, as the case requires. When I 

 carry the honey in, it is set near a window so as 

 to leave the supers as open and airy as I can; 

 and by the time I am ready to extract, the bees 

 are out sufficiently. 



Those bees that pass out are, of course, 

 trapped. It would not be necessary to trap 

 them; but the young that do not know their 

 home will congregate on the window or house, 

 and stay there, so I just trap all and carry 

 them to the yard and liberate them there. If 

 one wants to get those young bees in some cer- 

 tain hive to strengthen it, just lay the open 

 trap on or near the hive they are wanted in; 

 and while the most of the young will go there, 

 the older will mostly go to their respective 

 homes. Should the bees all be from an out- 

 apiary, they ciin be hived where wanted, and 

 will all stay there, for they are in a " strange 

 land." 



Hive-escape^ I have not used very extensive- 

 ly; but smoking and brushing I have practiced 

 largely, and the window method in a wholesale 

 way. The escjipe no doubt has its place: but 

 for large and out apiaries thfy will not do the 

 work rapidly enough. My experience had 

 taught me that I could rapidly free supers of 

 bees in the open air and in the house, and that 

 is why, a few years ago, I raised the question 

 of improvement in escapes. Since then the 

 matter has been discussed over and over; new 

 forms of escapes have been brought out, yet it 

 remains a fact that the question is not solved. 

 My opinion is that it will not be solved by any 

 method that leaves the super and the colony in 

 a manner connected so that communication can 

 be had, or that has a small outlet. Either of 

 those factors will defeat the purpose. The 

 super bees must be lost from home; and when 

 the excitement is on they must not be hamper- 

 ed in their going. 



[M. H. MendleSDu. one of the most extensive 

 bee-keepers in the worlo; J. F. Mclntyre. an- 

 other big honf^y proaucer. besides a score of 

 others who raiso honey by the ton and carload, 

 think the hive-escape is a great success, indis- 

 pensable, etc. It does not sfetn lo nie that the 

 hive escape problem is an unsolved problem in 

 view of the opinions of such bee-keepers. Your 

 instructions on how to and how not to cause 

 bees to uncap honey in removing th<^ same are 

 excellent. — Ed.) 



QUEEN-CELLS BY WHOLESALE. 



NEW VS. OLD METHOD. 



By H. L. Jones. 



Friend Root :~'UDder separate cover I am for- 

 warding you photos illustrating results achiev- 

 ed by the " new-fangled plan " of queen-raising 

 that you wrote unfavorably of in Gleanings, 

 July 1 and Aug. 1, 1895. I felt sure that some 

 of your leading breeders would take exceptions 



to your evident retrogression in going back to 

 the "good old-fashioned way;" but if silence 

 gives consent they must all indorse what you 

 have said, which is indeed quite incomprehen- 

 sible to me unless conditions for queen rearing 

 are not identical in our respective countries. 



Your first objection, that the cell-cups are too 

 expensive to make, is soon dispensed with, since 

 there is no necessity for making the cups, as a 

 strip of drone comb, which can be prepared and 

 attached in a couple of minutes, is preferable. I 

 have not made a cell-cup for years, but have 

 raised thousands of queens on the drone-comb 

 principle, as per Fig. 1. In the lower frame you 

 will notice 17 tine large cells completed out of 19 

 furnished; in the center frame, 17 out of 18 have 

 been accepted; while in the top frame all the 

 cells are in a fair way toward success. Could 

 you, by the " good old-fashioned method," av- 

 eracje the same number of fine available cells? 



One big advantage of the" new-fangled plan" 

 is that you know that all queens are started 

 from young larvae, and will, therefore, be fully 

 developed. You can also tell to within a few 

 hours when the queens will hatch, if you have 

 been careful to utilize larvas of only the right 

 age, and experience will soon teach you this. 

 By the method you follow, of allowing the bees 

 to build their own cells as they wish in colonies 

 from which you have removed breeders, the 

 cells must, to make a sure thing of it, be cut out 

 on the tenth' day. and will then continue to 

 hatch up to the sixteenth, instead of the lot in 

 about IIJ2 days, and you can figure out what a 

 vast difference in the net results this variation 

 in time must make where over 1000 per annum 

 are raised. Then, again, these drone-cell cups, 

 by being built all together in one compact clus- 

 ter, require fewer bees to maintain the requisite 

 temperature; the cells are not joined together 

 so that they can not be separated without de- 

 stroying one or more cells, and there is no muti- 

 lation of brood-combs. 



Another good feature about these cells is the 

 ease with which they all fit into the West cell- 

 protectors, just as if they were built to order; 

 and I may mention that I would just as soon 

 think of producing extracted honey with an old 

 one-frame honey-slinger asto raise queens in 

 quantity without the aid of cell -protectors and 

 cages. I give a ripe cell in one of these cages 

 at the same time that I remove the reigning 

 queen ; but when sending off young queens that 

 have been laying only a few days I usually give 

 a virgin queen from one to three days old, liber- 

 ating her right on the combs at the same time, 

 and have very few destroyed. Look at the 

 lower row of cells in Fig. 1, which are within 

 34 hours of hatching, and you will notice that 

 they are so much surrounded with comb that 

 only the points of the cells are visible; and I 

 find that, when used without protectors, they 

 are less liable to be torn down than theordina- 



