304 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



April 15. 



nearer Nature's way of rearing them than any 

 other plan we know of. 



"But," says one, "it will not pay me to 

 raise queens." 



Well, neither am I a queen-breeder. I have 

 never advertised queens for sale. It pays me 

 to raise my queens for the honey I get. How 

 do I know this? By comparing my honey-rec- 

 ords. My honey crop eight or ten years ago 

 averaged from 25 to 50 lbs. per colony (and 

 sometimes less). We will now take the rec- 

 ord of the last three years ; and to prove to 

 you that last year was a poor year (allow me 

 to digress a little), it was so poor that my 

 neighbor, who had 23 colonies, got only 56 

 sections of honey, and another with 60 colo- 

 nies got none whatever. Our bees worked on 

 the same pasture, yet I secured an average of 

 72*4 lbs. from 80 colonies, spring count, and 

 increased to 100 colonies. 



The year 1897 was a poor one. My average 

 was 52 lbs. from 100 colonies, no increase. 

 The year 1896 was good, my average being 122 

 lbs., all comb honey, from 54 colonies, spring 

 count, and increased to 103. 



My average, previous to 1896, was never 

 over 50 lbs. per colony, and I do not know 

 any cause for my increase of average except 

 that of my queens being so much better. To 

 get good ave rage crops you must have all good 

 queens. The queens are the propelling power 

 of the apiary. 



Evansville, Ind., Jan. 27. 



GETAZ' METHOD OF PREVENTING INCREASE. 



Dr. Miller's and the Editor's Objections Answered. 



BY ADRIAN GETAZ. 



Dear Friend Dr. Miller: — You and Ernest 

 are giving it to me about that method of pre- 

 venting increase, page 90. See Stray Straws, 

 Feb. 15. The fact is, both you and Ernest 

 strayed off the track, and failed to grasp all 

 the circumstances of the case. 



In the first place, note that the old queen is 

 to be removed at once (I use queen- traps on 

 all my hives, as I can not be always at the 

 apiaries). This secures two points. One is, 

 that there will be no more swarming until a 

 young queen hatches, and during that time 

 honey-gathering will go on as well as if there 

 had been no swarming. The second is, that 

 there is no more egg-laying until a new queen 

 is ready to lay. We shall see presently what 

 is the advantage of having no eggs laid. 



About a week later one of the virgin queens 

 emerges. Her first move is to try to destroy 

 the other cells. Instinctively the bees defend 

 the cells against her attack. The quarrel 

 goes on for a day or two, when the bees 

 (whether workers or queen or both I do not 

 know) decide that such a state of affairs is 

 getting to be a nuisance, and here goes the 

 swarm. The queen excluder, or a trap ar- 

 ranged as I described, prevents the queen 

 from going out ; and the result is, that the 

 swarm returns at once. The next day brings 

 a repetition of the program, but the swarm 



will remain out longer. This state of things 

 will go on, the swarming bees remaining out 

 each day for a longer time than the preceding, 

 if the weather is good. What happens in the 

 hive during that time ? While the swarm is out, 

 some of the young queens which so far have 

 been retained in their cells by the bees will 

 emerge, as there are not enough bees left in 

 the hive to prevent them. The first thing 

 they will do will be to engage in a fight that 

 leaves only one alive. This, in turn, succeeds, 

 during the absence of the swarm, in destroy- 

 ing the remaining cells, so in four or five days 

 after the first virgin queen swarmed there will 

 be only one queen left, no queen-cell, and, 

 more than that, no unsealed brood to build 

 any ; and right there and then the colony 

 goes to work in earnest, gathering surplus as 

 actively as if no swarming had ever taken 

 place ; at least that has invariably been my 

 experience, so there is a loss of only about 

 four or five days, so far as gathering surplus is 

 concerned. 



You can now see where the importance is of 

 removing the old queen at once ; and that is 

 the very point which you and Ernest have 

 overlooked — or, rather, that I failed to explain 

 sufficiently. If the old queen had remained, 

 there would have been a daily swarming dur- 

 ing a whole week before the emerging of the 

 first virgin queen. Worse than that, eggs 

 would have been laid during all that time, and 

 perhaps during one or two weeks more ; and 

 as long as eggs would have been laid, queen- 

 cells would have been built ; and as long as 

 queen cells and emerging queens had con- 

 fronted each other, swarming would have 

 grown from bad to worse, until, as Ernest puts 

 it, the colony might just as well have been 

 brimstoned so far as surplus is concerned. . 



The few days during which the colony is 

 without eggs and unsealed brood is what cures 

 the " swarming-fever, " if there is any such 

 thing, which I don't believe ; but at any rate, 

 after these few days there will be no attempt 

 made at building queen-cells, even if a laying 

 queen was introduced and had begun to lay at 

 once. It seems that, during that time, the bees 

 give up their notion of building queen-cells, 

 and turn their attention to the next best thing, 

 which, in such a case, is gathering honey. 

 How many days, cr, rather, how few days, 

 without eggs and unsealed brood, it will take 

 to cure the swarming-fever, I don't know. In 

 a few cases, where I introduced laying queens, 

 there were only four days, and that was suffi- 

 cient. Whether four days would always be 

 enough, or whether three days would do as 

 well or not, I don't know. 



It doesn't matter whether there is a virgin 

 queen present or not. It is the absence of un- 

 sealed brood and eggs that effects the cure ; 

 and I suppose that a caged queen would not 

 be an objection either, though I never tried it. 

 It is hardly necessary to say that a loose queen 

 and a caged queen together would not do. 



Knoxville, Tenn., Feb. 21. 



[Dr. Miller replies :] 



In what I said about the matter, page 122, 

 I had in mind only the trouble with swarms 



