1899 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



641 



greater value to the queen-breeder — a claim 

 for clipping that I believe has never been made 

 before. Now, every breeder will receive a 

 complaint occasionally ; and whenever I re- 

 ceive a bad one I send on another queen at 

 once, and ask for the return of the unsatisfac- 

 tory one ; and on several occasions I have had 

 queens returned with perfect wings in place of 

 the clipped queens sent out. Of course, the 

 first queens had been lost in introduction, and 

 supplanted by worthless queens, unknown to 

 the purchaser. In our printed directions for 

 introducing queens we say, " Be sure the col- 

 ony is queenless ; " but peculiar and unex- 

 pected conditions prevail in colonies at times ; 

 and the novice, and some of more experience, 

 also, occasionally attempt to introduce a queen 

 to a colony that already has a queen of some 

 sort, with the result that the choice queen is 

 destroyed, unknown to the purchaser, and the 

 breeder's reputation suffers as a consequence. 

 Now, clipping is a grand check against mis- 

 takes of this kind ; and if part of one larger 

 wing only is cut, the appearance of the queen 

 is but slightly impaired, and frequently the 

 purchaser fails entirely to note the clipping. 



BEST METHOD OE CLIPPING, 



I don't like the method of clipping that you 

 described some time ago, and I believe that, if 

 you give the following plan a good trial, you 

 will admit its superiority : Grasp the queen 

 by the wings, and place her on the top of your 

 left fore finger, which she will eagerly grasp ; 

 then bring your thumb down on her legs, and 

 you will have her as securely as if in a vise. 

 There will be no danger of her legs getting be- 

 tween the scissors, which should be slipped 

 under the longer wing on only one side. The 

 whole operation takes but a few seconds, and 

 the queen can be liberated right on the combs 

 by simply taking the weight off her legs, and 

 she hardly knows that she has been interfered 

 with, as her delicate body has not been touch- 

 ed. In clipping one wing only, it is advisable 

 to clip it fairly short, as I have known queens 

 to fly when the larger wing was clipped a lit- 

 tle shorter than the under one. 

 WAS THE METHOD OF CLIPPING RESPONSIBLE? 



I wish now to mention something very pe- 

 culiar and unusual in regard to somedronts 

 that disported themselves in my apiary about 

 nine years ago ; and as I have never heard of 

 any thing similar I should like your opinion 

 on the matter. At the time mentioned I used 

 to clip both the larger wings of my nice yel- 

 low queens pretty short, as this left them with 

 a fine symmetrical appearance, and showed 

 their beautiful color off to its best advantage ; 

 but, to my great surprise, several of these 

 queens produced drones with unnaturally short 

 wings — the upper wings, in fact, being no 

 longer than the lower ones, so that much of 

 the drone's body was exposed. In every oth- 

 er respect these drones were perfect, and could 

 fly all right ; but instead of the loud buzz-z-z 

 of the ordinary drone, the sound they made 

 was more of a buz-z-z. If you will clip the 

 two upper wings of a drone to the length of 

 the under ones, and let him fly, you will have 

 the sound exactly. There is no mistake what- 



ever about the facts above, as I noted down 

 every thing most carefully at the time, and 

 have been watching without success ever since 

 for something similar, but can assure you that 

 I now clip the wing on only one side. 



AGE AT WHICH QUEENS BEGIN TO LAY. 



One more subject, and I'm done for the 

 present. Why is it that so many of your 

 American works place the age at which queens 

 commence to lay at so early a date ? I keep a 

 very complete record in all my queen-raising 

 operations, from the date the larva is inserted 

 to the time the cell hatches, queen commences 

 to lay, etc., and I find from long and careful 

 observation that, on an average, the queen be- 

 gins to lay when about ten days old, and I 

 have never known a queen to lay under nine 

 days. Most of your American works put it 

 from six to eight days, while English writers, 

 such as Taylor, Neighbour, Cowan, etc., put it 

 much earlier still ; but Cheshire comes nearer 

 my estimation, and puts it at nine days. In 

 that beautiful little work, " The Honey-bee," 

 Cowan puts it from five to seven days ; but 

 those figures most certainly will not hold good 

 for this part of the world. Doolittle has it 

 from seven to nine days ; but there's some 

 comfort to me in the fact that the two medical 

 gentlemen, C. C. Miller and J. P. H. Brown, 

 are alongside of me with the ten-day average. 



Goodna, Aus., May 25. 



[We did try the drone-cells, but were no 

 more successful with them than we were at 

 that time with the Doolittle cell-cups; but our 

 Mr. Wardell has made the latter method so 

 very successful that we hardly see how there 

 could be an improvement, nor even a saving 

 in labor. Yourself, Mr. Alley, and others, it 

 would appear, in many cases at least, are 

 obliged (or at least find it more practicable) 

 to place these drone-cells filled with royal 

 jelly first in queenless colonies, after which 

 they are removed and placed in the upper 

 story of strong colonies possessed of a queen. 

 Now, right here it seems to me an amount of 

 labor is involved that more than offsets the 

 small amount of time consumed in making 

 cell-cups, especially when it is understood 

 that one with even crude methods can make 

 at least a thousand such cups in a day. See 

 answer to one of Dr. Miller's Straws in last 

 issue. 



Now, understand I do not claim that these 

 drone-cells with royal jelly will not be started 

 in colonies having a queen ; but from what 

 you and others who use the method write, I 

 take it that you will generally find it necessary 

 to use queenless colonies to start them in cups. 



Your point with regard to marking your 

 queens by means of clipping, so as to avoid 

 mistakes, is a good one. Every year we have 

 been obliged to replace queens that I felt 

 morally certain were all right, but which I 

 suspected were destroyed by the bees, and 

 their place taken by inferior queens already 

 in the hives. Your plan of requiring the 

 return of such queens would give a means 

 of determining whether any mistake had been 

 made ; and, what is more, it would determine 



