12 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jan. 1. 



extractor ; and don't forget to send along 

 some more good photos. From those in hand 

 it is plain that Mr. R. should be (no doubt 

 is) proud of his machine, and, and — its oper- 

 ator. — Ed.] 



..■■«»»»««»■•■■ 



SUPERIOR BREEDING-QUEENS. 



Why the Queens of some Breeders do Not Come Up 

 to the Advertised Qualities; Controlling the 

 Parentage of Both Sides ; Another Record- 

 breaking Queen. 



BY J. F. M'INTYRE. 



I have never advertised queens for sale, but 

 have bought queens from every breeder in this 

 country who claims to have anything superior, 

 and I am sorry to say that I am generally dis- 

 appointed. Why is it that we are so often dis- 

 appointed in buying the daughters of a queen 

 claimed to be very superior stock ? These 

 daughters should be all that is claimed for 

 their mother, and we are disappointed if they 

 are not. 



There are several reasons why the young 

 queens may not be as good as we expect from 

 reading the advertisement. First. The claims 

 may be exaggerated ; but I have charity enough 

 to think that this is not where the trouble gen- 

 erally comes in. 



Second. The young queens may not be as well 

 reared as their mother was. I believe this is 

 true in about ninety-nine cases in one hundred. 

 We find a very superior queen in the apiary, 

 probably raised under the superseding impulse, 

 and start out to duplicate her by starting a 

 large number of cells from her larvae in a 

 queenless colony, or in a super above a queen- 

 excluder, which is about the same thing, as 

 the bees regard that part of the hive as harm- 

 less ; and the result is a lot of queens below 

 the average in quality. To duplicate your fine 

 breeder the young queens must be reared as 

 close to nature's best way as possible. The 

 Doolittle cells placed in the middle of a brood- 

 chamber, where the colony is superseding its 

 queen, or preparing to swarm, gives the best 

 results in my hands, and the superseding col- 

 ony is the better of the two. 



Third. The young queens may not have mar- 

 ried as well as their mother, and their children 

 may inherit a lazy disposition from their father. 

 As in the human family, this is a hard matter 

 to control, but it is best done by raising an 

 abundance of drones from an equally good 

 queen in no way related to the one you rear 

 queens from, and by killing inferior drones. 



Fourth. Queens are often injured by long 

 confinement in the mails, especially if they 

 are laying rapidly when caged and shipped. 

 When a queen comes out with a swarm she is 

 in the best possible condition for a long jour- 

 ney by mail. The ovaries are then small, and 

 not so liable to injury as when they are large 

 and full of eggs. 



Larger cages should be used for shipping 

 valuable breeding-queens. The export Benton 

 cage is none too good to mail a breeding-queen 

 from the East to California, and the long-dis- 

 tance Benton is about right for all others. 



This subject of superior stock is now the 

 most interesting to nie of any connected with 

 the bee business. 



I am interested in the statements made by 

 Mr. Wright, on page 829, about a queen which 

 he calls "Sweetheart," and would pay fifty 

 cents more than the regular price paid for one 

 of her daughter's select tested, and one dollar 

 more if the young queen was reared in a col- 

 ony supersedihg its queen and mailed in an 

 export cage ; and if you could insure her mat- 

 ing with a drone from as good stock as herself, 

 which would make the young queen as good 

 as her mother, you might add another fifty 

 cents. Seven years ago I bought a queen 

 from a man named Wallace, who advertised 

 that he was raising queens from Dadant's best 

 stock. I raised about twenty queens from this 

 one to test the stock. The next season was a 

 dry one, and most bees had to be fed to keep 

 them alive ; but several colonies out of the 

 twenty filled their aupers with honey. Next 

 season, 1895, I bred from the best of these ; 

 and in 1896, which was another dry year, this 

 strain again filled their supers when others were 

 starving. I have had many colonies of this 

 strain which I considered ideal bees, and think 

 that they have been improved by breeding 

 from the very best each year. The present 

 year was a very dry one, but I have one colony 

 of this strain that filled 2}4 ten-frame L. supers ; 

 and I wrote in my record-book, after the num- 

 ber of this hive, that such bees would make a 

 man rich. They are beautiful, pure Italians, 

 light three-banded, queen large and yellow, 

 and very prolific. I have raised about 200 

 young queens from her, and they are all like 

 their mother. Her bees are gentle. She was 

 one year old last July, and has never swarmed ; 

 and this strain does not swarm half as much 

 as any other strain in my apiary. It i> rare for 

 me to become enthusiastic over a queen ; but 

 when a colony shows a marked superiority 

 over 600 others in the same apiary, it is a rare 

 thing. 



Fillmore, Cal. 



[You have very fairly and candidly set forth 

 some of the reasons why queens of good moth- 

 ers do not equal the original stock. It is true, 

 that some of those (not all) that travel long 

 distances in mailing-cages do suffer more or 

 less from confinement, exposure, and rough 

 handling ; and that is one reason why I have 

 been urging every honey-producer to learn to 

 rear his own queens by the Doolittle method ; 

 and while referring to that method I agree 

 with you, that those reared under the swarm- 

 ing or supersedure impulse are much superior 

 to those reared by the other plans. A colony 

 that is about to supersede its queen we consider 

 a prize ; and if we can get four or five of them, 

 we feel that we are in clover. But, of course, 

 when we have no such colonies we use the 

 next best — i. e., bring about the swarming im- 

 pulse artificially by feeding a little every da}'; 

 but even then an actual honey-flow is ahead. 



With regard to your breeding-queen, the 

 one that has made such a fine showing, we 

 hereby give you an order now for three of the 

 best of her daughters, if you will sell them, to 



