1900 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



6 1 



interested in getting and breeding the very 

 finest stock — not the finest to look at, how- 

 ever, but the finest working stock — those that 

 would give me the most honey ; and as I pro- 

 duce nearly all comb, they must cap it white. 

 I have had not only colonies but strains that I 

 have never known to cap honey greasy. I 

 will call it "close; " for all the difference I 

 can see, one has an air-space under the cap- 

 ping, and the other has not. 



In 1893 I bought a select breeder of a man 

 by the name of Wallace — I presume the same 

 man Mr. Mclntyre bought his queen of as 

 mentioned on p 12 of Gleanings. The first 

 season I reared only four queens from the 

 Wallace queen, as my old strain was good, and 

 for three or four years I did not find their 

 equal. 



The next season the four colonies gave about 

 600 lbs. of comb hon^y ; the best one 180 lbs., 

 all capped very while, while the average for 

 the whole yard was a little less than 100 lbs. 

 per colony. Then I requeened nearly the 

 whole yard from the old queen, and I never 

 saw a grea&y section from one of them. Then 

 the next good year we had I took 6000 lbs. 

 from 49 colonies of the above strain. I never 

 knew what the colony with the old queen 

 would do, as she was kept on five or six frames 

 ihe three years I owned her. The way to test 

 a queen is to rear a few young ones and see 

 what they will do. 



Three or four years later I bought another 

 select breeder of the same man. I requested 

 him to select me one whose workers were gen- 

 tle and yellow, that showed just three good 

 bands, and closed my letter by saying I would 

 not take the best five-banded queen in the 

 world as a gift. In due time I saw a few of 

 her workers were five banded. But I reared 

 fifteen or twenty queens from her for my own 

 use. The next season nearly every one of 

 those colonies capped its honey " greasy," or 

 close, while all from the first or Wallace queen 

 (thirty colonies, perhaps) capped their honey 

 white. Here were the two strains from the 

 same man. It is needless to say I killed the 

 last queen and all of her daughters. 



Next I received a very fine breeder from 

 Minnesota— imported strain They were good 

 honey-gatherers, but it was in the strain to 

 cap their honey "close," so I killed all the 

 queens of that strain and replaced last season 

 with thirty or forty granddaughters of the first 

 Wallace queen. Besides these and two or 

 three other strains I am testing, I have eight 

 or ten of the " Hutchinson," and if they equal 

 some of the others I have I shall be more 

 than satisfied. 



HOW TO REAR GOOD QUEENS. 



Most of my queens are reared in the Doolit- 

 tle cups as described in his book ; but the 

 frame of cups is placed in the center of the 

 brood-nest, as I think I get a finer lot of cells 

 built this way than over the queen excluder. 

 Unless the colony is preparing to swarm, or 

 supersede its queen, the queens must be caged. 

 When sections are on the hive I remove one 

 and replace with an empty section with a hole 

 through the top to drop the Wtst cage with 

 queen in. Cut off the projecting wire of cage 



close to the coil, then use a long tin cover to 

 keep from dropping through the hole in the 

 section. For all those who do only a small 

 business at queen-rearing and sometimes lack 

 the royal jelly to start cells, one of the best 

 ways is to prepare your frame of cell-cups, and 

 into each cell put quite a large larva from any 

 hive without food. This could be put in an 

 extracting-hive, over the excluder, or in a 

 strong queenless nucleus for 48 hours. Then 

 remove larvae from cells started, and replace 

 with very small larvae from your select queen. 

 This will secure an extra amount of food in 

 the cells, and they then will not remove the 

 food they put in the cells as they do when we 

 try to help them. By putting in some our- 

 selves, some of the best queens I have ever 

 owned have been reared, not excepting those 

 from natural swarming. When we save the 

 swarming-cells we are apt to save from too 

 many colonies, and they are not likely to be 

 all the equal of one we could select. 



Another good method is to change the lar- 

 vae in the cells when we find a colony super- 

 seding its queen. These can be taken out 

 soon after being capped, and they will imme- 

 diately start others. The strength of the col- 

 ony should be kept up by putting in frames of 

 hatching brood. I have kept colonies rearing 

 queens nearly the whole season in this way ; 

 but as a rule they have only a few cells at 

 once. 



Do you think this too much trouble to rear 

 them ? No : our surplus depends largely on 

 the quality of our queens ; and the little time 

 it takes to rear them should be a secondary 

 consideration. 



Conesville, N. Y. 



[Your idea of putting large larvae in queen- 

 cups and then replacing with younger is, I 

 believe, new. I call the attention of other 

 breeders to the kink. Perhaps there is some- 

 thing in it.— Ed.] 



FORM FOR NAILING FRAMES. 



The Importance of Accuracy in Hive Stuff. 



BY V. GREINER. 



Exactness in the different working parts of 

 the bee-hive has become of even more impor- 

 tance of late years than formerly. As the 

 construction of the hives has become more 

 and more complicated, so we have to exercise 

 more and more care in making them. With 

 the old ten-frame Langslroth hive of 30 years 

 ago, and its swinging frames, a slight differ- 

 ence in the length or width or height did not 

 amount to very much, and gave no trouble. 

 The end-bars of the frame might have varied 

 y^ inch in thickness, and still no inconven- 

 ience would have been experienced. The su- 

 pers — well, what of the supers? They were 

 six pound boxes ; and if they would only take 

 the 5x6 glass they were all right, no matter 

 how mucli they might vary otherwise. We 

 calculated that Js inch, more or less, consti- 

 tuted the bee space. Now we have gotten 

 that down to about % inch and less. Gener- 

 ally speaking the hive has arrived at a point 



