1904 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1065 



a conservative man ; in fact, I am fully aware 

 that he has been criticised for advocating' 

 methods which liave not been fully tried out 

 and which will not work; but from my ac- 

 quaintance with Mr. Pratt I am sure that he 

 never wrote a description of a new method 

 unless he had first used it with success. 

 That others have failed on trying the same 

 thing is another story; but I am convinced 

 that always this result has been due to a 

 careless reading of his articles or a lack of 

 knowledge of the habits of the bees them- 

 selves. Although my list of acquaintances 

 among bee-keepers is rather limited, I believe 

 from what I have learned that but few of 

 them are as careful students of the habits of 

 their bees as is Mr. Pratt. In addition to 



practically the yard is as large as that of 

 most queen- breeders, and a very large num- 

 ber of queens can be and are produced every 

 year. In addition to this yard there is an 

 outyard with a few large colonies for pro- 

 ducing drones, and a goodly number of mat- 

 ing nuclei. The object of having this out- 

 yard is that small nuclei may be made up in 

 one yard, carried to the other yard and open- 

 ed at once, thus making it unnecessary to 

 confine the bees for three days. 



To go into a description of the queen-rear- 

 ing methods of Swarthmore would require 

 more room than can be used here, even if 

 we were to give but a superficial account, 

 and this is unnecessary since the readers of 

 this journal have had the opportunity of 



SWARTHMORE MAKING UP SMALL NUCLEL 



his work in the apiary, Mr. Pratt is the 

 editor and publisher of The Swarthmore, a 

 weekly newspaper. 



The apiary is not a large one, the numbers 

 of full-sized colonies being about sixty; but 

 since Mr. Pratt has no helpers, and since 

 his methods of work do not require a large 

 apiary, he has never increased his stock. 

 Next spring he expects to increase to one 

 hundred, but this will be all that one man 

 can possibly care for under the system used 

 here. In addition to these full-sized colonies 

 there is a large number of small mating colo- 

 nies— "baby nuclei," the number in use de- 

 pending on the season of the year, so that 



reading of this system in articles by Mr. 

 Pratt himself. The main points of this 

 Swarthmore system are the laying of eggs 

 in queen-cells by the breeding queens, to 

 save the long process of grafting; the use of 

 flanged wooden queen-cell cups to make 

 handling easier, getting large numbers of 

 queen-cells accepted by the "swarm-box" 

 method, and the use of small mating-boxes; 

 and, above all, superiority of this system 

 rests on the fact that its use does not necessi- 

 tate the stirring up of the bees in the hives 

 when the cells are being handled. Almost the 

 entire process may be gone through without 

 the use of a smoker, and the bees are not 



