July 15, 1911 



nuclei, as they are more likely to accept a 

 stranger when they have full stomachs. 

 Keep these queens in their respective nuclei 

 until after any possible How of nectar, no 

 matter how light, for after a flow the bees 

 destroy all surjilus queens unless they are 

 fed each day, which is impossible through 

 the winter. 



The catch is here, and perhaps this is 

 where followers of this method may fail. I 

 take these nuclei (which should be on one 

 comb each) and shake before a hive con- 

 taining strange brood, and enough honey 

 for their winter stores. Shake all the bees 

 and queens together in one pile, and 

 sprinkle them with a handful of flour, 

 using no smoke. In this way they be- 

 come mixed and lose their scent. I do no 

 stimulative feeding the week before uniting, 

 and none after. If I succeed in getting the 

 queens accepted I have a clear track. This 

 method requires patience. I had afew col- 

 onies that would kill every queen but one. 

 I do not know whether my success (?) was 

 due to my care or whether to the strain of 

 bees. 



Of those wintered in this manner last year 

 I succeeded with six of the eight old ones 

 that were in one colony; of the four old and 

 three young ones that were together, I have 

 the three young ones. Of the lot of young 

 ones that were together, I wintered eight. 

 I am not sure how many were in that colo- 

 ny last fall. Each spring I do my requeen- 

 iiig two days after taking the bees from the 

 cellar. 



Perhaps those that have tried the plural- 

 queen system through the summer without 

 success have had the same experience I 

 formerly had. It worked well when a good 

 flow was on, but the extra queens would dis- 

 appear between flows. This may be pre- 

 vented by stimulative feeding, but it does 

 not pay. I have never been able to carry a 

 plurality of queens through the honey- 

 flows, and winter them in the same colony. 

 If Mr. A. B. Marchant, Sumatra, Fla., has 

 small flow all winter (enough to induce 

 plenty of brood) he ought to succeed in win- 

 tering a surplus. 



Those who are thinking of trying this 

 work next fall will do well to remember that 

 success will not come without painstaking 

 care in introducing the bunch of queens. 

 Don't give it half a trial and say that it will 

 not work. It is certainly worth a trial. Do 

 not feed a lot of syrup after introducing the 

 queens to the one colony. Whether you 

 succeed or fail, write me your experiments 

 in full. 



I will endeavor to answer a limited num- 

 ber of inquiries that are accompanied by a 

 self-addressed stam])ed enveloi)e. To those 

 breeders offering me queens to try this plan 

 on their particular strain of bees, I would 

 state that I might test it on a limited num- 

 ber of pure Italians. I positively will not 

 tolerate a personal interview with any bee- 

 keeper in regard to this subject. I must re- 

 fuse one and all. 

 iSIontijelier, Ohio. 



437 



MOVING 100 COLONIES OF BEES 1200 MILES. 



BY WM. L. COUPER. 



Complete details regarding moving bees 

 by the carload have been given from time 

 to time in Gleanings; but perhaps my ex- 

 perience in moving about a hundred colonies 

 as part of a car of "Settler's effects" may 

 be of interest to some readers. The trip, 

 which lasted about six days, was from Manor, 

 Saskatchewan to Hatzic, British Columbia, 

 a distance of about 1200 miles. Perhaps it 

 was rat her risky to include a cow, but it gave 

 me a free pass to travel with the car, and I 

 felt sure that I had the bees fastened so sol- 

 idly that nothing short of an upset could re- 

 lease them. 



The bees were confined by means of wire 

 screen covering the tops and entrances. I 

 did not have enough wire cloth to pack all 

 of the colonies in this way, so over the last 

 nine or ten hives I stapled a bottom-board, 

 dee]) side down, with the entrance on the 

 opposite end to the lower one so as to give a 

 through draft and an air-space above. These 

 colonies traveled as well as those covered 

 with screen. The first row was packed 

 against the back wall of tlie car, frames par- 

 allel with the rails, and hives as close to- 

 gether as possible. The second row was then 

 l)ut in place on the floor of the car, the back 

 end of the bottom-boards touching the front 

 end of the first row. Then a six-inch board 

 the full width of the car was laid so that it 

 overlapped both rows of hives, and was nail- 

 ed to every second hive. Besides fastening 

 all the hives solidly together, this plan had 

 the advantage of leaving a clear air-si)ace 

 between the tiers of hives, which were i)ack- 

 ed four high, each tier being fastened in the 

 same way. Above the hives, supers were 

 piled to the car roof, anti were also placed in 

 front, as I wished to exclude light as much 

 as possible. Boards were nailed across the 

 front end of these supers, held in place by 

 cleats spiked to the sides of the car. I used 

 inch boards here, but 2 " 4's would have been 

 better, as they sagged considerably in the 

 course of the trip, and one jnle of supers 

 worked loose ami fell on the cow. 



One rule was violated in packing bees, 

 this way, in that they were so placed that I 

 could not get at them to give them water 

 nor to attend to them in any way. My rea- 

 son for this was simply to save space; but it 

 must be remembered that I was shipping in 

 cold weather, and water, therefore, was not 

 likely to be essential. The first night of the 

 trip, the water in the water-barrel froze so 

 hard that it was necessary to chop the ice 

 with an ax. 



So far as the bees were concerned, the tri]) 

 was uneventful. A long level run over the- 

 prairie to Calgary was broken only by the 

 inevitable shunting at divisional points; 

 then followed the magnificent scenery and 

 heavy grades of the Rocky Mountains. The 

 former, by the way, may be enjoyed from 

 the open door of a iaox car far more complete- 

 ly than from a Pullman car, both because of 



