460 



Gleanings in Bee Culture 



with the swarm except about one quart, 

 which bees are left to take care of the brood. 

 I move the old hive back and make the en- 

 trance very small to prevent robbers. Then 

 when the next swarm comes out I set the 

 •old hive, No. 2, on the old hive, No. 1, and, 

 21 days later, I remove hive No. 1, shake 

 the bees in front of No. 2, and put on a su- 

 per if the bees are getting honey, and keep 

 No. 1 to put a late swarm in, or use it for 

 bees from a tree. In shaking the bees I am 

 very careful with the frames that have 

 queen-cells, as rough handling will injure 

 the young queen. 



Swarms that are treated in -this way dur- 

 ing a honey-flow will be likely to need a 

 super in four or five days. If the two old 

 hives, Nos. 1 and 2, have begun work in the 

 supers I put No. 1 super on the swarm 

 from No. 1, and No. 2 on a colony that is 

 slow about going into the super. 



Velpen, Ind. 



BREEDING TO ELIMINATE THE TENDENCY 

 TO BALL QUEENS. 



BY CH. NOEL EDDOWES. 



On page 278, May 1, Mr. B. B. Fouch asks 

 the question, "Why are the queens of nat- 

 ural swarms killed?" and you invite others 

 to give their experience or explanations on 

 the subject. In my opinion the explanation 

 is simply a matter' of breeding, and the rem- 

 edy is selection. My reasons for making 

 this statement are based on experience. I 

 have bought bees with the characteristic so 

 strongly developed that the simple fact of 

 lifting the hive-cover was sufficient cause 

 for the bees to ball their queen. By careful 

 selection of breeders I have eradicated this 

 tendency under normal conditions and usu- 

 al manipulations. 



A bee-keeper whose acquaintance I made 

 here told me that he considered the balling 

 tendency of bees in .Jamaica a perfect curse. 

 For the benefit of Mr. Fouch I will give you 

 the system I use to test the bees of my 

 breeders for this defect. Having selected 

 the queen from which I intend to breed, I 

 go to her hive and take out the frame on 

 which I find her, and turn it u])side down 

 and place it on top of one of the other frames 

 in the hive with the top-bars parallel. I 

 then cause the queen to run off by driving 

 her with the point of my finger until she 

 ■crosses the two top-bars of the frames and 

 goes below. In doing this it is advisable to 

 touch the queen with the finger, so as to 

 bring out to light any tendency to balling 

 that may be there. As soon as the queen 

 is below I throw the bees off the frame on 

 which she was, into the hive, and put the 

 frame back into its place and close the hive 

 and examine again in half an hour to see if 

 the bees are balling their queen. This must 

 all be done without smoke or other intimi- 

 dant. 



Never breed from a queen whose bees 

 show any tendency to this defect, however 



good honey-gatherers they may be, as in 

 these latitudes the balling tendency appears 

 to be most easily intensified. 



As the balling defect appears to be gene- 

 ral in Mr. Fouch's apiary, his quickest and 

 most certain way of getting rid of it w^ould 

 be to requeen with queens from a well- 

 known queen-breeder, who can give assur- 

 ance that his bees are free from the unde- 

 sirable characteristic. 



Halfway Tree, Jamaica, May 5. 



[\^ery possibly this balling tendency can 

 be bred out of the bees themselves; but in 

 our opinion balling is more often occasioned 

 by the peculiar behavior of the queen toward 

 the bees than because the bees are inclined 

 to ball her. Years ago we had one old hy- 

 brid queen that we used for supplying queen- 

 less colonies with eggs. We could pick her 

 off the combs and drop her into any hive 

 and shut the hive up. On several occasions 

 after this we watched her. She would go 

 about her egg-laying duties as if she had al- 

 ways been in the hive. In other words, her 

 behavior was so natural and easy that the 

 bees accepted her as a matter of fact. If a 

 stray bee showed hostility she would fight 

 it as if she were boss of the whole ranch and 

 expected her subjects to join issue with her; 

 in other words, she had a way that indicated 

 her royal and sovereign rights — rights that 

 she would not allow any foster subject of 

 hers to trample on. 



On the other hand, we have had queens 

 which, as soon as they were let loose among 

 the bees, would squeal in fright, hold up 

 their fore legs as if they expected to be ball- 

 ed, and such queens are usually not disap- 

 l)ointed at the reception they get, for they 

 are almost invariably balled by any and all 

 bees. While the scent factor, or colony _ 

 odor, may have an influence, we are begin- ■ 

 ning to believe that, during the period of l 

 confinement ir^ the cage, the queens them- 

 selves become accustomed to their environ- 

 ment, and as a result act naturally when re- 

 leased by the bees. It begins to look as if 

 the principal factor contributing to the suc- 

 cessful introduction by the caging process is 

 a scheme by which the bees quietly release 

 the queen by eating out the candy. The old 

 way of opening the hive and disturbing the 

 regular routine of the colony to release the 

 queen, often caused the bees to ball her, 

 when, if she had been allowed to crawl out 

 of an exit, which the bees created quietly, 

 she would have been accepted without hesi- 

 tation on the part of the bees. 



At the between sessions at the Massachu- 

 setts convention we had some talk with Mr. 

 Arthur C. Miller, who, as our readers know, 

 has for years believed that the scent factor 

 in ^he matter of introduction has been over- 

 estimated, and we are coming to believe 

 that he may be right. Mr. Miller has given 

 this subject no little thought, and we should 

 be glad to hear from him at his convenience; 

 for we believe that no man in the United 

 States has made the internal condition of a 

 colony more of a study than has he. — Ed.] 



