Aug. 15. 1911 



495 



ians, procured from Mr. F. A. Salisbury, of 

 Syracuse, N. Y. Historically the old bee- 

 house is a landmark, almost the last of its 

 kind, and possesses a novel charm because 

 of its many unique principles. 

 De I.and, Fla. 



To be continued. 



RAISING GOOD QUEENS UNDER UNFAVOR- 

 ABLE CONDITIONS. 



Regrafting Method; the Mormon Mating-hive. 



BY H. PERKINS. 



Any method of raising queens should, first 

 of all, make for good strong long-lived 

 queens. Economy, reliability, and rapid 

 production are also important points, and 

 must not be lost sight of. It is a compara- 

 tively easy matter to raise good queens when 

 weather conditions are favorable and the 

 bees are strong and swarming; but it is a 

 much more difficvilt task to accomplish the 

 same results early or late in the season, or 

 during an off year. It is to the latter con- 

 ditions that I especially devote this article. 



In my opinion the most important part 

 of good queen-rearing is raising good queen- 

 cells, which includes knowing how to create 

 strong cell-building colonies and keep them 

 in tune for cell-building. I have never been 

 able to raise uniformly good cells in any 

 other than strong colonies, above a queen- 

 excluder, or in the brood-chamber when 

 swarming preparation or supersedure was in 

 progress. 



For early cell-building I begin prejiaration 

 in the winter season by setting my colonies 

 in groups of five or six. In the spring, as 

 soon as they will average five combs of brood, 

 I select the strongest colony of each group; 

 and on a warm day, about noon, when bees 

 are flying well, I transfer one or two combs 

 of sealed brood from the two nearest colo- 

 nies to the strong one, and move the colo- 

 nies, thus reduced, far enough away to com- 

 pel the returning bees to enter the strength- 

 ened one, which is to be a cell-builder as 

 soon as the major portion of the brood given 

 it hatches. In two days after, weather per- 

 mitting, I treat the remaining colonies of 

 the group the same way, giving the brood 

 to the cell-builder to be. The result is that, 

 in a short time, the cell-building colonies 

 will have their supers filled with young bees, 

 which is just the condition needed for super- 

 cell building. 



Care must be exercised not to overdo the 

 thing; and colonies thus strengthened must 

 be well fed, especially during bad weather; 

 for so early in the season the honey-flow 

 can seldom be relied ujion to furnish suffi- 

 cient stimulation for cell-building. 



.Just as soon as my cell-builders have a 

 super full of bees I put two combs of partly 

 unsealed brood in the super to provide a 

 good cluster, and put on the queen-excluder. 

 The second day after, they will be ready for 

 business, and I give them a culture of graft- 

 ed cells between the two corobs of brood, 



If the number of cells accepted in this way 

 is not satisfactory (which is often the case 

 early in the season), I resort to the swarm- 

 box to insure satisfactory acceptance. 1 will 

 explain here, for the information of those 

 who do not already know, that a swarm-box 

 is a narrow box designed to hold three frames 

 (and is best made from an old super) , a wire- 

 cloth bottom, and a board for a cover. 



In stocking my swarm-box I use one comb 

 of honey and one of thin syrup to provide 

 moisture, and into the si)ace between I shake 

 about two quarts of bees and leave them 

 confined for six hours before giving them 

 the cells, which I leave with them over 

 night, indoors if the weather is at all cool. 

 In the morning the cells should be accepted 

 and ready for the reluctant cell-builder, and 

 the swarm-box bees returned to the colony 

 they came from. 



A queenless colony of medivim strength, 

 without unsealed brood or natural-built cells, 

 will do as well. Under unfavorable condi- 

 tions it is often impossible to get even strong 

 colonies to build good long well-fed cells 

 from one grafting. To overcome this diffi- 

 culty I employ what I call regrafting, which 

 I will here describe. 



When I anticipate having to regraft my 

 cells, I use larvip two days old for the first 

 graft, and allow the bees to work on them 

 thirty hours. I then remove the culture 

 from the cell-builder to the grafting-room, 

 and, with a hot knife, clip ofT the end of the 

 cells to reduce their depth. I then remove 

 the larva with a very small hook made from 

 foundation wire, and agitate the jelly with a 

 blunt-pointed stick to disseminate the lim- 

 l^id fluid which always surrounds the queen 

 larva of advanced age. 



After waiting about five minutes to allow 

 the surface of the jelly to stiffen a little by 

 evaporation, I regraft the cells with larvvr 

 from my breeding-queen. I always provide 

 a swarm-box or kindred means to accept my 

 regrafted cultures before giving them back 

 to the cell-builders, because the bees are 

 much slower to go to work on them than 

 when grafted the first time. 



I regraft only when it is impossible to get 

 good cells built any other way, for it is a 

 painstaking operation; but the results ob- 

 tained justify the effort. 



Many bee-keepers fall into the error of be- 

 lieving that the substance resembling peach- 

 gum, found in the bottom of hatched queen - 

 cells, is evidence that the cell contained an 

 excess of royal jelly; but this is not always 

 the case. The substance alluded to is often 

 nothing but residue, and may be found in 

 cells where the inmate starved to death be- 

 fore hatching. 



When a queen-cell is sealed, nature sets to 

 work to complete the job if possible. If the 

 supply of jelly has been short, the queen 

 will also be short. If it has been too short, 

 the inmate will never hatch. If the supply 

 was enough, or more than enough, the queen 

 will be fully developed, but that is all. 



To build cells, I quite frequently employ 

 colonies that are superseding; but I alway§ 



