Go4 



Gleanings in Bee Culture 



greased. These were extracted by them- 

 selves, and kept separate. It was not the 

 fault of the honey, but must have been a 

 peculiar trait of certain colonies. Such bees 

 might well be superseded with another 

 strain. 



If you must use this fermented honey for 

 bees, use it next spring, then there will not 

 be any danger of causing bowel trouble, as 

 it might if fed in the fall. We will suppose 

 your bees are wintered in a cellar, and in 

 triat case would consume, say, 10 lbs, of 

 stores during winter. If in fairly good shape 

 they will need something like 15 lbs. to car- 

 ry them over the breeding season from early 

 sjjring until the opening of the clover or 

 Taspberry season the following June. So 

 toy advice would be, use your fermented 

 honey for these spring stores. « 



Remus, Mich. 



BALLING OF QUEENS. 



A Serious Trouble in the Tropics. 



BY CH. NOEL BDDOWES. 



On page 460, Aug. 15, your editorial note 

 on my contribution to the discussion on the 

 question "Why are the queens of natural 

 swarms killed?" confines itself to the balling 

 of introduced queens. My remarks referred 

 to queens which had bsen born and reared 

 in the hive, and were balled by their own 

 bees when I lifted the cover to examine the 

 hive. It is needless to say I destroyed the 

 queens of such colonies. 



1 will give one very marked case that I 

 observed three years ago. The bees of the 

 colony balled and killed their own queen. 

 I gave them a ripe queen-cell, and the vir- 

 gin hatching from it failed to mate and was 

 lost. The hive was, consequently, queen- 

 less and broodless. I then tried to introduce 

 a queen by Doolittle's flat-cage system — the 

 cage not being driven down to the midrib, 

 under which circumstances the bees usually 

 release the queen by cutting out the comb 

 under the edge of the cage, within two or 

 three days. The bees in this case cut out 

 the queen in 12 hours, and killed each other 

 by the dozen while attempting to ball the 

 queen when she was in the cage, and killed 

 her as soon as they liberated her. 



I then attempted to introduce, by differ- 

 ent well-known systems, three successive 

 queens, which were all killed. After that I 

 shook the bees into an empty box, and shut 

 them up; and when they were in an uproar, 

 on finding themselves queenless, broodless, 

 and combless, I let a mated queen run in 

 through a small entrance. On examining 

 the hive the next day I found the queen 

 dead on the floor, and the bees had built 

 three pieces of comb, about three inches 

 long and about the width of a man's thumb, 

 composed entirely of queen-cell bases. I 

 then threw the bees back on combs with 

 brood from another colony, and on these 

 started ten queen-cells, and I let them re- 

 queen themselves. 



I can cite another instance which is very 



extraordinary, where an old queen belong- 

 ing to the hive paid not the slightest atten- 

 tion to her bees, following her all over the 

 combs; and each time she entered a cell to 

 lay they formed a ball over her while she 

 laid, from under which she crawled out and 

 continued laying, leaving the bees to kill 

 each other, under the impression that they 

 had her in the ball. I have seen those bees 

 on three distinct occasions do this at inter- 

 vals of more than a week. 



This old queen was not killed by her bees; 

 but on each occasion of an attempt to ball, 

 there were from 150 to 800 bees killed. 



These are experiences we meet with in 

 tropical bee-keeping which are rather puz- 

 zling to the man from the temperate zone. 

 This balling has occurred at different times 

 during a heavy honey-flow or in dearth; but 

 it is more common in November and De- 

 cember, when the honey-flow commences. 



But, as I have said in my former letter, by 

 a process of selection I have nearly eliminat- 

 ed this trouble. 



Half Way Tree, Jamaica. 



SUPERSEDURE 



OF NEWLY 

 QUEENS. 



How to Prevent it. 



INTRODUCED 



BY ARTHUR C. MILLER. 



How very frequently the complaint is 

 heard that the bees superseded some choice 

 queen recently introduced! The trouble is 

 generally laid to harm to the queen caused 

 by mailing, or to some injury such as a lost 

 leg, etc. In all these cases, with rarely an 

 exception, the queens were introduced in 

 cages and released by the eat-out plan. Man 

 meddled and muddled as usual. Dequeen- 

 ing and immediate direct introduction of 

 the new queen is rarely followed by attempt- 

 ed supersedure, even though the queen came 

 from a distance. If, however, the queen 

 was taken in the full tide of her laying, and 

 caged with the ordinary quota of attendants, 

 she may have received such a shock to her 

 system that she will never again be good. 



When the bees start to supersede a recent- 

 ly introduced queen, the trouble may be 

 stopped by the following procedure: Remove 

 the started cells, also two combs of capped 

 and emerging brood, and in their jilace put 

 from another colony two combs of hatching 

 eggs and very young larvae. That is all. 



If the attempts at supersedure are resum- 

 ed it can be stated with certainty that the 

 queen is really failing. There is a rare ex- 

 ception when the bees continue attempts at 

 supersedure after the transposition of brood 

 when the queen is really good; so if the 

 queen is particularly valuable it is well to 

 remove started cells again and change 

 another comb of capped brood for one of un- 

 sealed larvae. By combs of capped brood 

 or unsealed larvae is meant where the great- 

 er part of the contained young are of the 

 character specified. The foregoing proced- 

 ure is based on fundamental laws of bee life. 



Providence, R. I. 



