APKIT. 1. 1914 



257 



two thirus, ur of 200 out of the 300 colonies, 

 lies will) the queen. Undoubtedly this is 

 lari^ely Irue; but the stores to be used by 

 the ditferent colonies while in a state of 

 repose, tlie age and vitality of the bees, and 

 the location of the colonies, all liave an 

 important bearing in this matter. 



Some colonies get started to work to a 

 greater or less extent on different bloom ; 

 and where so started they will adhere to 

 (|uite an extent on that bloom ; and when 

 tliis bloom is a long distance from the liive 

 the vitality of the bees is worn out faster 

 than when it is nearer their home. Then 

 colonies located in the shade, in low damp 

 places, or with the entrance facing away 

 from the sun, do not ripen their stores as 

 perfectly as do those with conditions more 

 favorable. We used to talk about colonies 

 as '' near alike as two peas," with one doing 

 good work and the other getting scarcely a 

 living; but most of our j^ractical ajDiarists 

 realize that, where every thing is consid- 

 ered, two colonies which may appear per- 

 fectly alike can, by one or more " cog- 

 wheels " being out of mesh, be very dissim- 

 ilar; and this dissimilarity may make all the 

 difference between the good and the poor. 



But let us turn our attention to the part 

 which the queen plays in this matter. Mr. 

 Hooper says, " These 300 colonies may have 

 queens all reared from the same mother and 

 under the same conditions, yet some are 

 very much inferior to others." Under nat- 

 ural swarming this is possible; but under 

 the guidance of an intelligent queen-breeder 

 it is not probable. With natural swarming 

 the rule is that, with the sealing of the first 

 queen-cell, out comes the first or prime 

 swarm ; and with this swarm go % to y% of 

 all the bees the colony numbei'ed before 

 swarming. The inmate of the first queen- 

 cell sealed has had all the food and atten- 

 tion lavished on it that the first one did 

 to bring forth a queen superior in every 

 respect; and all that is required from now 

 on till she emerges from her cell is sufficient 

 heat for her development. But as a rule 

 there will be half a dozen queen larvse in 

 other cells, all the way from those just 

 hatched from the &^^ to those near to seal- 

 ing over, and these can not have the atten- 

 tion lavished on them that the first did; 

 t herefore they, as Mr. Hooper says, " may 

 he inferior," and that just in proportion to 

 the lack of the best environment. 



Again, Mr. Hooper tells us, " We all 

 know that virgin queens take from four to 

 twelve days in mating." If by this he means 

 that any queen ever mates in four days 

 from maturity, I can not be classed with the 

 "all;" for I never knew of such an occui'- 

 ence. I do not say that such is not possible 



under the genial sunshine of Jamaica, but 

 even that is doubtful. 1 once rushed into 

 print with the report that I had a queen 

 emerge from the cell on the first day of 

 July, lead out a swarm on the second day, 

 and commence to lay on the fourth day of 

 the same month, and so I reasoned tliat all 

 of the old records were broken. But the 

 next year, during swarming time, we had a 

 week of cool rainy weather, so disagreeable 

 that not a swarm issued. On the eighth day 

 the sun came out, and the air was balmy. 

 Then, to my surprise, I found plenty of 

 young queens running around in hives 

 which had had swarms issue from them 

 with the old or mother queen, from four to 

 eight hours before. In this way my " brok- 

 en records " showed that I was not familiar 

 with tlie fact, often proven since then, that 

 virgin queens are often held in their cells 

 by the worker bees from one to eight days 

 after maturity, in which case they go out to 

 mate in accord with the length of time from 

 their matwrity rather than from the time 

 they emerged from the cell. 



During those earlier years of my bee- 

 keeping life I was continually puzzling over 

 the problem of part of my colonies giving 

 good yields of honey while others did 

 scarcely any thing; and it was not till I 

 commenced rearing queens as given in "Sci- 

 entific Queen-rearing " that I found any 

 answer to that puzzle. Then, with the se- 

 lection of larvae of proper age, from my 

 best queen mothers, I began to obtain more 

 nearly like results from all the colonies in 

 the apiary. I now had matters under my 

 own control to a great extent; and by tak- 

 ing a frame of nicely cleaned and polished 

 comb from a colony which was preparing 

 the cells for the first eggs laid by a recently 

 mated virgin queen, and putting this in with 

 my best breeder for twelve hours, and then 

 taking it out and giving it to a queenless 

 colony. I learned just the size and looks of 

 a larva twenty-four to thirty-six hours old, 

 which were the ages when they could be 

 turned into the best of queens to the best 

 advantage by " broody " bees, with the rich- 

 est chyle they had prepared for these 

 larvae. 



Having these tilings learned I then had 

 nineteen out of twenty of my virgin queens 

 mated and laying on the eighth or ninth day 

 after maturity, with not one out of fifty 

 failing to have plenty of eggs in the combs 

 of her colony or nucleus on the tenth day, 

 during the summer months, which would 

 give about such weather as Mr. Hooper has 

 during two-thirds of the year. When Sep- 

 tember and October come on, even the best 

 of our queens take more time after their 

 maturity for mating; and in October there 



