APRIL 1, 1914 



271 



some means before being' sent out. Then it 

 is so much easier to find tlie queen in tliese 

 little colonies that the time saved in caging 

 amounts to considerable. It is very annoy- 



ing to have to search any length of time for 

 the queen when one is in a hurry. Taking 

 it all around, 1 like the plan very much. 

 St. Joseph, Mo. 



QUEEN-REARING ON THE ISLAND OF CYPRUS 



BY M. G. DERVISIIIAN 



Until within a very few years I obtained 

 my queens from natural swarms only, and 

 I used to have a large percentage of swarms 

 every year in April and May. The major- 

 ity of these ciueens were small in size, and 

 weak. The last two or three years, with 

 the help of Gleanings, T have adopted up- 

 to-date swarm-controlling methods, and 

 during two seasons I have had only two or 

 three natural swarms from between fifty 

 and sixty colonies. This improvement has 

 been profitable, both for the production of 

 honey and for vigorous prolific young 

 queens. 



Years ago the colonies which swarmed 

 did not yield any honey, and those which 

 yielded honey could- not produce any queens 

 — that is, they could not do both together. 

 Under the i^resent seientifie methods I make 

 one or two of my weak colonies queenless, 

 and commence feeding. The bees start 

 queen-cells which I destroy before they are 

 sealed. I give cell cups grafted from my 

 best colonies having fine long queens. The 

 next clay, or about thirty or forty hours 

 afterward, I remove these cell cups into my 

 breeding colony which I especially pirepare 

 for that purpose as follows : Early in May 

 I create a very strong queen-rearing colony, 

 and I change the unsealed larvee from this 

 Avith sealed brood from other colonies, so 

 that in the lower story there remain two 

 combs of honey and pollen, one on each 

 side, two frames having full sheets of comb 

 foundation, and six combs of hatching 

 brood. I confine the queen of this queen- 

 rearing colony to the lower story of ten 

 combs Avith a queen-excluder. On top of 

 this excluder I put another full-sized story 

 which I fill with eight combs of hatching 

 brood from other colonies. I commence 

 feeding with thin syrup or (preferably) 

 honey mixed with water. Two or three days 

 afterward, when most of the brood has 

 hatched, I insert in this upper story cell 

 cups grafted from my best colonies having 

 long year-old queens. (These cells were 

 fii'st accepted by other queenless colonies, 

 and then transferred to this queen-rearing 

 colony). I continue feeding regularly every 

 evening. 



The number of the cells given does not 



exceed twelve, as 1 have reason to believe 

 that, the fewer the cells, the better the re- 

 sults obtained. By accident last September 

 I discovered that a moderate-sized cglony 

 out of which I had taken a queen started a 

 single queen-cell, and for an experiment I 

 did not replace this cell with one raised 

 under the fore-mentioned method. When the 

 cell was sealed I found it was the largest I 

 had ever seen, and tlie resulting young 

 queen was correspondingly larger. I intend 

 to keep her for the purpose of breeding. 

 When this colony started the queen-cell in 

 question the bees were fed every evening. 



Some of the queen-rearing colonies I 

 divide into nuclei of three combs each, and 

 give each lot of bees a queen-cell. I keep 

 these nuclei about two feet away from each 

 other, all in one place, and confine the bees 

 in each nucleus for two or three days in 

 order that they may not return to their old 

 stands. On the third day after sunset, just 

 before dark, I remove the wire screens from 

 the entrances and put in front of each 

 nucleus a board a foot square, slanting 

 against the front in such a way that the 

 bees when they come out may bump their 

 lieads against the board. Each board is 

 painted a diff^erent color — red, white, green, 

 blue, black, etc., the object being to make 

 the queen and her escorts mark well their 

 new home. I keep these boards in place for 

 eight days. Before adopting this plan my 

 percentage of loss of queens was great, but 

 noAv hardly a queen enters the wrong hive. 



I leave the queen of this breeding colony 

 with three or four combs of her hive, and 

 then refill the loAver story and the top story 

 with hatching brood from other colonies so 

 that, in a few days, this breeding-hive again 

 becomes crowded with young bees. After 

 this I again give cell cups started by other 

 queenless colonies as described above. As 

 soon as the cells become ripe in the queen - 

 rearing colony I remove them into the nu- 

 cleus Iiive described, from Avhich the queens 

 are taken later on to be mailed. It is un- 

 derstood that the nuclei as well as the large 

 colonies are all fed regularly with a small 

 quantity of thin syru]i every evening. T 

 never sell queens from the nuclei until they 

 have been laying for about twenty days, so 



