OCTOBER 15, 1S14 



805 



l)iouglil to tile heath in order lo be complet- 

 ed \\ntli honey of the heath. The latter crop 

 being over, the bees are generally killed, and 



the bee-farmers await the next market fo 

 buy new swarms. 

 Breukelen, Holland. 



MEQUEENING WITHOUT DEQUEENMG 



BY J. E. HAND 



My thanks are due to Mr. Merwin, page 

 514, July 1, for a further explanation of his 

 method of requeening without dequeening'. 

 Undoubtedly, caging the queen under the 

 conditions he mentions will induce bees to 

 finish grafted queen-cells; but how about 

 the labor of hunting up the old queen? Will 

 not such cells be built just as readily above 

 aqueen-excluder without caging the queen? 

 and will not a young queen hatched above 

 an excluder supersede the old queen upon 

 the removal of the excluder? I cannot better 

 express my views upon this subject than by 

 quoting the following 

 sentences from G. M. 

 Doolittle's book on 

 queen-rearing, page 

 158. Here is the quo- 

 tation : " If you wish 

 t o supersede any 

 queen in your yard on 

 account of old age or 

 for any other purpose, 

 you have only to put 

 on an upper story 

 with a queen-exclud- 

 ing honey-board under 

 it ; place a frame of 

 brood with a queen- 

 cell upon it in this 

 upper story ; and after 

 the young queen has 

 hatched, withdraw the 

 queen-excluder, and 

 your old queen is su- 

 perseded without your 

 even having to find 

 her," etc. 



Again on page 96 in 

 the same book Mr. 

 Doolittle says, in part, 

 *" This is a singular 

 freak, and one which 

 I know not how to 

 account for; but I do 

 know that so far every 

 virgin queen that has 

 succeeded in getting 

 from the upper story 

 into the lower one has 

 superseded the queen 

 reigning there, wheth- 

 er that queen was old 

 or young." AY li i 1 e 



these sentences were written a quarter of 

 a century ago, they are true to-day, and 

 will remain true to the end of time, for 

 the instinct of bees cannot change. I wish 

 to emphasize this trait in bee nature, be- 

 cause I regard it as an important factor in 

 the economical solution of two important 

 problems, namely, " requeening without de- 

 queening," and " rwarm prevention." Con- 

 cerning the former problem, however, little 

 more can be said, for the virgin-queen meth- 

 od is undoubtedly the surest and most eco- 

 nomical method known. 



Lifting a comb from a frame hive at the bee market. Phutogiaijliud by 

 J. C. Bee Mason,. Londota. 



