JULY 15, 1916 



601 



TIMELY HINTS ON QUEEN- RAISING 

 Using Naturally Built Cells without Transferring 



BY JOSEPH GRAY 



The underlying principle of all queen- 

 rearing may be condensed into four words 

 —crowded, clustering, queenless bees. Some 

 may question the queenless part of this 

 statement ; but the principle is there, even 

 tho a queen may reign in another part of 

 the hive. 



Queens should be produced from healthy 

 stock, and in a perfectly healthy neighbor- 

 hood, therefore a strict watch should be 

 kept for both types of foul brood, and, I 

 am sorry to add, Nosema apis. As regards 

 locality for a heavy or light flow I am some- 

 what undecided. 1 do know that my great- 

 est hatch — 40 cells on one comb — were 

 raised during a heavy flow. The nuclei do 

 well at such a time; and so, while a light 

 flow may give a little less trouble from the 

 crowding of combs with honey, still I rather 

 favor a heavy flow of nectar. 



METHOD. 



All queen-raising falls under two heads 

 — man-made cell cups and grafting, and 

 bee-made cells and natural selection. I have 

 always pinned my faith to the latter. 

 " Queens raised direct from the egg " has 

 been my slogan. 



It is immaterial who first used the flat 

 comb. Suffice it to say that in 1909 at the 

 Lancashire Eoyal Agricultural Show, Eng- 

 land, in a lecture on queen-raising I exhibit- 

 ed a quarter-frame hive and flat comb with 

 9 fine queen-cells thereon, and brought 

 forth the principle of "crowded, clustering, 

 queenless bees." Do I still advocate so small 

 a frame as 4 x 7? No. Why? Because the 

 larger and bigger the cluster, the better, 

 both for raising and mating. 



At the present time I am using the full- 

 size American standard fi'ame here in the 

 Far West. The more we can cut out the 

 fads and make one article serve two pur- 

 poses the better. It is next to impossible 

 to store combs except on the colonies. The 

 moths get them every time. 



SELECTING THE BREEDER. 



One season I was going thru 1000 colo- 

 nies. At yard No, 7 I crme across a colony 

 that for two seasons ^ad filled two supers 

 to the others one. I never saw that queen, 

 yet she was my favorite. Somehow I think 

 it is habit ; but I cannot help marking a 

 queen a breeder if her colony shows excep- 

 tional honey-gathering qualities. 



After honey-getting comes temper. At 



yard No. 8 didn't we " beat it " double 

 quick? Colony No. 4 was the mischief- 

 maker. That queen did not reign long. She 

 interfered too much with our work. The 

 temper of the bees from my favorite queen 

 was always even. 



The drones, being the production of the 

 queen only, are full-blood with the queen; 

 the workers and virgins are half-blood, 

 hence the drones should be the equal of the 

 queen in color. I note the evenness of the 

 worker's markings last. These are the in- 

 dex to the purity of the queen's mating. 



THE EQUIPMENT. 



Take a shallow super; make two saw- 

 cuts at each end, as. shown, and chisel out 

 the side wall between the saw-cut, and level 

 with the rabbet for a depth of about 2 

 inches, leaving 2Y2 inches below the frame. 

 This allows the top-bar to drop in the slot. 



and forms a pivot for opening and closing 

 the frame. Two nails are driven thi-u the 

 end walls as supports for the bottom-bar 

 end of the frame. This allows the frame 

 to be opened and closed like the leaf of a 

 book, without removal from the super — a 

 great convenience when said frame is cov- 

 ered with a big cluster of bees. It takes 

 very little smoke to uncover the cells suffi- 

 cient to examine or cut out. 



Having 

 previously in- 

 serted our 

 combs into 

 the breeding 

 colony, Ave 

 are ready to 

 prepare for 

 cell building. 

 It is easier to 



