384 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



May, 1917 



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HEA DS OF GRAlNl |2gi|[ ff~DIFFERENT FIEL DS 



May, 1917 



BY GRACE ALLEN 



I cannot sing of bees and flowers 

 This best of all earth 's Mays, 



When men must meet such tragic hours 

 Thru all the lovely days. 



The cardinals are calling clear, 



The raptured mockingbird 

 Sings sweeter, tenderer, more near 



Than ever I have heard. 



The bees are humming round each hive — 



You know the old, old way, 

 That makes you thrill to be alive 



On such a tingling day. 



Beneath blue skies and waking trees 

 Where green shows more and more. 



There stirs and floats upon the breeze 

 A flag above my door. 



The Influence of I want to ask some 



Young Queens on the questions, and should 

 Swarming Question like some advice. 

 Last summer was the 

 first time for me to clip queens. I had about 

 all the bees I thought my location would 

 stand for, and attempted to prevent swarm- 

 ing; and in case I did not succeed I wanted 

 to hold the bees on their brood. I tried a 

 plan given in Dr. Miller's book. When the 

 swarm issued I caged the queen, cut all cells, 

 left the caged queen in a Miller cage shoved 

 in at the entrance. After five days I cut 

 cells again. In another five days I cut what 

 showed up again and released the queen. 

 Part of the colonies treated this way went 

 to work. Some of them did not let up work 

 at all, but the rest of them swarmed re- 

 peatedly. I would cage the queen again and 

 see that there were no cells; let them go for 

 a few days, and then release the queen. It 

 made no difference. They would not work — 

 sulked and hung out. I removed the queen 

 in a few of them and gave a cell. When the 

 cell hatched they went to work all right 

 after losing two weeks or so of a fine clover 

 flow. To prevent swarming I went over all 

 colonies about once in ten days and destroy- 

 ed queen-cells that might be started. I had 

 about 15 colonies out of 120 that did not 

 make any preparation to swarm. These 

 were my best surplus producers of course. 

 These made from four to nine Danzenbaker 

 supers of comb honey each. I tried several 

 other schemes to get those sulkers to go to 

 work. I removed all brood and gave empty 

 combs. I gave some of them ten combs of 

 sealed honey, with the idea they would carry 

 it upstairs to give the queen room to lay. 

 I gave ten frames of full sheets of founda- 

 tion. All these schemes looked alike to 

 these bees. As soon as the queen was re- 



leased they would swarm. But all colonies 

 that had the queen removed, and a cell given, 

 sulked till the queen hatched and mated, 

 and then went to work. , 



I have been thinking that if I would 

 raise a lot of queens and have them ready 

 in nucleus I could at swarming time ex- 

 change queens, giving the colony a young 

 queen. If the old queen was not too old, 

 and a good one, I introduce her to the nu- 

 cleus where I got the young one, and use her 

 again, or else raise enough young ones to 

 do the business. This looks like a lot of 

 trouble to me; but if I thought it would do 

 the business I would try it once any way, 

 as I have quite a lot of hybrid and black 

 queens. 



Do you think it a good plan, if the stock 

 in the colony is good and the chances for 

 pure mating good, to remove the queen and 

 leave just one cell after the swarm returns? 

 Would the bees lose too much time to make 

 the plan a poor one by waiting for the young 

 queen to hatch f 



Notwithstanding my amateur bungling I 

 got a crop last summer that looked good to 

 me. We had a great clover flow that lasted 

 till the dry weather stopped it in August. 

 I worked my best colonies for comb honey 

 and the rest of them for extracted. I have 

 sold 243 cases of comb honey and 5000 lbs. 

 of extracted honey. 



Sabetha, Kan. Frank Hill. 



Dr. Miller replies: 



Bees are pesky critters, aren't they? 

 Your experiences remind me of some I've 

 had myself. I would carefully plan out a 

 certain scheme that I felt sure would work — 

 couldn 't help but work — and then when 

 submitted to the bees they would none of it. 



One of these schemes was the very one 

 you are now counting on. I decided I would 

 get a young queen into each colony in one 

 of the out-apiaries, and then good-by to 

 swarming. To get young queens ahead of 

 swarming-time is easier said than done; but 

 it may be done, even if we send south for 

 queens. At any rate, I got in the young 

 queens, and then — the bees swarmed! 



The fact is that the presence of a young 

 queen, no matter if she has not yet been 

 laying a week, will not overcome the swarm- 

 ing f«ver if it is already there. The pres- 

 ence of a young queen, however, will, almost 

 without exception, prevent the development 

 of the swarming fever, if she enters upon 

 her duties while yet no swarming fever is 

 present. The late C. J. II. Gravenhorst gave 

 it as a rule without exception that a colony 

 having a queen reared in the hive in the 

 current year would not swarm that year. 

 That may be true with blacks — his bees 

 were blacks — but there are rare exceptions 

 with Italians. So if you cannot get the 

 young queen established at laying before 



