278 GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE May, 1920 



FROM THE FIELD OF EXPERIENCE 



npplies onlj^ to beekeepers on a small scale, 

 those having 500 colonies and under. 



Where they have colonies by the thou- 

 sand and are moving bees every few months 

 to different locations to catch the flow, a 

 truck or trucks might be better; but, in our 

 locality and with the number of colonies 

 we keep, I want you to understand in cold 

 black ink that we have no use for a truck. 



Paris, Canada. Alex Taylor. 



SHORT CUTS IN REQUEENING 



Annual Requeening and Packing Cases Used as 

 Protection for Mating Boxes 



Beekeepers who operate several hundred 

 colonies of bees partly in outyards, with lit- 

 tle or no help, can appreciate the necessity 

 of eliminating any manipulations in requeen- 

 ing that are not strictly necessary. 



I have a fairly uniform strain of bees, 

 with all the queens Italian, but an average 

 of 10 per cent mismated. In requeening my 

 practice the past two seasons has been as 

 follows : 



About a week before the end of the main 

 honey flow I kill all queens that are mis- 

 mated and all queens that have not produc- 

 ed an average crop and all two-year-old 

 queens, altho the latter are all good queens 

 except for age. All the colonies whose 

 queens are thus killed are permitted to 

 raise queen-cells which are destroyed after 

 eight or nine days. At the same time I go 

 to my colonies that had good two-year-old 

 queens and mark all frames with queen-cells. 

 One marked frame is left in each hive; the 

 rest with bees, brood, and queen-cells are 

 used for colonies needing new queens. At 

 the end of four weeks all colonies are look- 

 ed into to ses if there is a young queen. If 

 she is present she should be old enough to 

 have been laying eggs for a week. Con- 

 sequently, it is only necessary to find eggs 

 or sealed brood, and therefore a whole yard 

 may be examined in a short time. 



The first year this plan was tried in my 

 apiaries, I found 22 per cent of the queens 

 lost; so this season, I made 30 extra two- 

 frame nuclei for every 100 colonies requeen- 

 ed. These two-frame nuclei were made by 

 taking one frame of honey and one frame of 

 bees with the brood and one or more good 

 queen-cells and placing in each of the nu- 

 cleus hives. The entrance, a %-inch auger 

 hole, was closed with green leaves tight 

 enough to last two or three days before it 

 would be dried out sufficiently for the bees 

 to eat their way thru if I did not get time 

 to open it. Of course, the nuclei must be 

 protected from extreme heat and cold. 



In due time there ought to be at least 20 

 laying queens out of the 30 extra • nuclei. 

 These are used and introduced into the colo- 

 nies that are queenless. But because these 



colonies have been queenless a long time 

 and all the bees are old, it is a waste of 

 time trying to introduce any queen to them 

 as they are. Therefore, after having ex- 

 amined a whole yard and having made a 

 record of all the colonies that are queen- 

 less, all such colonies are given three or 

 preferably four frames of brood in all 

 stages from other colonies and again al- 

 lowed to build cells from the brood given 

 them; and after eight or nine days enough 

 laying queens from the nuclei are caged in 

 Miller cages and taken to the queenless 

 colonics and introduced in the usual way, 

 after having destroyed all the cells these 

 colonies may have built on the three or 

 four combs given. These cells are destroyed 

 quickly and thoroly by shaking the bees off 

 the combs to make certain that no cells are 

 missed. The colonies are now in condition 

 to accept the queens, especially if four 

 frames of bees and brood have been used so 

 that plenty of young bees have hatched. If 



This yard in 191516 contained 50 colonies in modi- 

 fied Long Idea hives, with supers, and packed all 

 the year round as shown in the back center of pic- 

 ture. As a result of this experiment, Mr. Has- 

 singer has all his bees in the modified Long Idea 

 hives today. 



only one or two frames of brood are used, 

 it seems there is too large a proportion of 

 old bees, and in many such cases the bees 

 will not accept the queen, especially if no 

 honey is coming in. 



There are only two examinations neces- 

 sary for all colonies that were average pro- 

 ducers and that had Italian bees. First, to 

 find the queen and kill her. Second, examine 

 a month later to find eggs or brood. The 

 colonies that had inferior or mismated 

 queens would require three examinations. 

 The additional examination is to destroy 

 all their queen-cells and give a frame with 

 cells from a better colony. All colonies found 

 to be queenless will require six examinations 

 as the whole process must be repeated. 



Four or five of the colonies may be found 

 with laying workers. All the combs that 

 have laying-worker eggs or brood are re- 

 moved with the bees into a super or hive 



