G T. K A N T»N G S T N B K E CULTURE 



.\l'tJiT.ST, 3 920 



parts of water. After wringing out the ex- 

 cess of the solution remove the cover of the 

 hive, using a little smoke. Then lay the 

 damp cloth on the super and replace the 

 cover. In a few minutes the super will be 

 free of bees. 



Question. — I have one colony that is very strong. 

 They have one super almost full, but theiy haven't 

 swarmed, tho they have started queen-cells. Would 

 it be practical to take the frame that has the queen- 

 cell and give it to the weak colony after the cell 

 has been finished? 



New York. D. E. Curtis. 



Answer. — Our advice is to get the queen - 

 cell out of this hive immediately so that 

 this colony may not be inclined to swarm. 

 We also advise that you get the queen mated 

 before you give her to your weak colony. 

 In this way the old queen in the queenless 

 colony will continue laying until the time 

 that the virgin becomes a laying queen. To 

 accomplish this you could easily remove 

 from your strong colony two or three frames 

 of bees and brood, one of which, of course, 

 contains a queen-cell. Care should be taken 

 not to remove the queen. It would be well 

 to take one or two frames with brood and 

 one with some honey. These frames should 

 be placed in a hive on another stand and the 

 entrance contracted to a small opening. As 

 soon as the queen becomes mated, you may 

 then kill the queen in the weak colony and 

 unite this nucleus with it. 



Questions. — (1) Would it be safe to take all the 

 honey but that in the brood-chamber or bottom story 

 in the fall? Or, would you advi.se leaving a super 

 on the hive? (2) Will Italian and black bees be- 

 all right side by side? (3) One of my hives seems 

 to be full of drones instead of workers. What can 

 be the trouble? Will the bees live thru the winter 

 as well with so many drones? (4) What is the 

 cau-se of bees bringing out their young ones and 

 de.stroying them? The hive hasn't any super on. 

 Would that have anything to do with it? 



North Carolina. Paul Southard. 



Answers. — (1) At the end of the flow the 

 supers of honey should be removed and tho 

 colony in the brood-chamber left with at 

 least 30 pounds of stores for winter. If you 

 find that there is not as much honey as this 

 in the brood-chamber, it may be necessary 

 for you to exchange some of the frames of 

 the brood-chamber which do not have brood 

 in them at the time for some of the full 

 frames of honey from one of your supers. 

 Whenever you have any choice in the matter 

 it is better to choose those frames of honey 

 in which the comb is old, since the bees 

 winter better on such comb. (2) There is no 

 leason why your Italians and blacks should 

 not be side by side, but wo tliink quite likely 

 you will want to Italianize the blacks since 

 Italians are so much more desirable. Of 

 course, if you raise a young queen in the 

 apiary, when she flies to be mated, she might 

 very easily mate with a black drone, but 

 might also do this if the two hives were in 

 the sanie apiary, i ven if they were not side 

 by side. (3) You have not given us a com- 

 jdete enough description so that we can be 

 certain whv there is such an excess of drone 



comb. It may be that tliere is no good lay- 

 ing queen j)resent and that you have either 

 a drone layer or laying workers. In suc.h a 

 case you would find no worker brood at all. 

 In case you have a queen that is just begin- 

 ning to fail you might have a large amount 

 of drone brood and yet have some worker 

 brood. There is one other possibility, and 

 that is that you have old combs that have 

 too large an amount of drone-cells. If so, 

 it would pay you, during the flow, to cut out 

 such drone comb and replace it with work- 

 er comb. Any colony that has a large num- 

 ber of drones in the fall is abnoi-nial. Oth- 

 erwise, the drones would be killed at ihat 

 time of the year. Unless a good queen is 

 introduced in time so that workers may be 

 hatched before winter, you could hardly ex- 

 pect such a colony to live over winter. (4) 

 Sometimes when brood has become chilled or 

 overheated, or, when wax moths are at work 

 in the comb, bees may be seen pulling the 

 young ones out of the hive. There is also 

 an abnormal condition, which often happens 

 at this time of the year, in which you might 

 mistake the actions of the bees, thinking 

 that some of them were pulling out others 

 and killing them. The condition to which 

 we refer is often called the ' ' Disappearing 

 Disease." The sick bees are often pulled 

 out of the entrance by the well bees, but 

 they are not killed by them. In this case 

 you will probably see little bunches of these 

 affected bees in the grass in front of the 

 hive. The presence or absence of the super 

 has nothing whatever to do with the bees ' 

 pulling others from the entrance. 



Questions. — (1) In your talk in the May issue, 

 page 295 you say "in 21 days from the laying of 

 the egg the bee "hatches." Wouldn't emerges be bet- 

 ter ? Also on x^age 296 you say "put a queen-eix- 

 cluder lietween the two colonies" instead of "be- 

 tween the two stories." (2) Under "Life of tht> 

 Queien," you say of queen-cells, "as soon as they 

 are nicely started the queen deposits a fertilized egg 

 in eacli." You may be right, but I never knew a 

 (lueen to lay in a queen-ceill, and altho they may 

 somctiiiu's do so, they more often enlarge a cell 

 containing an egg or larva. Am I right? 



AVyoming. .John M. Gibbs. 



Answers. — (1) Thank you for the correc- 

 tions. You are quite right about it. (2) In 

 the past we have usually avoided this ques- 

 tion by saying the eggs are dej)osited in the 

 queen-cells. We have never seen a queen 

 deposit an egg in a queen-cell, nor do we 

 know of anyone who has. Furthermore, we 

 know that there are some authorities who 

 question whether the queen ever does this. 

 We do not believe that the bees generally 

 Ijuild the queen-cells around the eggs. As 

 we all know, the queen-cells in a colony 

 from which the queen has been suddenly re- 

 moved differ greatly in appearance from 

 ordinary queen-cells. In fact, they have 

 more tlie appearance of having been built 

 about the eggs or larvae, as we believe they 

 were. It seems quite possible, however, that 

 bees usually move the eggs into the (pieen- 

 cells. We do not know. 



