September, 1920 



O T. E A N I N O S IN B E E C IT L T tJ K E 



may be so cliaiiycd that the rptuniiiig bees 

 will not recognize it as their previous home. 

 Of course, it" the [larent hive is carried some 

 distance from the old stand on which you 

 have tlie new hive there will be less danger 

 of the bees' entering the wrong hive. 



WUV LOSS OF QUEEN'S IN MATING. 



{Anmver bii L. L. Andrew-i.) 

 Question. — We have been having: an unusual fa- 

 tality of que*'iis here in southern California at the 

 time of mating the ((Ueen-s. Do you think this loss 

 is due to lizards or to birds? If birds, what kinds 

 do the damage ? 



California. F. P. Heston. 



Answer.— The loss of queens at the time 

 of mating can be accounted for in several 

 ways. This being an unusually cool si)ring 

 with many cloudy and foggy days, condi- 

 tions were very unfavorable for queens' 

 Hying out and returning. Esjiecially was 

 this the case where there were intermittent 

 iiours of sunshine and clouds. Birds, the 

 martins in particular, always get many bees 

 and, of course, are not respecters of queens. 

 These birds are always to be found around 

 the apiary, and very few of the beekeepers 

 realize the damage they do. Other birds, 

 such as the California mocking bird and 

 some of our tly-catchers, have been accused 

 of eating bees, but I have no proof of their 

 guilt. In fact, I am willing that the mocker, 

 as we call him, should have a few bees rath- 

 er than any harm should be done him. We 

 have always felt that lizards were friendly 

 toward the bees until this year, when we 

 killed and dissected several and found them 

 gorged with bees. Since then we have had 

 no mercy on them. We have found more 

 queens than usual with defective wings this 

 year. These, not being able to fly, of course 

 turn out to be drone-laj^ers. 



R.MSE QUEENS OR BUY THEM SHAPE OF QUEEN 



EFFECT OF REQUEENING ON LONGEVITY. 

 (Answers by Jay Smith.) 



Questions. — (1) Does Mr. Smith believe tliat ;i 

 sideliner or small honey-producer could raise i?o:)d 

 queens and raise them as cheaply as he can buy 

 them, provided he can get them near by ? I believe 

 many queens are injured by shipping, but that a 

 good breeder will raise better queens than the ordi- 

 nary lieekeeper. (2) Does Mr. Smith attach any 

 importance to the shape of a virgin queen '! Does 

 he prefer any certain form, and if so, what is it '! 

 Will any certain form produce more egg.s and live 

 longer than another? (3) Will requeening every 

 year tend to produce queens and bees shorter-lived 

 than we had years ago when queens were kept 

 three and four years ? My youngest queens stood 

 the April storm best, generally speaking. .\nd year- 

 old queens are my oldest in the future, unless they 

 are exceptionally good and are kept for breeding 

 purposes. 



Michigan. .\. W. Lindsay. 



Answers. — (1) It depends a great deal on 

 the sideliner or the small honey-producer 

 himself. If he has a liking for this branch 

 of the work, it would be both profitable and 

 pleasurable to rear his own queens, and the 

 risk of introducing can be eliminated by giv- 

 ing a large, well-<leveloped queen-cell to the 

 colony when the honey flow is well on; for, 

 if this colony was (pieenless 10 days when 

 the honev tbtw was on, it would do no harm 



since the bees reared from the eggs laid l)y 

 the queen at this time, ha<l she been left in 

 the colony, would have emerged too late to 

 ilo any good for that honey How. I cannot 

 agree with you that many queens are in- 

 .iured in the mail. If the journey is extend- 

 ed long, say over 10 days, the bees and queen 

 are of course worn out and arrive feeble, 

 and injury is apt to result, altho many 

 queens have been shipped to England, and 

 the reports from there are very gratifying, 

 altho queens were three weeks on the 

 road. My experience in both selling and 

 buying queens is that if the queen is shipped 

 when she is just beginning to lay, is a fine, 

 vigorous queen, and is properly introduced, 

 she wuU be every whit as good as tho she 

 was raised by the bees themselves in their 

 own hive. (2) A virgin queen just hatched 

 should be large, long, with broad abdomen, 

 tapering gradually from the thorax down to 

 a point. Two or three days old, she will be 

 much smaller, little larger than a worker, 

 and should be extremely active and nervotis. 

 After she has mated and begins to lay she 

 should begin to stretch out, broad and very 

 long. A blunt queen is not as good in my 

 experience. Neither is a small queen as 

 good. Some report small queens are as good 

 as larger ones. I do not wish to argue with 

 these people, but will state that in the 

 many thousands that I have used, I am yet 

 to see a small queen that was worth a cent. 

 The bigger the queen the better. (3) Re- 

 queening every year could in no way produce 

 queens that were short-lived. How could it? 

 If you rear a queen, the life of the queen 

 will depend largely on the breeding queen 

 back of her, and what difference could it 

 make after this queen was reared whether 

 that breeder was kept four or five years or 

 immediately killed? The only possible dif- 

 ference, as I look at it, would be if you 

 reared queens from a breeder, say five years 

 old, thus trying to transmit the longevity 

 from the old queen. If there were any dif- 

 ference I should say queens reared from an 

 old queen would not have the vigor of those 

 reared from a j'oung one. In fact, I have 

 seen old, decrepit queens that were super- 

 seded produce deformed queens, and I laid 

 it to the fact that the old queen laid two or 

 three eggs in the cell and the young queen 

 was misshapen before the bees removed the 

 extra larva. A similar question arose a few- 

 years ago concerning apples. A good many 

 said that when they constantly took buds 

 from young apple trees that had never borne 

 fruit, following this up year after year, the 

 young trees would not laear as well as tho 

 buds had been taken from trees that had 

 borne for a number of years. The Indiana 

 Horticultural Society conducted a number of 

 experiments along this line, taking buds 

 from young nursery stock that had been 

 taken thus for many generations, before any 

 of the trees had ever borne fruit. Right 

 alongside of these, buds were taken from 

 trees that had borne fruit for many years. 

 The (Ifclsioti was there was no difference. 



