Deokmber, 1920 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



amounts of dark comb honey may be sold 

 locally, or where the comb honey that is 

 poorly finished and travel-stained because 

 of a slow and intermittent honey flow may 

 be sold to better advantage locally than the 

 same honey in the extracted form; but for 

 the general market only the finest grades of 

 comb honey find a ready sale. 



Comb-lioney Production Limited. 

 Successful comb-honey production on a 

 commercial scale being thus liniited to 

 rather restricted areas, and restricted to 

 beekeepers of peculiar training and tempera- 

 ment, makes of this a somewhat exclusive 

 phase of honey production; and if the old 

 ratio of prices between the two types of 

 honey is restored, the beekeeper who is able 

 to produce comb honey successfully will have 

 a great advantage, not only in the price he 

 receives for his crop, but also in the quicker 

 sale of the comb honey. The condition of 

 the honey market at the present time illus- 

 trates well the difference in readiness of 

 sale of the two types of honey which will 

 probably prevail for some time, unless comb 

 honey should so conipleteh^ disappear from 

 the markets that the demand for it would 

 cease because people have forgotten that 

 there is such a thing. The beekeeper who is 

 located in a region suitable for comb honey 



and who knows how to produce it to advan- 

 tage certainly will do well to produce comb 

 honey next year. 



Will Comb-honey Production Become a Lost 

 Art? 

 It would be unfortun»te indeed if the art 

 of comb-honoy production should be lost be- 

 cause of a lack of masters in this art. Not 

 only will there, in all probability, always be 

 a demand for a limited quantity of comb 

 honey which should hy all means be sup- 

 plied, but beekeeping will suffer a perma- 

 nent loss if comb-honey production should 

 be entirely discontinued. Much of the in- 

 formation in beekeeping which we now pos- 

 sess, and which we are utilizing in the pro- 

 duction of extracted honey, was obtained 

 during the comb-honey era by the solution 

 of the many intricate problems connected 

 with comb-honey production. Producers of 

 extracted honey of today may be thankful 

 that the production of comb honey has af- 

 forded so many knotty problems, the solu- 

 tion of which has added tremendously to 

 the richness of our fund of information ap- 

 plicable to extracted-honey production. 



[This introductory article on comb-honey produc- 

 tion is the first of a series of articles on the same 

 subject to be published in Gleanings during the 

 coming months, j 



OUR experi- 

 m e n t s in 

 mating 

 queen bees on 

 Duck Island, at 

 the eastern end 

 of Lake Ontario, 

 were started in 

 1919 and were 

 continued on a 

 somewhat larger scale in 1920. 



The object of these experiments has been 

 to mate together queens and drones bred 

 from certain Italian colonies in the Experi- 

 mental Farm Apiary at Ottawa that have 

 shown the best honey-producing and non- 

 swarming qualities and from this to develop 

 by selection a strain of Italians possessing 

 these qualities. 



Duck Island was selected for the mating 

 station because it is eight miles away from 

 the nearest island CGalboo Island) and over 

 eleven miles from the nearest mainland- 

 (Point Traverse, Ont.). Moreover, Duck 

 Island (including the small adjacent York- 

 shire Island) covers only about 1500 acres, 

 and there is good evidence that no honey- 

 bees exist upon it. 



Mating Experiments of 1919. 



In the 1919 experiments sixteen virgins 

 and 500 drones were taken in twin nuclei on 

 Langstroth frames to the island on July 23. 

 Twelve of the queens began to lay soon, but 

 six of these produced drones only and the 



QUEEN-MATING EXPERIMENTS 



This Year's Continuation of the 



^Mating Experiments Begun on 



Duck Island in i^jg 



By F. W. L. Sladen 

 (Apiarist, Dominion Department of Agriculture, Ottawa) 



other six vary- 

 ing proportions 

 of drones and 

 workers. T h -e 

 cause of the im- 

 perfect matings 

 was not ascer- 

 tained, but it 

 may have been 

 that the drones 

 were too young or too few. Further particu- 

 lars of the 1919 experiments will be found 

 in "Gleanings" for February, 1920, pages 

 80 to 82. 



Mating Experiment, 1920. 



In 1920, fifteen- queens, two of them hav- 

 ing emerged on July 19, and thirteen on 

 July 25 and 26, with 2128 drones that had 

 emerged between 9 A. M. on July 20 and 

 noon on July 24, were brought to Duck 

 Island on July 28 just as the basswood flow- 

 ers were beginning to open. They were 

 brought in sixteen ^win nuclei, each contain- 

 ing two Langstroth combs and a space for a 

 third comb. 



The weather from July 28 to Aug. 2 was 

 windy, cloudy, or cool. August 3 showed 

 some improvement and August 4 was clear, 

 warm, and still, a perfect day for mating. 

 Very favorable weather for mating con- 

 tinued almost every day until the end of the 

 month. 



None of the queens had begun to lay when 

 the island was revisited and all the colonies 



