;{7(; 



GLEIANINGS IN JJEE CULTURE. 



Aug 



not be kept swarmiiiji- all the time; so I adopted the 

 transposition process, and soon found that I could 

 get all swarms that were strong- enough to have 

 cups for fiueen-eell-i started, to swarm almost when 

 I wished to have them, and rear all their queens 

 from my best stock. Thus those made strong 

 swarmed first, the medium next, and those made 

 weak bj' taking- away brood last, furnishingr me with 

 a succession of natural cells for nearly two months, 

 and I do not see why I can not keep it up till Sep- 

 tember if I wish; for if pasturage falls, the lack can 

 be supplied by feeding. At first I looked ovor the 

 stock, and all I found having eggs in the queen-cells 

 I marked; and when the eg-g-s had been hatched, and 

 royal jelly was plenty in the cells, I took out their 

 larviB and jjut in one just hatched from my best 

 queen. To do this I shaved the piece of eomb taken 

 from my best stock down near the base of the cells, 

 when the small larviB just hatched could readily be 

 seen. Ni^w, with a toothpick made of a goose quill, 

 having- the point bent into a hooked shape while 

 soaked and then dried, so it should not stiaighten 

 out, I could lift these little larvte from their cradles 

 and set them floating in the royal jelly, from which, 

 in duo time, they emerg-ed royal princesses of the 

 right lineage. Next I thought trying taking those 

 eggs out of the cells an'l transferring my intended 

 i-oyal larvic directly into them. The bare cells, de- 

 void of all royal jellj', looked rather unpropitious, 

 and I doubted the proprietj- of placing the tiny in- 

 fants in such a hard cradle without even a blanket 

 beneath them; but an examination an hour or two 

 afterward showed them plentifully supplied with 

 the necessary loyal jelly. If they were well cared 

 for in this case, why not transfer them into the 

 queen-cups before the eggs were laid? was my next 

 thought. To think was to act, and I soon had IT lit- 

 tle larviv snugly ensconced in 17 queen-cup cradles. 

 An examination showed, however, that only about 

 half of them were fed, while the others were re- 

 moved. Next I took 24 old queen-cells from 

 which the queens had hatched, and stuck them, by 

 means of melted wax, on to strips, and tacked 4 of 

 the strips into a frame. Then I transferred the lit- 

 tle larvae into them. Some of those cells were one- 

 fourth full of old royal jelly, left by the previous 

 queen; and although it looked hard and uninviting, 

 I placed the larvte on it. I expected the bees would 

 remove the old jelly, larva; and all ; but an examina- 

 tion showed that these old cells were the surest of 

 the whole. Next I tried transferring eggs; and al- 

 though I succeeded to some extent, yet as many as 

 4 out of 5 were removed. To be sure, this is all some 

 trouble; but I think the queens will average enough 

 better to pay; and as I said at the outset, good 

 <iueens are the mainspring to successful bee-keep- 

 ing. The difference between a queen that will keep 

 SCO square inches of comb occupied with brood, and 

 one that will keep but 600, is half of the surplus 

 honey-crop; and the difference between one that 

 will keep MOO square inches of comb in brood, and 

 one that will keep but 400, is the difference between 

 a g.')0d crop and no crop at all. Then let all of us 

 see to it, that our queens are of the highest type 

 possible to obtain. 



I forgot to say, that to keep track of the cells in 

 poor stock which were grafted with the selected lar- 

 Vfe, I stuck a l!i-iach wire nail through the comb 

 near the cell. By this means it was impossible for 

 the bees to steal a march on me by deceiving me as 

 to the identity of the cells. Also I believe Mr. J. L. 



Davis, of Michigan, was the first to bring the trans- 

 position of larviB to notice. G. M. Doolittle. 

 Borodino, N. Y., July 18, 1881. 



I believe there has been a caution, friend 

 D., in these pages, against nsing the trans- 

 position process, when there were other 

 larva' in the hive. If I understand you. 

 yours would all have it. To illustrate : If 

 you transpose larvae into queen-cells in a 

 stock of black bees, if the black bees have 

 larva' of their own unsealed, they will often 

 throw out the larva.' you givetliem, and 

 use some from their own hive. I do not 

 know why they do this, unless they dislike 

 the larvae because of its having been handled. 

 We transposed a great deaf last year, but 

 this season have not used it. You have crit- 

 icised the way friend Hutchinson and the 

 rest of us have raised queens, quite a little; 

 and when you advertised those raised in the 

 good old way under the inlliience of natural 

 swarming, we expected you were going to do 

 away with the " unnatural''' ••tinkering" 

 way of getting up queens. I do not mean to 

 say that queens reared by transposing the 

 larva' are necessarily iioor, aside from the 

 danger of having the bees use their own lar- 

 vae after all, as I have mentioned; but is it 

 really '• according to nature," or are we to go 

 according to nature, after all V 



^VHV BO BKES SriNG lUKlTrBERS OV 

 THEIK OWN FAMILY SWITIETIMES ? 



fJlHE 3l3t of May I hadanew swarm which I hived 

 and went to work all right. I think the sec- 

 ond or third day after, about six o'clock, I 

 saw a ball of bees at one corner of entrance; I got a 

 smoker, and open d and found a ball inside, and a 

 queen in that. They had killed a number of their 

 own bees. This was an old laying queen out of a 

 hive in my own yard, for she had lost a foot, and I 

 knew her, and she must have come out without 

 many bees to accompany her; but wh3' should she 

 try to go in that hive? 



Queen-cell, queen just coming out; let her in at 

 the entrance, Saturday afternoon. I looked and 

 found her all right, about an hour after. Sunday 

 morning, looking around to see if all was quiet, I 

 found this nucleus killing off their bees and carry- 

 ing them out lively; so I got a smoker and opened 

 the hive; found my j'oung quCi-n in a ball; took her 

 out and caged her till Monday morning, and they 

 took her again all right. I took the laying queen 

 out of this nucleus about an hour before letting h'.r 

 in Saturday. July iith, about G o'clock, T had her 

 laying all day, looking round to see if all was quiet; 

 found a three-story hive killing off their bees; 

 opened them, but could not find any queen or ball, 

 but they were a good deal excited. On the lOth they 

 were still bringing out, now and then, a bee. 



I introduced an Italian (jueen in a black swarm. I 

 think the third day I found her dead at the entrance 

 of the second hive in same row back of them, but 

 no dead bees, no fighting. Why did the blacks drive 

 her out? Here is what beats me. 1 took a queen 

 out of a nucleus, carried her off half a mile, put her 

 in a hive, and the third day went to lot her out; 

 took the cage out, and pried up the wire cloth; and 

 she went like a streak. "Well, you are gone," 

 thought I. I came home, and the third or fourth 

 day went to that nucleus to see if they had started 



