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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jan, 15 



like vise white, for he can not always get 

 shade in a bee-yard spot available. We find 

 in our own experience it is difficult to locate 

 our bees just where we would like. But 

 there is another condition where black would 

 be too much of a good thing. At night, 

 when there is no sun, there is but little dan- 

 ger that the supers will be too warm, say 

 for comb-honey production. If supers then 

 are painted black they would dissipaite heat 

 at a time when it is decidedly needed. Tak- 

 ing it all in al', general conditions require 

 white for hives. — Ed.] 



INTERESTING NOTES FROM GERMANY. 

 The Direct Method of Introducing Queens. 



BY DR. BRUNNICH. 



Let me give you a few words concerning 

 this extremely good way of Mr. Simmins, 

 given by Mr. Miller. I have given, during 

 this season, under the most varying condi- 

 tions, 13 queens to strong colonies, and a 

 large number to mating-cases, all with good 

 success. Perhaps I may mention some of 

 the most interesting cases. Generally I let 

 the queen go 45 minutes without feed. Once 

 by mistake one queen was obliged to fast 

 two full hours, without the least injury. It 

 was, however, a fertile one. A virgin would 

 certainly have died in an hour. Then I gave 

 some good puffs of tobacco smoke to the 

 colony, and after one or two minutes the 

 queen was allowed to enter the hive without 

 giving any more smoke. 



Queen No. 2 I gave to a colony which had 

 killed or balled different queens, and which 

 was already in quite a degenerated condi- 

 tion. No. 3 I gave to a lady, distant half an 

 hour from me. It was in the afternoon, at 

 3 o'clock. I sought the old queen, then I 

 gave smoke with only a cigar, and then the 

 young queen was given. In August I had a 

 strong colony whose young queen had been 

 lost some time. The bees already had lay- 

 ing workers with much drone brood, open 

 and capped. Well, the queen was given 

 and immediately accepted. Most interesting 

 to me was the following: 



I took a queen out of a section, which I 

 thought to be all right, and gave it to a 

 freshly dequeened colony. After some days 

 I found that all the brood in the section was 

 drone brood, and the queen probably not 

 fecundated. Nevertheless, the colony ac- 

 cepted the poor queen, which continued to 

 lay only drone eggs. I may add that all 

 queens given were marked on the thorax 

 with a very quick-drying color, so that no 

 mistake is possible. 



VITALITY OF SPERMATOZOIDS OF DRONES. 



I had occasion to have an exceedingly in- 

 teresting experience. The 29th of July, at 

 10 A.M., I found in a section in my mating- 

 station a dead queen— certainly dead for 

 some hours, for the queenless bees took not 

 the least notice of her. In the evening, at 

 10, I dissected the queen and found that she 



was fecundated, and opened the receptacu- 

 lum se7ninis, whose contents I examined in 

 a few drops of salt water. To my great 

 surprise, all the spermatozoids were quite 

 alive, and moved with extreme quickness for 

 at least half an hour. For 14 and perhaps 

 20 hours the queen had been dead, but nev- 

 ertheless the spermatozoids still lived. The 

 day was a very warm one. 



A QUEEN WHICH KILLS A WORKER. 



On the 30th of July I gave to a section (a 

 matmg-box with one frame, and with glass 

 on both sides) a virgin. A bee came to her 

 m a somewhat unkind way. Immediately 

 the queen crawled on to the said worker 

 and gave it one or more stings. The bee was 

 dead in a moment. 



A QUEEN STUNG BY A BEE. 



On the same day as above, I observed on 

 my mating- station that a virgin queen re- 

 cently given was stung by a worker. I saw 

 how the bee extracted its sting from the 

 thorax of the queen. Directly the left mid- 

 dle leg of the queen was lame. However, 

 she became fertile, and works now in a full 

 colony, after my amputation of her motion- 

 less leg. 



Ottenbach, Germany. 



SMALL ENTRANCES IN WINTER. 



BY SAMUEL SIMMINS. 



"A bee-keeper I once visited had five or 

 six hives m a covered apiary facing south 

 those hives were placed upon strips made of 

 one- inch timber, two inches wide, and nailed 

 edgewise on stakes driven into the ground 

 so as to form a sort of rack. The hives had 

 no bottom- boards, for our friend thought 

 bees succeeded best when they had plenty of 

 air. . . Strange to say, colonies in these 

 hives wmtered successfully, and v/e were 

 very much astonished, in one of the hardest 

 winters, to find that he had not lost a single 

 colony, while our losses had been heavy " 



Now, the late Charles Dadant wrote" the 

 above words for the American Bee Journal 

 of Dec. 26, 1895. It will be noticed the bees 

 were in a covered place, apparently fully 

 open on the south side, if not all round- and 

 that well-known writer and bee-master was 

 astonished at the success of his friend* but 

 really when we come to think about the 

 matter there is nothing very remarkable 

 about It. The bees were dry, and therefore 

 the cold did not take hold of them as it does 

 where they are shut in almost close so 

 that their own moist and impure exhalations 

 can not be disposed of. 



Let us see what a small entrance does. If 

 the weather is warm, or you place your 

 bees in the cellar where frost does not reach 

 them, they very soon set to work changing 

 the air which would otherwise become foul* 

 but when left outside during winter the lim- 

 ited entrance allows not only the accumula- 



