1906 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



891 



ty super on top I have not had a single 

 swarm during the buckwheat flow, without 

 any further effort at thair prevention, while 

 before this I was bothered with nearly half 

 of the colonies contracting the swarming 

 fever during the first week of buckwheat 

 bloom, they keeping the swarming up till 

 very little section honey would be obtained. 



Before going to the apiary at this time I 

 carefully look over the standing of the bee- 

 yard as to the value of the queens in the 

 different hives, as it is given in the little 

 squares on my record-board, and take from 

 the home apiary the number of ripe cells re- 

 quired for use in requeening all colonies 

 having queens which do not come up to the 

 standard of good queens. When the sections 

 are all piled on the wheelbarrow, as given 

 above, from a colony having a queen not 

 considered good enough to winter over, I 

 take the opportunity to hunt up the queen 

 and kill her, as she is quite easily found at 

 this time on account of so many of the bees 

 being in the supers just taken off. 



Having found the queen and killed her, 

 the next work is to give them one of the 

 ripe queen-cells I have brought. In taking 

 them from the brooding colony at home, 

 each one was placed in one of the West cell- 

 protectors, so that the bees would not de- 

 stroy the queen by cutting into the cell be- 

 fore they were aware that their old mother 

 was gone. Each cell-filled protector was 

 partially imbedded in a sheet of cotton wad- 

 ding, cut to fit into the bottom of a paste- 

 board thread- box, easily obtained at any 

 drygoods store. Having the number re- 

 quired in the box, another right-sized sheet 

 of wadding is put over all, the cover to the 

 box put on, and a rubber cord sprung around 

 the whole to keep all in a secure position so 

 that the cells can not roll around when the 

 box is handled. One end of the box is 



hours, and I have often carried such for 

 from one to twelve hours, in the way here 

 given, without the loss or injury of a single 

 queen. In this work the wadding is far 

 preferable to cotton batting, for the glazing 



west's queen-cell protector in use. 



marked top, and the base of each cell is 

 placed toward this end of the box so that I 

 may always know that the cells point down 

 when carrying the box in my inside vest 

 pocket, or pocket in my shirt, where cells 

 are always carried at all times except when 

 used in the bee-yard where they are raised. 

 A "ripe" cell is one from which the 

 queen will emerge in from twenty to thirty 



DOOLITTLE'S POCKET QUEEN- CELL CARRIER. 



on the wadding keeps the cotton from stick- 

 ing to the cell or cell-protector, as it is oth- 

 erwise liable to do. 



After killing the queen the frames are all 

 put back in the hive, when two of the cen- 

 ter ones are pried apart enough so that the 

 cell-protector will go down just under the 

 top- bar to the frame, when the frames are 

 brought back in place again, this imbedding 

 the protector into the comb so it is securely 

 fastened there until removed by the apiarist. 

 As this is the season of the year when the 

 bees do most of their superseding of queens 

 (it seems so natural to them), my loss in 

 using this plan will not average more than 

 one queen-cell out of twenty given. So 

 small a loss will not pay for a special visit 

 to the apiary to ascertain whether colonies 

 so treated obtain laying (jueens or not — es- 

 pecially as the colony which will occasional- 

 ly destroy a cell or kill the just-emerged vir- 

 gin queen have brood of their own from 

 which to rear a queen, so the loss is never 

 very great should an occasional cell be de- 

 stroyed. Of course, there is a chance that 

 the young queen may be lost when going out 

 to meet the drone, in which case that colony 

 is doomed unless rescued by the apiarist. 



