1905 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



715 



ers you are doing so to save foundation. 

 Use half an inch— don't waste your founda- 

 tion by putting in two inches. 

 Casanova, Cuba. 



SUPERSEDING OUR OLD QUEENS. 



Do Not Let the Bees Decide as to the Time for 



Doing This; a Novel Plan for Indicating 



the Age of Queen. 



BY E. W. ALEXANDER. 



To supersede our queens when two years 

 old, or to leave it for the bees to attend to, 

 is a question of far more importance than 

 many realize, and one upon which I very 

 decidedly differ with some of our best bee- 

 keepers. Last fall we had 107 queens in our 

 apiary that were 24 years old. Therefore 

 for many years we have superseded all our 

 queens at 2 years of age; but as a part of 

 these queens were some we had bought, and 

 were of an extra good strain, their hives be- 

 ing well filled with honey, and as some writ- 

 ers on the subject had claimed that the bees 

 knew better than we when to supersede 

 their queens, I thought I would test this 

 matter thoroughly on a large scale, even if 

 it cost me the 107 colonies to do so. 



THE RESULT OF THE EXPERIMENT. 



We put our bees in the cellar about the 

 middle of November. These colonies, with 

 their queens 2| years old, were put in with 

 the other colonies here and there all through 

 the lot, and had exactly the same chance as 

 those with younger queens. When we took 

 them from the cellar about the middle of 

 April we found only eleven that had super- 

 seded their 'queens; and it had been done so 

 late in the fall that 6 were drone-layers, and 

 the other 5 were about as weak in bees as 

 those with the old queen; and of the remain- 

 ing 96, '6 were fairly good, 26 were very weak 

 in bees, and the other 67 were dead. 



In looking over our bees about Sept. 1 we 

 noticed that these old queens had all stopped 

 laying, and had but little brood compared 

 with the young queens. This fact, undoubt- 

 edly, had much to do with the weak condi- 

 tion of the few that survived the winter. 



Of the other 603 colonies in the same cel- 

 lar, that had queens 6 months old and IJ 

 years old, only 7 were lost. 



Now, my friends, can any of you say that 

 it does not pay to keep track of the age of 

 your queens, and attend to superseding them 

 yourself? I am sure it has always paid me 

 well, heretofore, to do so, and I do hope that 

 this costly experiment that I have just made 

 will save many of you from a like experi- 

 ence. As I have written before, it is so easy 

 to get the best of young queens now that 

 have been reared from extra good honey- 

 gathering strains that we have no excuse 

 whatever for keeping old inferior queens in 

 our apiary; and I want to ask those of you 

 who advocate letting their bees do their own 

 superseding if it would not have been much 

 better for me to supersede those 107 queens 

 last summer, at an expense of about $65, 



than to lose at least $400 worth of bees in 

 leaving it for the bees themselves to attend 

 to. 



KEEPING TRACK OF THE AGE AND QUALITY 

 OF THE QUEENS. 



In the August issue of the Review, 1904, 

 is published an article I wrote on keeping 

 track of the age and quality of our queens, 

 which is well worth more than a year's sub- 

 scription to some of you who take that pa- 

 per; and for the benefit of those who take 

 Gleanings only I will copy a part of said 

 article: 



"As we I'un all our bees now for extract- 

 ed honey I will not take up any of the thou- 

 sand and one different ways of producing 

 comb honey. That is a trade of itself; nei- 

 ther will I enter into the many different ways 

 of rearing choice queens, except what 1 

 have said in the above; but there is one 

 thing which I wish to call your attention to, 

 and that is this: Not one bee-keeper in 50 

 can tell me, as we walk through his apiary, 

 the age and quality of every queen in the 

 yard. This is one of the most essential 

 things to know at all times if you expect to 

 make a success of the business; and I have 

 often wondered why some one has not given 

 us a good practical way of knowing this be- 

 fore now. I used a book for this purpose, 

 but often found it quite inconvenient to look 

 over 200 or 300 pages to find what I wanted 

 to know at a glance; so I adopted the fol- 

 lowing, which is very accurate, and tells me 

 at once all I wish to know about the age and 

 quality of every queen I have. 



"TIN tags for showing AGE AND QUALITY 

 OF QUEENS. 



" Something like 30 years ago I cut out a 

 lot of pieces of tin — some round, some half 

 round, and some square, about one inch in 

 diameter; and whenever I find a young 

 queen commencing to lay I put one of these 

 tags on the front of the hive on the left-hand 

 corner, about two inches from the bottom. 

 It is put on with a carpet-tack through the 

 center, and is easily taken off with my knife; 

 and it follows that queen to every hive she 

 is ever put into. If she proves to be a choice 

 queen the tag is put a few inches higher up 

 on the corner of the hive; and if very choice, 

 still higher. If she is inferior in any way it 

 is put over toward the middle of the hive; if 

 very poor it is put clear over to the other 

 side. I use only one shape of tag each sum- 

 mer, with all the queens of that summer's 

 rearing. The next summer I use another 

 shape, perhaps round or square; then when 

 I walk through the apiary I can tell at a 

 glance the age and quality of every queen 

 in the yard; and then when I have surplus 

 queens on hand I can go right to the hives 

 that contain my poorest queens and super- 

 sede them at once without having to open 

 any hive unnecessarily. You see I can tell 

 at any time. I see by the fronts of the 

 hives just how many queens I have of a cer- 

 tain age, also their quality. If you will 

 adopt this way of keeping track of your 

 queens you will soon weed out the poor ones, 



