THE AMERICAN APIGULTURIST. 



207 



no heavier than the usual kind but 

 is several times as strong. 



When a form is used in nailing 

 them four can be nailed, while five 

 can be put together by dovetails. 

 Hundreds of one-pound sections of 

 honey of this kind I have hauled 

 in a lumber wagon for fifty miles 

 over the roughest of roads and 

 never knew one to get broken. 



Another thing in their favor is 

 that they can be made with a sin- 

 gle saw and by foot power as it is 

 simply sawing thin pieces from 

 blocks of the right length and thick- 

 ness. After the saw is filed and 

 set if an oil stone is properly held 

 against the side of the teeth while 

 they are in motion the projecting 

 points will be taken off and then 

 the saw will leave its work as 

 smooth as a planer. If dovetailed 

 or one-piece sections were set 

 down at my door free of cost I 

 should continue to use the ones 

 described so long as I had the time 

 and machinery to make them. 



Bradford^ loioa. 



NOTES FROM THE BAY 

 STATE APIARY. 



HENRY ALLEY. 

 • 



For four months queen-rearing 

 has been going on as rapidly as 

 we could push it. All of our or- 

 ders were filled as early as the 

 first week in July, with the excep- 

 tion of a few that were mislaid. 

 August 4, we received orders for 

 125 queens. We had the queens 

 to fill such orders, but as one of 

 them was a large one and the 

 price offered below what we could 

 rear queens for, it was declined. 

 The next day orders for forty-one 

 queens came to hand and every 

 cue was filled by return mail. 



Some one will say, "Well, Alley 

 did not always fill his orders with 

 such promptness." No, we did not. 

 When we had orders for 500 

 queens and were having " hard 

 luck" in rearing them, we could not 

 fill orders bj^ return mail. Now, 

 while we are having unusually 

 good success in our apiary, one very 

 prominent queen dealer is having 

 a hard time of it. He writes us 

 thus: "It has been a hard year 

 for breeding queens here ; in fact, 

 one of the worst I ever knew. I 

 have been having an experience 

 in raising cells I nev^er saw or 

 heard of before, and I am using 

 the same method (which is practi- 

 cally the same as yours) that I 

 have for years and never failed to 

 get good cells until now. There 

 was a quite a flow of honey 

 through June and all worked well 

 until the flow ceased, and since 

 then about half the queens die in 

 the cells. The larvae look all right 

 before the cells are sealed, and 

 apparently well fed, and the cells 

 are well developed ; but on exam- 

 ination a day or two before the 

 time for the queens to emerge, 

 many of the queens are found 

 dead, some still in the larvje state, 

 and others nearly matured. Some 

 queens that do hatch are no larger 

 than a worker bee and are, of 

 course, worthless. I am at a loss 

 to know the cause of it." 



We advised our friend to go back 

 into the country and get some col- 

 onies of bees from the old box- 

 hive men, and also to change the 

 mother bees. If new breeding 

 queens are obtained from some 

 distant apiary, it will be an easy 

 matter to discover the cause of 

 the trouble. In our opinion it is 

 in the queens. There seems to be 

 some peculiar disease that has de- 

 veloped in the ovaries of the 

 mother bee. Some twelve years 

 ago we bad a similar experience to 

 a small extent, but the trouble was 



