1904 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEErER 



probably just as expensive to make as 

 worker-comb. The cells are necessari- 

 ly deeper and the greater distance be- 

 tween cell-walls make it more diffi- 

 cult for the bees to steady themselves 

 while working on them. Taking all 

 this in connection with the greater 

 amount of wax tUley would drop to 

 the floor of the hive, may offset the 

 apparent gain to the bees by the more 

 open construction of drone-comb. 



The more we come to know those 

 things that are grievous to bees and 

 tend to provoke them to acts of 

 swarming; in short, when we learn 

 hpw to win them from their wayward 

 propensities, will we be able to sys- 

 tematize the( production of worker- 

 comb without the aid of comb founda- 

 tion. I hope there are many persons 

 among the hosts of Bee-Keeper read- 

 ers who are willing to help the good 

 work along. For, as the bees build 

 the honey-comb, so may we move 

 steadily onward by a concerted effort, 

 till that grand achievement is recorded 

 to the glory of honey-producers and 

 the enduring good of apiculture. 



Wheelersburg, OMo, i_ ec. 3, 1903. 



QUEEN REARING. 



The Art as Practiced by a British Expert. 

 By John Hewitt. 



DEAR MR. HILL: In all the 

 American bee papers I see from 

 time to time a lot of silly stuff 

 about rearing queens. The so-called 

 Doolittle system of making artificial 

 cells and putting in royal food being 

 about the favorite. All that Doolittle 

 discovered ( ?) will be found in Huber's 

 book, published over 100 years ago. 

 Huber also showed that bees, in select- 

 ing larvae to rear into queens always 

 began on those two days old; this 

 being so — and I know he is right — how 

 •can any one expect to get bees to start 

 on larvae just hatched from the egg? 



Thlere is another fact, which I soon 

 found out, and that is, the bees quick- 

 ly remove all the royal food Doolittle 

 directs to be put in the cells, as they 

 will anything else they have not stored; 

 this led me to try putting in larvae 

 without the food and I then found they 

 developed almost every one into 

 queens, instead of just a few. I now 

 pared drone-comb down, cut it into 



strips and put a larvae in every alter- 

 nate cell and these were all rearetl into 

 queens, although tliei(> uas not a trace 

 of royal food or the base of a queen 

 cell. 



I did not. hoM-ever. feel satisfie^l as 

 if I gave just hatched larvae, they at 

 once dried up in the cells and veiy 

 few would be developed. I then 

 adopted the plan of giving the larvae 

 two days old. which were all soon on 

 their way to become queens; when the 

 cells were half-built I remove these 

 larvae and put in others just hatched 

 from the egg. so that they tumbled 

 as it were into a perfect bath of royal 

 food; these queens invariably hatched 

 out into splendid specimens. 



Always on the "mend," I now used 

 drone larvae two days old, for the fol- 

 lowing reasons; The bees start queen 

 cells on them just as readily as on 

 worker larvae, and should one get 

 missed or overlooketl, it develops into 

 a drone and not a small queen to play 

 "old Harry" two days too soon, and 

 when one has to depend on help, it 

 does not do to take risks. 



I soon got tired of hunting out drone 

 comb and cutting it into strips, so I 

 made a machine to make 50 cell cups 

 at once; these, held at exactly the right 

 distances in a frame are dipped into 

 molten wax and then immediately 

 stuck on a stick, as soon as the wax 

 gets cold the cells are all fastened to 

 the stick and are ready for larvae. 



If all the queen rearing is done in 

 full stocks, having the swarming fever 

 on, no cell needs to be cut out, as the 

 bees will protect the queens, and Avhat 

 is more, so long as the swarming fe- 

 ver is kept on, the bees will start and 

 seal cells as fast as you give them no 

 matter how many they may have seal- 

 ed or queens already hatched and 

 ripening. 



There is one very big advantage in 

 this, as every queen is examined be- 

 fore putting to a nucleus to mate and 

 all that do not "come up to the mark" 

 are destroyed, hence I have no second 

 or third class queens. 



If queens are reared on these lines 

 and given to good strong nuclei to 

 mate, I'll guarantee — if good breeding 

 queens are used as mothers — the bees 

 produced by those queens will never 

 spring dwindle or suffer from winter 

 dysentery. I make this assertion after 



