1904 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



139 



lapou her own comb, to her own bees 

 had her immediately balled, and she 

 would undoubtedly have been destroy- 

 ed if I had not rescued her by a lib- 

 eral application of smoke and proceed- 

 ed to introduce her as aii entire strang- 

 er. Now tills may seem strange upon 

 the face of it. She was certainly no 

 stranger to her own bees, but she had 

 absorbed, so to speak, the scent from 

 the cage in which she was placed. 

 Consequently she was to the bees 

 practically a strange queen. Further 

 than this, the bees which were caged 

 with her upon being liberated were at 

 once attacked by the other bees and 

 killed. 



Acting upon this fact I conceived 

 the idea of making, of screen wire 

 cloth, a small box two inches or so 

 upon the side,with the ends turned up 

 about three-eighths of an inch, like the 

 cover of a small card-board box. 



I place the queen to be introduced 

 with her bees in this box, using a 

 piece of card board to form the other 

 side of the box temporarily. Now re- 

 move one of the frames from the hive 

 you wish to introduce your queen to 

 and lay the screen box, paper side 

 down, upon the comb, covering some 

 place where there is a little honey. 

 And after withdrawing the paper 

 from between the box containing the 

 queen and bees, press slightly upon 

 the screen box, imbedding it in the 

 comb just enough to hold it in place. 



Put the frame back into the hive and 

 allow it to remain a day or two, then 

 remove the frame, liberate the queen 

 and her bees, who have already ac- 

 quired the smell of the new combs of 

 the hive, and upon replacing the comb 

 the queen will be accepted without 

 question almost invariably. 



Of course, you must allow^ no 

 queen-cell in your hive during this op- 

 sration. 



I have tried the water cure (so call- 

 id) and have had very little success 

 in that direction. I have a glass nu- 

 ;Ieus hive, in which I have conducted 

 jome very interesting experiments in 

 ntroducing queens, the actions of the 

 lueen and bees being observed close- 

 y. I have tried several of the vari- 

 ms methods. 



I find that no matter how long the 

 lUeen has been left caged in a hive, 



whether liberated by the candy meth- 

 od or otherwise, she will immediately 

 retire to some remote corner of the 

 hive or behind some close fitting frame 

 where she will remain for some time, 

 seemingly afraid of her life. And if 

 crowded out of such a cover will at 

 once put for another, if possible. 



But with the method here explained 

 she will almost invariably pay no at- 

 tention to the bees or they to her, but 

 will both attend to their several du- 

 ties regardless of each other. At least 

 such has been my experience so far. 



Haverhill, Mass., May 16, 1904. 



This is one of the best and simplest 

 methods of introduction, though one of 

 the oldest known to the craft. Its ef- 

 ficiency, however, is really advanced 

 by caging the queen without attend- 

 ant bees at all, and placing the intro- 

 ducing cage over emerging young bees 

 and unsealed honey. The cage is bet- 

 ter made a full inch deep. It is well 

 also to make it four or five inches 

 long. Unravel about one-half inch on 

 all sides and bend at right angles a 

 full inch all around. It should be 

 firmly pressed into the comb, or the 

 bees may cut the cells away and enter 

 too soon. — Editor. 



^VINTERING EXPERIMENTS. 



Mr. Miller's Favorite Plan Not a 

 Success in Canada. 



By J. L. Byer. 



APRIL number of the American 

 Bee-Keeper to hand, and among 

 other items I read with interest 

 Mr. A. C. Miller's article on "Results 

 of Some Experiments in Wintei'ing."' 



By way of preface allow me to say 

 that last season I was pretty well con- 

 verted to Mr. Miller's line of argument 

 relative to the wintering of bees in 

 single-walled hives covered with 

 tarred felt paper. So much so, in fact, 

 that I took advantage of every oppor- 

 tunity offered, both in private and pub- 

 lic conversation with bee-keepers, to 

 express my views on this question. 



To prove correctness of my theory 

 (rather Mr. Miller's) by practice, last 

 fall I prepared 26 colonies in two dif- 

 ferent yards, thirteen in each yard, in 

 manner prescribed by Mr. Miller. 



