1 



154 



AVHAT 



THE 



CONSTITUTES 



QUEEN? 



A GOOD 



Bv ArtUiir C. .Milltc 



I HAVE often asked myself this 

 question and 1 liave as otten tried 

 to answer it both for myself and 

 for others. 1 have tried to enumerate 

 the virtues of good (lueens, but after 

 all is said it comes to this: the good 

 queen is the one whose colony gets 

 the most and best honey. 



In looking at the work of some of 

 my trial stock my attention was ar- 

 rested by the colony of a queen which 

 I have called, for convenience, the 

 Vermonter. She is an Italio-Black hy- 

 brid which my son got in Vermont in 

 1902. His attention was attracted by 

 the large size of the swarm she was 

 with and by the quantity and quality 

 of the work the parent colony had 

 done. 



I introduced her to a small nu- 

 cleus late in July. This she quickly 

 built up into a good colony and pro- 

 duced about 30 pounds extracted hon- 

 ey from fall flowers. Wintered on 

 summer stand and without any pro- 

 tection other than the thin hive, the 

 colony came through strong and at 

 this writing (.June 18) has already 

 yielded .30 pounds extracted honey 

 and has two 28 pound cases of comb 

 honey well under way. As the col- 

 ony fills three shallow chambers and 

 two supers. I looked for signs of 

 swarming and I also wanted to save 

 the extra queen cells. There were no 

 external symptoms, and within all was 

 serene. Not a queen cell oir cup to be 

 seen. Each brood chamber was 

 packed with brood except drone comb. 

 Such cells the queen had completely 

 avoided, even though in several 

 places she had laid in worker cells 

 all around the drone cells. These lat- 

 ter were all varnished and ready for 

 use. Apparently the workers wanted 

 drones but the queen did not. 



The case is interesting. The queen 

 is in her fourth summer at least, and 

 has once been out with a swnrm and 

 yet now when she should be declin- 

 ing she is keeping the equivalent of 

 in L frames packed with brood and 

 declines to raise drones. Is she a 



AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. August, 



good queen? I care nothing for the 

 markings of her bees but I do care 

 for the stamina which she possesses. 

 Her vigor is reproduced in her bees 

 as is shown by the size of her colony, 

 for it matters not how prolific a queen 

 may be, if her bees are not long-lived 

 the colony will not get big and stay 

 big. According to custom the bees 

 from this queen should be cross, but 

 they are not. They are not angelic 

 to be sure, but they handle well, mind 

 their own business and hustle. 



Such a strain of bees is worth hav- 

 ing. Being a hybrid it will be diffi- 

 cult to foretell the qualities of queens 

 raised from lier, but vigor they doubt- 

 less will have, and that means a 

 whole lot. I sometimes think it is be- 

 ing lost sight of entirely. I am con- 

 stantly testing queens from diiferent 

 parts of the country and the virtue 

 most often conspicuous by its absence 

 is vigor. Queen after queen will die 

 young and their daughters are no bet-< 

 ter. Not all purchased queens are so 

 but their proportion is far too great 

 for the best good of the industry. 



Another colony of interest in com- 

 parison with the Vermonter is head- 

 ed by a queen of the so-called leath- 

 er-colored Italians. The queen is in 

 her third summer and the colony is of 

 apparently the same population as the 

 other. Both have been subjected to 

 the same treatment. This Italian 

 stock has produced the same amount 

 of honey as the Vermonter, btit has 

 a host of drones and are too ugly to 

 live with. They are not content with 

 defending their home but are out 

 looking for trouble all the time and 

 it is almost impossible to handle them. 



Here are two apparently equal col- 

 onies doing equal work and yet one 

 has a host of drones and the other 

 none. Apparently the drones are no 

 drain on the colony and yet I think 

 that assumption is wrong. Drones 

 feed liberally on freshly stored honey 

 provided the cells are full enough for 

 them to reach it. but when honey iS' 

 scarce they have to rely entirely on 

 the workers. Removal of the drones 

 (about 3 pints )has so far failed to 

 show any appreciable difference iu 

 honey supply. 



.Tune 18, 1004. 





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