788 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



cided success. It began blooming 

 July 1, is in bloom yet, and to see the 

 bees on it of a morning would delight 

 the heart of any bee- man." In plant- 

 ing sweet clover we notice that sown 

 in the fall and winter does the best, 

 and we conclude the cold of winter to 

 be of some benefit to the seed tlius 

 sown. A united effort of the many 

 bee keepers would soon produce a flora 

 in the land of uncalculable worth. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



Golden Willow as a Honey Prodncer. 



E. B. BBEBEE. 



As a great deal depends on the 

 strength of our colonies when the main 

 honey harvest commences, perhaps it 

 is well for us to look closely to what 

 makes them so. 



As I have had bees for some time in 

 localities where there was no willow, 

 and at the same time had others where 

 there was plenty of willow, I think I 

 can tell something about its value to 

 bees. 



As soon as this willow begins to 

 bloom, wliich is about the last of April, 

 our bees commence to work in good 

 earnest ; and if we had as fine weather 

 for bees to work as we have in July, 

 I think they would gather almost as 

 mucli honey from it as they do from 

 basswood. As far as my observatious 

 extend, I think tliey gather more honey 

 from willow than from apple blossoms, 

 and we have plenty of both. A bee- 

 keeper came to my apiary when wil- 

 low was in bloom and was astonished 

 to find that my bees did not rob, wlien 

 he saw a hive of frames full of honey 

 exposed in the apiary ; and wlien I 

 called his attention to the bees work- 

 ing on the willow he thought he never 

 saw bees work busier. 



The quality and flavor of the honey 

 is very poor. Althougli it is not as dark 

 as some, it hasavery repugnantand in- 

 ferior flavor, but 1 cannot see but that 

 they build up and breed just as fast on 

 it as on any other, and that is just 

 what we want at tliis season. Aside 

 from this, we have the advantage of 

 knowing there is no robbing going on 

 at thie most critical time ; as witli our 

 bees in the locality where there is no 

 willow, they have to be closely watched 

 and the entrances contracted, espec- 

 ially if there is work to be done which 

 requires opening tlie hives; we also 

 find there is a vast difference in the 

 strength and condition of the colonies 

 in these two locations, say about the 

 last of May. 



I do not wish to compare willow as 

 equal to basswood or any of the main 

 lioney plants, but, cominer as it does 

 lirst in the spring, it is of much value 

 as it has the double advantage of 

 stimulating the bees to breed and keep 

 them from robbing and spring dwin- 

 dling. 



I know of no tree or shrub that is as 

 easily propagated as this willow ; it 

 will grow anywiiere without any care 

 or cultivation, wet or swampy locations 

 being preferable, and it does not 

 spread any more than as it is set out 

 or planted. It also makes a fine shade 

 tree, being handsome for lawns, yards 

 or walks. It is a very rapid and 

 thrifty grower ; a cutting set out in the 

 spring will make a good sized tree in 

 four years. Tliere are three varieties 



The. Willow. 



of willow in this vicinity, but the 

 golden or yellow willow is far prefer- 

 able for the bees, as the otliers yield 

 but little honey compared to this one. 

 Oneida, N. 1^., Nov. 27, 1882. 



For the American Bee Journal. 



The Reariiu 



of Cheap (Queens. 



G. SI. DOOLITTLE. 



Editor Bee Journal : The fol- 

 lowing article -I wrote for the Rural 

 New Yorker but thinking it may be 

 interesting to the i-eaders of tlie Bee 

 Journal, I should be glad to see it 

 in its valuable columns : 



The gi-eat Creator of all tilings pro- 

 nounced his work good when he rested 

 from the same, and so it came to pass 

 that it was good for bees to multiply 

 and increase by natural swarming. In 

 the preparation for this, the first work 

 is the laying of eggs in ttie drone cells 

 whicli are already built; or if no drone 

 comb is in hive, some is built, or work- 

 er comb is cut down and drone comb 

 substituted for the purpose of produc- 

 ing drones, or male bees. Next, large 

 acornctip-like cells are built for a 

 royal cradle for the young queen, in 

 which in due time the reigning queen 

 deposits an egg intended for a queen. 

 At about the time this egg hatches, a 

 copious supply of food is placed in tliis 

 large cell for the royal larva to feed 

 upon, and as it grows more food is 

 given, till it actually floats in a sea of 

 food— so much so that I have repeat- 

 edly seen a lump of uneaten food 

 larger than a marrowfat pea left in 

 the bottom of the cell after the queen 

 had emerged therefrom. Another 

 thing which is always noticeable is 

 that this food is prepared and queens 



reared when forage (both honey and 

 pollen) is abundant, and at no other 

 time do we expect natural swarms. 



Again, there is a hiveful of bees of 

 all ages, from the nurse bees which 

 prepare this food to the aged veteran 

 with wings tattered and torn with the 

 labors of the field. Thus, with pros- 

 perity on every side, the highest 

 queens of the highest type are raised. 

 Now, if such queensas the above were 

 reared and sold for a " dollar," or one 

 dozen of tliem for $9, the cheap queen 

 controversy would have liad no exis- 

 tence. In the course of time, it was 

 ascertained that by removing the 

 queen from the hive the bees could 

 convert the larva hatching from an 

 egg intended for a worker bee into a 

 queen by building a queen cell over a 

 worker cell and supplying -the same 

 with royal jelly, the food of the queen 

 larva. Thus queens without number 

 could be reared at the pleasure of the 

 apiarist, eitlier during the season of 

 natural swarming or at any other time 

 of the year when there were eggs and 

 larvse in the hive. All went well for 

 a time, butaftera while it began to be 

 whispered by our most practical apia- 

 rists that such queens were tending 

 toward depreciating the qu.ility of our 

 bees; so it was proposed that, as a 

 remedy, all queens should be reared 

 as nearly as possible under the same 

 conditions as those reared by natural 

 swarming. Others claimed that such 

 talk was nonsense, and still continued 

 on as before. At about this time I 

 was greatly excited over the bee ques- 

 tion, and so to accomplish the most in 

 the leasttirae, I took to rearing queens 

 "artificially," as this process was 

 termed at that time. All seemed to 

 go well the first season, and I was 

 about to decide against our practical 

 bee men, and say such queens were as 

 good as any, although I invariably 

 found that such queens were much 

 smaller than those reared in natural 

 swarming, and after the queen 

 emerged from the cell not a bit of food 

 remained, but the cell was licked as 

 dry as any drone or worker ever licked 

 its cell. 



The next season queens were reared 

 in the same way, although I saw quite 

 a perceptible difi'erence in the working 

 qualities of my bees, but I was not 

 fully convinced of my mistake till 

 through the next winter and spring 

 over two-thirds of my queens reared 

 the season previous, died of old age, 

 while queens reared by natural swarm- 

 ing lived from three to five years. 

 Fully convinced that such queens were 

 not as good as any, I have, as far as 

 possible since that time, had all my 

 queens reared from cells produced 

 during natural swarming. 



Soon after this it was proposed by a 

 certain man, prominent before the 

 bee-keeping world, that queens should 

 be sent out and sold as soon as they 

 were found to be laying, without 

 any guarantee of any sort, and that 

 the price be one dollar. Heretofore 

 none but tested queens had been sold, 

 and as the price had been from three 

 to ten dollars each, fair queens had 

 been the rule, for at these prices pains 

 could be taken to rear queens as good 

 as possible by any process except nat- 



