1903 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



231 



PRIDQEN ON QUEEN-REARING. 



Pridgen's Queen-rearing Tenement Hive; the Detail 

 of Its Construction. 



BY W. A. PRIDGEN. 



[Some time ago, as our readers will remember, Mr. 

 \V. H. Pridgen began a .'^eries of articles detailing his 

 system of queen-rearing which had attracted some 

 attention in the bee-journals. In the mean time, lack 

 of time, and a desire on his part to test some new 

 devices which he thought might prove superior to 

 those he had been using, induced him to drop the 

 matter for the time being. He has since had an 

 opportunity to test these new things, and has now 

 placed in our hands the manuscript to complete the 

 entire series. The initial article of the new series is 

 begun with this issue. 



it will be noted that he uses a sort of queen-rearing 

 tenement hive of special design one that stands up 

 on legs at a convenient working distance. In fact, 

 this whole hive is so constructed as to enable him to 

 throw one or more brood-nests together; to change the 

 entrance from front to rear: to unite, and perform 

 many^ necessary operations for the rearing of queens. 

 In order to understand the description the reader 

 should first study all the engravings, getting as fair 

 an idea as possible of the detail of the hive before he 

 takes up the general description. Without any pre- 

 liminaries, Mr, Pridgen plunges into his subject as 

 follows:] 



This hive is especially constructed to 

 overcome the perplexing manipulations nec- 

 essary with ordinary hives in preparing 

 bees for cell-building-, to accept cups, etc. 

 It has been in practical use for two seasons, 

 and meets all of the requirements under all 

 conditions. It can be used as one mammoth 

 hive of six times the ordinary size, and con- 

 tains anj'where from one to six virgin or 

 laying queens, or some of both; or in a few 

 minutes it can be changed to any desired 

 number of distinct hives up to six, and each 

 contain a normal colon3' of bees. 



Any portion made queenless can be 

 worked as a queenless colony, or communi- 

 cation can be given through queenexclud- 

 ing zinc to an adjoining apartment contain- 

 ing a queen, thus giving one complete con- 

 trol of the situation. 



A stud}' of the illustrations, all of which 

 are of the s.'ime hive, will give one a pretty 

 correct idea of its constructioii, and better 

 enable him to understand the cause and ef- 

 fect of the difterent manipulations. 



As shown in Fig. 1, with every thing in- 

 tact it forms six distinct hives, with no 

 communication from one to another, in which 

 the bees winter better than in ordinary sin- 

 gle-wal!ed hives, aseach colony is benefited 

 more or less by the warmth of the others. 

 AVhen the time arrives to commence queen- 

 rearing'- operations, instead of drawing 

 brood and bees from other colonies to pre- 

 pare one over an excluder and laying queen, 

 in the ordinary way, it is only necessarj' to 



remove a queen and work the bees as queen- 

 less, or give communication to an adjoining 

 apartment, and work them as is the case 

 over an excluder. 



In this wa3' queens can be removed, and 

 communication given from one apartment to 

 another, according to the wishes of the op- 

 erator, until all but one or two queens are 



Fig. 1. 



removed, and communication is given from 

 one apartment to another throughout. When 

 this stage is reached, three or four batches 

 of cells in different stages of development 

 can be kept in the hive all the time. 



Each apartment has two entrances at 

 each end, the hive being alike on both sides, 

 with only a sheet of zinc between them, one 

 being below and the other immediately 

 above it, all of which are closed, except 

 those actually needed, by means of plugs 

 cut to fit them. 



In this way drones or queens may be al- 

 lowed to fly from certain apartments, or 

 prevent their flying at will, besides being 

 able to change entrances from one end to 

 another of certain apartments from time to 

 time, for reasons that will present them- 

 selves. 



When arranged for winter, the center 

 apartment in top tier, and two end ones in 



Fig. 2. 



bottom tier, are given entrances on one side, 

 and the order reversed for the other three 

 on the opposite side, which gives ample 

 room between them to prevent the mixing 

 and fighting of the bees after they have 

 been separated in the fall and become dis- 

 tinct colonies. 



In making the test, the idea was to carry 

 the experiment far enough to see if a num- 



