1895. 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



347 



chaff, the bees did not winter as well in it as in the Jones hive. 

 I have discarded the combination hives, as I found it did not 

 pay to have too many kinds in operation. G. G. GuNN. 



Gonor, Manitoba, April 11. 



CONDUCTED BY 



XJK. C. C. JVIII^LBR, MARENGO, ILL. 



[Questions may be mailed to the Bee Journal, or to Dr. Miller direct.] 



Italianizing and Keeping Bees Pure. 



I have purchased nine colonies of hybrids and black.-;, 

 four of them being hived in old hives, which seems to be con- 

 trary to G. P. Hachenberg's experience, as related on page 

 287. 



I am desirous of Italianizing my hybrids, and, of course, 

 refer to my text-book, and there I am advised to purchase a 

 choice tested queen and rear my own queens from her. ,So 

 far, so good ; but after this choice queen has reared Italian 

 stock, and I proceed to rear queens in that hive, how am I to 

 get sufficient virgin queens mated to queen nine colonies, 

 when I have only the one colony of Italians, all the rest being 

 hybrids ? A. E. G. 



Answer. — No, you're not very badly mixed, but you may 

 as well make up your mind that keeping bees pr.re is not as 

 easy as keeping chickens or cattle pure. Your tested queen 

 will in a few weeks be surrounded by a family of pure Italian 

 workers and drones, but as you suspect, the virgin queens 

 reared from the tested queen will have a better chance to 

 meet black than yellow drones. You may use drone-traps and 

 suppress all but the yellow drones, but very likely your neigh- 

 bors will furnish a good supply of dark drones. I5ut if you 

 requeen all your colonies from the tested queen, these new 

 queens, even though they meet pure black drones, will rear 

 pure Italian drones, or at least practically so, and next season 

 all young queens will have a much better chance to meet yel- 

 low drones. So you can go on, constantly weeding out unde- 

 sirable stock, but you may have to do more or less of that 

 weeding for years if black bees are around you. 



You may buy untested queens for each one of your colo- 

 nies, and the chances of your young queens will be better. 

 Suppose you buy a tested queen of the very best kind for each 

 colony. New queens will be reared next year, whether you 

 will or no, and with black or hybrid bees all around you the 

 chance for impure mating will be pretty good. I think you 

 will find it a work of time to have all pure Italians, no matter 

 what your plan, unless there are no impure bees about you. 



Transferring and General Management. 



I am just making a beginning in bee-keeping this spring. 

 I already have a colony in a box-hive, and I have purchased 

 the increase from the colonies of some of my neighbors, I 

 furnishing the hives (which are the 10-frarae Dovetailed) to 

 put the new swarms in. 



1. I wish to transfer the bees in the laox-hive to one of my 

 new 10-frame hives, and propose following " Heddon's'short 

 way" — that is, drumming a portion of the bees and the queen 

 from the old hive into a forcing-box, and then giving them to 

 the new hive, and allowing the old hive to stand for 21 days, 

 when the brood will be hatched, and can then be driven into 

 the new hive. Do you think well of this plan 9 a — If the old 

 hive and brood with a portion of the bees are allowed to stand 

 for 21 days, will they not rear a queen ? and if so, what shall 

 I do with her ? b — Will the bees of the new hive receive kindly 

 the newcomers from the old hive at the expiration of 21 days? 



2. My hives are all 10-frame, with full sheets of founda- 

 tion in the frames. In hiving swarms, shall I give them the 

 10 frames at once, or a lesser number, using the division- 

 board ? 



3. Should the super and sections be put on at once when 

 a swarm is hived ? or not until the frames in the lower story 

 are pretty well filled ? 



4. What is the best way for artificial swarming ? 



5. My place is surrounded with great apple orchards, 

 which blossomed very profusely this spring, but my bees paid 

 no attention to them. Can you account for this ? 



Ben Avon, Pa. H. P. J. 



Answers. — 1. The plan is good, a — Most likely the 



young queen will be there all right, and if you are anxious for 

 increase you can make another "drive" and put all the bees 

 in a new hive, or you can unite all with the first "drive," and 

 the bees will take care of the queen-business without any at- 

 tention on your part, b — Yes, at that time, while bees are 

 busy gathering, there is little trouble about uniting bees in 

 any sort of style. After the harvest has closed they don't 

 take so kindly to newcomers. 



2. In working for comb honey, better give only about five 

 frames at the start, then add the remainder when these are 

 filled. 



3. Don't put on sections at once unless you have a queen- 

 excluder over the brood-frames. And don't wait for the 

 frames to be pretty well filled, but put on sections in perhaps 

 a couple of days, when the queen has got fairly to work laying. 



4. That's a hard question. Depends much on what you 

 have, what you want, what you know, your pasturage, and 

 perhaps other things. On the whole, I think the best thing is 

 to read up in the books, then try to decide what plan will suit 

 you best. In a place like mine, where it is a somewhat un- 

 certain matter what will be in two weeks from any given 

 time, I like the plan of starting nuclei, then as soon as the 

 young queen gets to laying fill up so as to make a full colony 

 by taking one or two combs with adhering bees from each col- 

 ony that can spare. In that way you are not caught with a 

 lot of weaklings by a sudden stoppage of the honey-flow. 



5. I am not sure I can. If the weather was too bad for 

 bees to be out, of course they would not work on fruit-bloom, 

 but if weather was such that bees were flying freely, and they 

 paid no attention to apple-bloom, I should say there was some- 

 thing they could do better on, but I have not the slightest idea 

 what it might be. 



A Big Oflfier. — Send two new subscribers to the Ameri- 

 can Bee Journal for one year, at .SI. 00 each, and get as your 

 premium a free copy of Root's " A B C of Bee-Culture " bound 



in cloth. This offer will hold good only so long as the present 

 stock of books holds out ; so you'd better send your order 

 within a couple of weeks. It's a big offer, and you ought not 

 to miss it. It is a 400-page encyclopedia of bee-keeping, fully 

 illustrated. Over 60,000 copies have already been sold. The 

 regular price, postpaid, is $1.25 ; or we will clnb it with the 

 American Bee Journal for a year — both for only ."gLSO. 



