952 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



July 15 



water on the plan at that time, I remember, 

 and the bee-keeping public has never taken 

 much notice of it since, possibly because of 

 that cold water; but the plan is all right, 

 nevertheless, and has been in practical use 

 in my apiaries for fifteen years or more. I 

 frequently find queens by the plans given by 

 Mr. Hand, especially the first one. This al- 

 so, by the way, was made public some years 

 ago by that veteran bee-keeper M. M. iBald- 

 ridge. But for steady use I prefer the plan 

 of snaking them out. It is perfectly practi- 

 cal with any race of bees with which I am 

 acquainted, when you know how. I will tell 

 you again before long just how to do it. 

 ^• 



"SWEET CLOVER IN A NEW LIGHT." 



That is certainly a new light in which 

 sweet clover is placed in the paragraph on 

 p. 823. I have fed sweet clover and sweet- 

 clover hay at various times and for various 

 periods during the past ten years or more, 

 and I never noticed any injurious effects 

 from it whatever. In fact, at one time when 

 we fed our three Jerseys for several weeks 

 on nothing but sweet-clover hay and bran, 

 we decided, according to my recollection, 

 that it made a little nicer butter than any 

 thing else. At any rate, private customei's 

 gladly took it at the highest market price. 

 The idea of arlding it to other varieties of hay 

 is doubtless good; l)ut it should be done at the 

 time the hay is made and stacked away. I 

 wish some of those who are skeptical about 

 the valvie of sweet-clover hay could have 

 watched my horses several weeks ago. We 

 had cut a small quantity of sweet clover for 

 hay, and put it into the barn alongside of the 

 old alfalfa hay on which the horses had been 

 living all winter. A few days later the young 

 man who had been doing the feeding came 

 to me and said, "That sweet clover makes 

 tine hay. The horses like it better than al- 

 falfa. I have been trying to get them to use 

 up the old hay by mixing the new hay with 

 it, but they will hunt out every bit of the 

 sweet clover before they will eat any of the 

 old hay." 



^r 



DESTROYING QUEEN-CELLS TO PhEVENT AFT- 

 ER-SWARMING. 



A few yeai's ago I received a letter from a 

 man who offered to reveal to me an infallible 

 method of preventing after-swarming. He 

 did not ask for any compensation, and the 

 only stipulation he made was that I should 

 keep it a secret. To this I readily agreed, 

 and soon another letter came with the par- 

 ticulars as to the valuable discovery. I was 

 to wait until five days after the colony had 

 swarmed, then cut out all queen-cells but 

 one. When I wrote back to him that his 

 method was not exactly new or altogether 

 desirable or reliable, he became very angry 

 at me. I believe he thought I was trying to 

 rob him of the credit and benefits of his great 

 discovery. Be that as it may, I have never 

 revealed his secret from that day until this, 

 aad it is but very seldom that I have made 

 any use of \\\i method. Beginners in bee- 



keeping very often put their faith in this 

 plan, and I have known quite a few men of 

 considerable experience in bee-keeping to 

 depend upon it. The greatest objections to 

 the plan are the great amount of labor in- 

 volved and the great liability to miss some of 

 the cells, making all the labor in vain. There 

 are times when it seems to be the best thing 

 to do, and a few hints on how best to go 

 about it may not be amiss. First select the 

 cell you want to keep, taking care that it is 

 in a position where it will not be likely to be 

 damaged in getting it back into the hive. 

 Then carefully brush all or nearly all the 

 bees from this frame, remembering that you 

 must not shake it or handle it roughly or you 

 may injure the immature queen. Having 

 the bees out of the way, look carefully for 

 other cells. Pay particular attention to all 

 the edges of the comb. Sometimes a cell 

 will be so doubled up against the bottom or 

 end bar of the frame that only the closest 

 scrutiny will detect it. Sometimes a queen- 

 cell will be built on the smooth surface of a 

 solid frame of sealed brood, projecting only 

 slightly above the surface. Here you come 

 to another great fault of the plan, which is 

 that the poorest and smallest cells are most 

 likely to be overlooked, yet will defeat your 

 labor just as surely as the large tine ones, 

 with the added disadvantage that the queens 

 they, produce are apt to be of poor quality. 

 After you are through with this first frame, 

 the others may be handled with less cere- 

 mony, shaking the bees off to make a thor- 

 ough inspeciton. 



Do not let your selected cell remain long 

 unprotected if it is cool, nor let it stand in 

 the hot sun. In spite of all your care you 

 are likely to find sometimes that your one 

 selected cell never hatches; and unless you 

 look after such colonies closely you may find 

 some of them hopelessly queenless. Or the 

 queen may have some defect in her wings or 

 otherwise, which will keep her from being 

 mated. Such things are not likely to hap- 

 pen when the selection ol a queen is left to 

 the survival of the fittest after they " are 

 hatched. I believe some have reported that 

 the bees have swarmed out with the only 

 queen left in the hive. I have never had 

 this experience, but it might occur when the 

 swarming fever was prevalent and the cells 

 were not destroyed until nearly time for 

 them to hatch. 



Taken altogether, this way of preventing 

 after-swarms is not to be recommended. 

 Better methods are the well-known Heddon 

 plan, or the similar one of leaving the old 

 hive beside the new one for a week, then I'e- 

 moving it so as to deplete the old colony as 

 much as possible. Better yet, when a later 

 yield of honey may be looked for, is the plan 

 of giving the colony, as soon as it has swarm- 

 ed, a ripe cell, or a newly hatched queen, or, 

 still better, a laying queen. Usually at this 

 time a queen may be turned loose with per- 

 fect safety; and as the colony is weak in 

 numbers she or the bees may be depended 

 on to destroy the cells more certainly and 

 cheaply than you can do it. 



