THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



45 



wish the inventor to lerially claim his oivn. 

 Mr. Root's positon is very peculiar, and one 

 that cannot be successfully defended by 

 argument. 



THE BEABING AND SHIPPING OF QUEENS. 



But little need be said upon the score of 

 choosing breeding stock, as any breeder of 

 any pretensions whatever will secure the 

 the best within his means. We would urge, 

 once more, however, the importance of 

 rearing an abundance of drones from the 

 choicest stock. Keep all drone comb out of 

 undesirable colonies, and give an abundance 

 to a few of the best colonies. This will iill 

 the air with choice drones, and the chances 

 of a queen mating with an undesirable drone 

 will not be more than one in one hundred. 

 We don't know whether the plan mentioned 

 by one of our correspondents, that of keeping 

 over an unfertile queen in order to secure 

 extra early drones, is a good one or not. We 

 have never seen the need of it. We have al- 

 ways had drones flying as soon as it was 

 profitable to have queens hatched. The 

 requisites for securing good cells are, first, 

 an abundance of bees. Not only enough to 

 make a good, prosperous colony, but the 

 nurse bees must be present in large num- 

 bers in proportion to the larva? to be nursed. 

 After the cells are sealed, they may be plac- 

 ed in the upper story of a strong colony with 

 a queen excluder below them, and the cell- 

 building colony started to building another 

 batch of cells. All this work must be done 

 with exactness as to dates. The breeder 

 must know, to within a day, when a batch of 

 cells will hatch, and must not forget. One 

 correspondent mentions having a large cal- 

 endar hung up, and marking the dates, to- 

 gether with the hive num Iters, when the cells 

 must be removed. This is the plan we have 

 always followed : and is an illustration of 

 how carefully some system must be followed. 

 It is a difficult matter to so calculate that 

 there shall always be enough laying queens 

 to fill all orders, enough young queens or 

 mature cells to replace them and no cells 

 left over. When a breeder has orders ahead 

 all of the time, he can very nearly make 

 things come out even, but not always. A 

 spell of cool weather, or a stoppage in the 

 honey flow, may cause a delay in the queens' 

 beginning to lay, and then there will be no 

 place to put the newly hatched queens. Hot 

 weather or a honey flow may bring opposite 



results. It is best, however, to always have 

 on hand an abundance of cells, even if quite 

 a number of their occupants must be even- 

 tually destroyed. The greatest expense in 

 queen rearing is in getting the queens fer- 

 tilized and laying. The nucleus hives, the 

 combs and bees with which to stock them, 

 and the time of caring for them, are all ex- 

 pensive — particularly so the time. So far as 

 the queen is concerned, at least, until she be- 

 gins laying, but few bees are needed for a 

 nucleus. There must be sufficient, however, 

 for defense and the generation of enough 

 heat to hatch the brood. Large combs are 

 very poorly adapted to queen rearing, as 

 they prevent the bees from arranging their 

 work in a compact form. We have often 

 thought of using the old style of Heddon 

 super for a nucleus hive, having four nuclei 

 in each hive, and using sections an inch and 

 a half wide for frames. Mr. Alley uses 

 such small combs, and one of our corres- 

 pondents in this number mentions using 

 such frames. The greatest trouble with hav- 

 ing onlj' a few bees in a nucleus, aside from 

 that of robbing, is that the queen soon lays 

 all the eggs that can be cared for, then goes 

 over the combs a second or third time, leav- 

 ing two or three eggs in a cell, when discon- 

 tent begins, and the end is " swarming out." 

 Where a breeder is constantly over run with 

 orders, this objection is not serious. We 

 have always used the regular sized combs, 

 keeping the nuclei pretty strong, probably 

 twice as strong as they are really needed 

 as regards the queens, using plenty of empty 

 combs and extracting the honey; thus getting 

 a crop of queens and a crop of honey. In a 

 locality where the honey flow is light, this 

 plan would be less desirarable. Before tak- 

 ing away a queen she was allowed to fill the 

 combs pretty well with eggs. A young 

 queen was introduced at the removal of the 

 laying queen, or soon af ler ; thus, in ten 

 days more, the nucleus recoived another 

 "sitting " of eggs. By this method, the nu- 

 clei were kept strong, there wus no robbing 

 nor swarming out, and everything passed off 

 smoothly ; and when fall came, four or five 

 of these strong nuclei united made a good 

 colony. We did everything possible to sys- 

 tematize and save labor. We even went so 

 far as to place the nucleus hives up on 

 "stilts" (stakes) to avoid the tiresome 

 stooping and kneeling postures when caring 

 for them. The covers to the hives were 

 hinged on — not with expensive iron hinges 



