THM MMERICMN WMM JQilPPRHlEEr. 



471 



vision-board made of perforated zinc, 

 with a wood rira 3-16 of an inch (half 

 a bee-space) above the plane of the 

 sheet, on each side. Mr. John S. 

 Reese, of Kentucky, who has a perfor- 

 ating machine, has improved the zinc 

 queen-excluding hone)'-board by per- 

 forating the sheets in rows, so as to 

 come right over the centres of the top- 

 bars of tlie frames, thus insuring a per- 

 fect break in the upward passways. I 

 like his plan the best of all. 3. Three- 

 eighth.? of an inch. — G. W. Demaree. 



1. At the top of the brood-apart- 

 ment, to take the cover when the sur- 

 plus cases are not on, and to take a 

 cover to the T-super, which must not 

 have two bee-spaces, or how about 

 tiering them ? 2. My own ; that is, 

 one containing the bee-space and 

 break-joint principle. 3. One-fourth 

 inch, or none to speak of. — James 

 Heddon. 



1. There is practically no difference 

 — either place will do. 2. The slotted 

 queen-excluding honey-board is pref- 

 erable. 3. About I of an inch. — The 

 Editor. 



mSFOMDMCE. 



QUEEN-REARING. 



Hour to Rear the very Best 

 Qneens. 



Written fur the American Bee Journal 



BY WM. H. BAXCH. 



lot of queen-cells ; one that I once prac- 

 ticed until I found some of ray queens 

 died in three months, and many with- 

 in one year. This caused vexation and 

 loss, and I began to study and experi- 

 ment, and from those experiments I 

 have found tliat I could rear the very 

 best queens. It is done in the following 

 manner : 



At any time when bees carry nat- 

 ural pollen, and the drones are out, or 

 will be at the time the queens will be 

 old enough to make her bridal tour 

 (early in the spring, summer, or late 

 in the season), take the queen from a 

 strong colony, then wait eight days, 

 and cut out every queen-cell and in- 

 sert a frame of eggs, not larvaj. Be 

 sure that there is not one egg hatched. 

 This is the secret, not larvce but eggs. 

 About trebble the number of queen- 

 cells will be constructed, and the 

 queens will be of the very best ! The 

 longest lived queens that I ever had, 

 were reared according to the above 

 method. 



Orau, N. Y. 



There has been very much written 

 on this subject, yet not one has cen- 

 tered the mark. This is written in all 

 kindess. I do not rear queens for 

 sale, and I do not' write this to start a 

 controversy j^^'o or con on artificially 

 reared or naturally reared queens, but 

 that the inexperienced maj' profit 

 by what I have proven for many years. 



All are well aware what queen- 

 breeders say about naturally and arti- 

 ficially reared queens, and how much 

 stress is laid on the /' swarming im- 

 pulse," larva? three days old, strong 

 colonies, and the first set of queen- 

 cells reared in a colony, etc. In the 

 American Bee Journal for May 16, 

 1888, is an article in which the writer 

 says, " divide the colony." When I 

 read that article, I felt a sjmpathj' for 

 the wu'iter, and much more for those 

 who read the article that have had 

 small experience in queen-breeding, 

 and expect good queens. I then 

 thought that it was my duty to correct 

 the error immediately. 



It is a very simple and easy matter 

 to divide a colony of bees, and rear a 



OLD QUEENS. 



Shall We Supersede Old Queen§ 

 Ourselves ? 



Written for Gleanings in Bee-Cultv/re 



BT O. O. POPPLETON. 



The assertion, that bees know better 

 when to do this work than we do, 

 is in a certain sense true, and in other 

 ways not true ; for while they fre- 

 quently supersede their queens before 

 the apiarist can possibly detect any 

 failure of the queen, or, at least, before 

 he would detect it in the ordinary 

 routine of work, they frequently re- 

 tain failing queens, if allowed to do 

 so, for months after they are nearly 

 worthless ; but all are agreed that such 

 queens should be replaced by the bee- 

 keeper. The fact that, in following 

 any rule of superseding on account of 

 age, we will sometimes destroy queens 

 good for yet another season, is also 

 true ; but this is only one item to be 

 considered in making a decision of 

 what is best to do, and not the conclu- 

 sive reason that the one who made it 

 seemed to consider it was. 



The entire question is one simply of 

 profit and loss ; that is, a question of 

 which way costs the least. On the 

 one hand we have the expense of 

 furni.shing the colonies with the joung 

 queens, which any one can easily de- 

 termine for himself, and to this must 

 be added the value of an occasional 

 queen that would be destroyed that 

 would be useful for yet another season. 

 This last item is much less than many 

 suppose it to be. and less than I sup- 



posed it was until after I had closely 

 observed the matter for several years. 

 On the other hand, we have a material 

 reduction of our honey crop, resulting 

 from the failure of many old queens at 

 a critical time of year. 



In the northern States the time of 

 year when such failure will les.sen the 

 amount of honey stored by the colony 

 extends from late in the fall until 

 about July 1 next ; and it is practically 

 impossible to detect this failure in time 

 to entirely prevent the loss of honey. 



The bees do very little superseding 

 of their own accord at this season of 

 the year ; in fact, practically none at 

 all of the queens that are commenc- 

 ing to fail, but not yet entirely so. At 

 least nine-tenths of the superseding in 

 my apiary in northern Iowa was done 

 in the months of July and August. 



To aid me in getting at the real 

 facts in this matter as well as in others, 

 I have always kept a complete record 

 of all my queens, and have practiced 

 clipping their wings. This last en- 

 abled me to keep a coi'rect record of 

 each queen, without any guess-work. 



I soon noticed that those colonies 

 whose queenwas in her fourth season 

 nearly always gave me less than the 

 average amount of honey, and enough 

 less, too, to much more than pay for 

 the expenses of having given them 

 young queens the fall before, and 

 allow largely for the value of such 

 good queens" as might be killed while 

 doing so. I never killed all of my 

 third-season queens, although I think 

 it would have paid to do so ; but I al- 

 ways kept a few of the best ones, so I 

 have had both kinds of queens to com- 

 pare results from many years. 



A colony which is veiy strong at 

 the commencement of the honey-flow, 

 will store more honey according to its 

 numbers than will a medium strong 

 one, and only queens in prime vigor 

 can get their colonies strong by the 

 time white clover commences to yield ; 

 and even if old and yet good, they are 

 rarely ever as vigorous as are younger 

 ones ; and my main reliance for sur- 

 plus honey was always on those colo- 

 nies having queens in their second or 

 third seasons. 



It is quite a long while fi'om the 

 time brood-rearing ceases in the fall 

 and the first of July following ; and 

 any failure of the queen during this 

 time, even if only partial, seriously 

 diminishes the number of mature bees 

 the hive will contain during the honey 

 harvest, and no failure of a queen can 

 take place during this time that can 

 be noticed by the apiarist, soon enough 

 to prevent a serious reduction of the 

 amount of brood that will be raised in 

 time for the harvest. 



A much larger production of colo- 

 nies having old queens will be weak in 



