316 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



September 



new queens instead of by returning the old 

 queens. Is my. way right, by rule? If so, 

 whv does it not work? 



This way looks to me just about the same 

 as Fred W. Hall's whom you call a good bee- 

 keeper in answer to the first question in July 

 American Bee Journal, page 243. 



The way I secure lots of bees for the hive 

 r set off is, that before I take away that hive 

 I shut up the bees in it by a special contriv- 

 ance of my own of wire netting (no stuffing 

 up with grass for me), then in two days I re- 

 move the wire netting affair, and thus there is 

 no lack of bees with the queen in the set- 

 away. PENNSYLVANIA. 



Answer. — One of the pleasures of beekeep- 

 ing is the constant opportunity to try new 

 things and to do things differently, generally 

 finding them turn out failures, but occasion-' 

 ally scoring a success. It's a good thing, but 

 a good thing may be carried too far, and in 

 your beekeeping you're an ultraist of the ul- 

 traists. If anything is common practice among 

 beekeepers, that's reason enough for you to 

 be fornenst it. If they stuff grass in en- 

 trances, it's "no stuffing up with grass for me;" 

 if they hunt up queens, it's not for you in a 

 thousand years, and you'll go to twice the 

 trouble to avoid it. If you keep on. some day 

 it will occur to you that most beekeepers use 

 hives with 8, 10 or more frames, and you'll de- 

 cide to use only five, and then want it ex- 

 plained why you don't get bumper crops. I 

 can sympathize with you in your discourage- 

 ment. I've tried fool things enough to make 

 quite a book, and felt the chagrin of failure; 

 but when we find, as you say, "nothing works," 

 we can quit doing so many things differently, 

 do the same as others do and then there's no 

 reason why we should not have as good suc- 

 cess as they. 



You can put the hive with the queen on a 

 distant stand, and I sometimes do so if only 

 a frame or two of brood are taken with 

 her, but if a considerable amount of brood and 

 taken with her I prefer to put up on 

 top. so as to keep the whole force of bees with 

 the colony at the old stand; for if set for 

 some days on a separate stand a goodly num- 

 ber of field bees would be left at the new 

 stand. 



As to the bees swarming out, it may be that 

 you left more than one cell. Often a queen- 

 cell is so hidden that one must be an expert 

 at finding cells not to miss it, and if two cells 

 are left in the hive the bees are practically cer- 

 tain to swarm. It is possible, also, that when 

 the young queen went on her wedding trip the 

 bees swarmed out with her. 



My understanding of F. W. Hall's plan is 

 that he removes the old queen and then de- 

 stroys all queen-cells but one. That gives him 

 the great advantage that he has a young lay- 

 ing queen in each hive, and the chance of such 

 a queen swarming is a negligible quantity. 

 the plan is excellent in that respect, it 

 is not every cm- who would want to adopt it, 

 for it has the disadvantage of a rather bad 

 break in egg-laying from the time the old 

 queen is killed until the young one begins to 

 lay, which may be as much as three weeks. 

 Those who are working for constant improve- 

 ment of stock will also object that the annual 

 renewal loes not favor the full 



testing of each iueei > a to allow the selec- 

 tion of i ■ Mr- Hall is a 

 very pleasant gentleman as well as a successful 

 beekeeper, and when he sees this, if he finds 

 any misrepresentation I shall be glad to be cor- 

 rected by him. But the Hall plan is hardly 

 for you, since hunting up queens is an essen- 

 tial part of the plan. 



Queens — Feeding for Winter 



1. I bought a nice queen bee in June of this 

 year and she came in good shape, as far as 1 

 know about bees. I put her in a new colony, 



which had been 10 days without a queen. 

 About four or five days later I looked in to 

 see what she had done and found that she had 

 laid a lot of eggs, and in some of the cells 

 were two eggs. I looked in again on the 17th 

 and found that the queen was there, but not a 

 single egg had been hatched out. Why is it 

 that they will not hatch out? Do you think 

 that the eggs will hatch this summer? 



2. I also bought another queen, and I put 

 her in the colony which I had just made 

 queenless, and the bees received her all right. 

 She has ueen in the hive for about 14 days, - 

 but has not laid any eggs. 



3. I also find that my bees will not get more 

 than 3 or 4 combs drawn out this summer. I 

 put each swarm of bees on ten full sheets of 

 comb foundation to each hive. Should I 

 leave the undrawn sheets in each of the hives, 

 or must I take out what is not drawn out and 

 put them away until next spring? 



4. My bees have not gathered honey as yet. 

 The cotton is blooming here and it will bloom 

 until about frost. I do not want to feed my 

 bees until I have to. We have frost in the 

 middle or latter part of October if we have 

 an early fall, and if we have a late fall it will 

 be about the first of November before frost 

 will set in to kill all kinds of crops that 

 bloom. About what time in the fall would 

 you start feeding my bees for the winter? 



5. Can you furnish me honey to feed them 

 on, and how much to each hive will it take, 

 and at what price, or would it be better for 

 me to feed sugar syrup? If sugar is used, how 

 much should be used to the hive? Should it 

 be cooked to a thick syrup? Will three- 

 fourths syrup and one-fourth honey be a good 

 feed? 



fi % > ill I have to buy a feeder, or can you 

 give me a good plan as to how to make a good 

 feeder' I am thinking of putting on an empty 

 super and having a tin box made, say about 12 

 or 14 inches long, 10 or 12 inches wide and 2 

 or 4 inches deep. 



7 If any of the honey or sugar syrup runs 

 out in the hive out of the feeder, will it 

 drown the bees or cause robbing? 



NORTH CAROLINA. 



Answdks. — 1. I have had a very few queens 

 in my lifetime, perhaps not more than two or 

 three whose eggs never hatched. I suppose 

 from some defect in the queen. I don't sup- 

 pose the eggs of this queen of yours will ever 

 hatch. 



2. Sometimes it happens that a queen is tol- 

 erated by the bees a considerable time, al- 

 though not allowed to lay, and then she may 

 lay all right; or, she may be then killed. I 

 wouldn't be very hopeful about yours. 



3. The sheets of foundation that are not 

 drawn out should not be left with the bees over 

 winter. Indeed, it is not best to leave them 

 there now, if the bees are making no use of 

 them, for they are likely to daub them with 

 bee-glue, and I have known them to daub foun- 

 dation so badly that they would never draw it 

 out afterward. So if they are making no use 

 of it, it will be well to take it out until honey 

 is yielding again, or until you feed. 



4. It would be better to feed before every- 

 thing is frozen; but as you say you do not 

 want to feed until you are bound to. you may 

 as well wait till after frost, whether that 

 comes early or late. 



5. It is quite possible that your bees will get 

 enough for winter from the late flow, but if 

 not. I think Dadant and Sons can supply your 

 needs, but would hardly be able to quote a price 

 until later. Each colony should have not less 

 than 30 pounds of honey, or its equivalent in 

 sugar syrup; and 40 pounds would be still 

 better. If you feed sugar syrup, it needs no 

 cooking, only so that the sugar is dissolved. 

 But it will dissolve more rapidly if you stir 

 the sugar slowly into boiling water. Whatever 

 you do, don't scorch it if you don't want to 

 kill your bees. For such late feeding, sugar 

 syrup should be thick, say at the rate of 5 

 pounds of granulated sugar to 2 pounds or 

 pints of water. I would rather have honey 

 than sugar for winter food, although some 

 prefer sugar. At any rate, at the present 

 prices of honey and sugar most beekeepers 



would feed at least part sugar. I would very 

 much rather feed the mixture you propose 

 (one-fourth honey and three-fourths syrup) 

 than to feed all sugar. If you feed all sugar 

 you should use a level teaspoonful of tartaric 

 acid to 20 pounds of sugar. If you use one- 

 fourth honey, no acid will be needed. 



6. For feeding you can use a box such as 

 you propose, preferably of wood with melted 

 paraffin or wax run around the corners, but 

 there must be something to keep the bees from 

 drowning, such as excelsior or cork chips. 



7. There would be hardly any danger of 

 drowning bees with a leaky feeder, but there 

 would be danger of robbing. Feeding after 

 bees stop flying in the evening makes the dan- 

 ger less. 



Laying- Worker 



This spring I purchased two colonies for 

 $25. I determined to run principally for ex- 

 perience, with possibly some increase this year. 



My first swarm came off June 13. and I 

 hived them on the old stand, gave them a full 

 depth super, full of sheets of foundation. 

 This colony has today two supers, seven 

 frames full, and working like mad. On June 

 15 I hived what I first thought to be a swarm 

 from my second colony, but on finding a queen 

 in the hive of the second colony as well as 

 with the swarm, I decided that it was an after- 

 swarm from No. 1. I hived them and after 

 two hours this afterswarm took French leave 

 and left me where I was before. 



I then, that day, June 15, went through my 

 first colony, the one which swarmed two days 

 before, and found not only the queen, but five 

 or six ripe queen-cells. This certainly put me 

 up in the air, so I decided that right here was 

 where I was going to do my first turn at in- 

 crease. I took two frames of bees and brood 

 with two cells, put them in a hive with two 

 full sheets of foundation and sat down to 

 await developments. In due time I went 

 through my small nuclei and found both cells 

 had hatched, but was never able to find a queen 

 among them. Otherwise this division ap- 

 peared to be contented and was bringing in 

 nectar and pollen; however, in a short time 

 I began to suspect laying workers. I found 

 worker cells capped with drone cappings. I 

 could not find queen-cells any place, so I 

 took another frame of brood from the orig- 

 inal hive. I had replaced the first two with 

 foundation, and this made three frames taken 

 from this hive. The division, however, did 

 not build any cells on the third frame, and to 

 my surprise, I began to find not only worker 

 cells with drone caps, but also a few worker 

 cells on the first frames with regular worker 

 cappings. Here was another nut for me to 

 crack. I had ordered queen from a breeder, 

 realizing that my chances for a successful in- 

 troduction was slim, and now I have read in 

 the American Bee Journal for August an ar- 

 ticle by John H. Lovell on Parthenogenesis, 

 in which the theory is that at Hmes laying 

 workers produce both drones ana workers. So 

 now, after what I fear a long drawn out in- 

 troduction which will likely try your pa- 

 tience, I have arrived at the question. 



First — Do laying workers at times produce 

 both drones and workers? If so, what will be 

 the functions of such workers produced from 

 layer eggs? 



Second — We are led to believe that bees work 

 largely from instinct, governed largely by 

 work necessary, and are not the intelligent 

 creatures which fiction has sometimes ' led us 

 to beleve; then how do bees, in your opinion, 

 differentiate between infertile eggs laid by 

 workers in worke, cells and thus cap them 

 with drone cappings? 



These are the questions which arc particu- 

 larly disturbing me, although there are a hun- 

 dred and one other which would like t<> 

 know just exactly what is your opinion about. 

 I will not, however, take the attitude of a 

 ioner who wrote you asking you 

 to ask one hundred and fifty questions and 

 answer them at the same time. I will, how- 

 ever, later buy your book, "One Thousand 

 Questions," etc., and possibly I will find some 

 of them already answered. 



I have read several books on beekeeping and 

 without attempting to flatter you, my dear 

 Doctor, I can truthfully say that I never read 

 any book which gave me the keen delight 

 which your "Fifty Years Among the Bees" 

 did. 



I, with the rest of the bee world, big and 



