236 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



July 



long as she does not the hees will 

 start cells in the triper story as 

 promptly as if the queen-excluder 

 v ere present. 



The distance of isolated brood from 

 the queen is a matter of importance. 

 The first case on record of a queen 

 being reared over a laying queen oi 

 which I have any knowledge occurred 

 in this wise: I had a number of 

 empty brood-combs that I wanted to 

 protect from the moth, and 1 piled 

 four stories of them over a medium 

 colony. Fearing that the bees might 

 not reach the combs farthest from 

 the brood-nest, I put one or two 

 frames of brood in the upper story. 

 Later on, upon opening the hive, I 

 was greatlv surprised to find in the 

 upper story a nice little brood-nest 

 and a young queen laying. There was 

 an opening at top from which the 

 young queen could take her wedding 

 flight, and she had evidently not in- 

 vaded the domains of the reigning 

 queen below. In this case there was 

 no excluder, and nothing to prevent 

 free passage from top to bottom; so 

 it was the mere matter of distance 

 that gave the bees the feeling of 

 queenlessness. 



Since then I have had a number of 

 cases in which the same thing oc- 

 curred without any intention on my 

 part. In a number of cases I have 

 also designedly put brood above, in 

 order to rear a queen, but failed 

 every time. I don't know why. I 

 lb ink others have had better success. 

 There seems to be a difference as 

 to the degree of intensity of the feel- 

 ing of queenlessness on the part of 

 the bees, perhaps dependent on the 

 degree of isolation. The closer the 

 isolated brood is to the queen, or 

 the more open the communication, 

 the less the feeling of queenlessness. 

 Perhaps, also, there may be a differ- 

 ence in the bees themselves. A colony 

 with a young queen is not so likely 

 as one with an old queen to start 

 cells over an excluder. Indeed, one 

 is not always entirely sure that cells 

 will be started, whether the queen 

 be old or young. But practically al- 

 ways one may be sure that if cells 

 already started are given over an ex- 

 cluder, with a laying queen below, 

 such cells will be respected and 

 ! just the same as if they had 

 i,ni., 1 the cells themselves. They 

 may not feel queenless enough to 

 start cells, but they do feel queenless 

 enough to take care of them and con- 

 tinue them if cells are already 

 started 



[n all <>f this the excluder in mind 



common zinc queen excluder. 



The result may be a little different 



with the wire excluder, on account of 



its gt i in I he \in< ' i 



irnal for He, i mbi i 1918, 

 page 412.' \V. J. Shepp it ' 



ound that when the new queen- 

 - iccluder was used, the bees, as a 

 rule, would not build queen-cells, ex- 

 cept when a shallow super was put 

 above the first story, and a second 

 wire excluder over that * * * But 

 if an ordinary zinc excluder was used 



id of . wire one. there was no 

 difficulty in getting th ; bees to build 

 queen-cells." 

 We speak generally of rearing a 



queen over an excluder. It may be 

 under, or it may be at one side. I 

 tli ink, however, that bees over an 

 excluder feel more keenly their 

 queenlessness than when under or at 

 one side. 



When, then, we desire to rear 

 queens in a colony with a laying 

 queen, we may feel about sure that 

 cells will be started if the story con- 

 taining the brood be separated from 

 the story containing the queen by an 

 extracting super and an excluder: 

 that they will generally be started if 

 a zinc excluder is used without the 

 extracting super; and they will gen- 

 erally not be started when a wire- 

 excluder alone is used. Also, that if 

 cells already started are given, we 

 may feel quite sure they will be con- 

 tinued if a zinc excluder be used. 

 With a wire-excluder I'm not sure 

 whether we can count on their being 

 continued unless an extracting-super 

 also intervene. .Marengo, 111 



A Successful Queen Breeder 



By E. G. Carr 



MANY tynes of persons keep 

 bees, and when a queen- 

 breeder is able for twenty- 

 five years to satisfy, with hardly an 

 exception, these various tastes, one 

 wonders how it is done. Such a 

 queen-breeder is Lloyd H. Robey, of 

 Worthington, West Virginia. 



Mr. Robey was born in Lumber- 

 port, not far from his present home, 

 in September, 1850. He was left 

 fatherless in early childhood, and at 

 the age of 12 started to learn the 

 shoemaker's trade. He became ex- 

 pert, and so mastered the tools of the 

 trade that, to use his own words, "If 

 I were going to build a house I would 

 use the shoemaker's tools." He uses 

 a crooked sewing awl for a grafting 

 tool. 



Bees were taken up as a side line 

 with the hope that they might prove 

 profitable in honey production, as too 

 close confinement at the shoe-bench 

 had brought on considerable diges- 

 tive trouble. Finding the nectar sup- 

 ply insufficient to make honey pro- 

 duction profitable, Mr. Robey took up 

 queen-rearing, and after having mas- 

 tered the intricacies of the business, 

 began, in 1891, to supply queens in 

 the trade. From that time his busi- 

 ness has grown until the output the 

 u seasons has been about 3,000 



\li Robey uses the hand-made 

 "1 ),,, , little" cell-cup and grafts into 

 them thi' smallest larva- which can be 

 handled, after priming the cups with 

 "royal jelly." They are then given to 

 i colony which has been prepared for 

 nting by removing it from its 

 nil in its Mead placing a hive 

 containing four combs of honey and 

 poller and one frame of brood. The 

 From about four combs from the 

 removed colony are shaken into the 

 ired hive and in five hours, or 

 about noon, fifteen grafted cells are 

 after the frame of brood has 

 been i emi >ved The next morning the 

 started cells arc put in the upper 

 story of a strong colony for comple- 

 tion. The cell-starting colony is then 



restored to its former place and con- 

 dition and in two days the process is 

 repeated. 



Frames for the mating hive are of 

 such size that three will fit into a 

 Langstroth size frame. Two or three 

 are used for a nucleus. Twin mating 

 hives are used, as are also some hold- 

 ing four nuclei. 



Formerly these were stocked by 

 fitting them into the "L" frames and 

 placing in a colony. Later, bodies 

 were made of such size that they 

 would carry twelve of the small 

 frames crosswise, two such bodies be- 

 ing used as a colony. 



As a rule, ripe cells are given nu- 

 clei. 



Late in the season, when the ten- 

 dency is to feed the cells poorly, 

 sometimes the larva? are removed 

 from the cups, where they have been 

 fed for two days and replaced with 

 newly-hatched larvae, at the same 

 time shaving down the cups with a 

 hot, sharp knife. This insures well- 

 fed larva?. 



Mr. Robey imports breeding queens 

 every two years. However, before 

 these are used for breeding they are 

 tested, usually for two years, to 

 guard against introducing any unde- 

 sirable trait. 



Drone mothers, as well as queen 

 mothers, have always been selected 

 by Mr. Robey. It is noted that this 

 point is now receiving much more at- 

 tention than formerly. 



Mr. Robey's experience has been 

 that only the first batch of super- 

 sedure cells have proven satisfactory. 

 He has often found the returning 

 mated queen accepted in a queenless 

 nucleus. 



Mr. Robey shipped queens to F. W. 

 L. Sladen, in England, twenty years 

 ago. He successfully sent queens to 

 r.ritish Guiana, using a 12-hole cage 

 and about one-half pint of bees. The 

 queen was on the road twenty days. 



For a number of years orders for the 

 entire output of the apiary were 

 booked by the first of May. In his 

 dealings with the public Mr. Robey has 

 assumed the same attitude as the Pull- 

 man porters, which is : "The customer 

 is always right." It is possible he has 

 satisfied some unjust claims, still he 

 believes it has paid in advertising. 



Because of the recent sugar short- 

 age and the fact that he annually 

 used 6,000 pounds, Mr. Robey has 

 abandoned raising queens for the 

 trade. 



New Egypt. N. J, 



The Baby Nucleus 



By E. F. At water 



WHEN the writer was attending 

 high school, nearly twenty 

 years ago, and keeping some 

 bees, and thinking more about the 

 bees than the school, it was his privi- 

 lege to spend a few days with Mr. 

 Thos. Chantry, at Meckling, S. D., 

 and there saw in use a super divided 

 into four compartments, something 

 like the old Heddon super, in which 

 separators could not be used, and in 

 each compartment were two or more 

 frames of 4J4 sections, and a nice, 

 prosperous little nucleus in each com- 

 partment. 



