144 



THE BEE-KEEPERS' REVIEW. 



should read 'Hn sects.'" Keeping honey 

 beessimi^ly increases the number of in- 

 sects which help with the fertilizing. 



We had fully as large crops of as nice, 

 or nicer, fruit before there were any hon- 

 ey bees in the neighborhood, as we have 

 ever had since. During the past 19 years 

 we have had from two to seventy colo- 

 nies in the orchard, and, as a matter of 

 faith, believe they have done some good, 

 thovigh we could not see it. 



Archie, Mich. Mar. 25, 1899. 



Notes From Foreign 

 ^^^Bee Journals. 



by f. i,. thompson. 



The controi, of drones and the 

 mating of queens. 



Mr. Pender in Australian Bee Bulletin 

 says ' ' I have proved to my own satis- 

 faction, at any rate, that drones in an 

 apiary over one mile awaj^ have but 

 little influence over our queens, if we are 

 careful to provide plenty of drones. ' ' He 

 keeps 100 nuclei in a separate yard, with 

 5 to 10 full colonies to furnish the drones 

 for mating. These are not allowed to 

 raise their own drones to maturity, al- 

 though a patch of drone comb is left in 

 each to satisfy its desire for rearing drone 

 brood. This brood has its heads sliced 

 off at regular intervals. But in the up- 

 per stories of these colonies are kept 

 frames of drone brood brought from de- 

 sirable colonies in the yards run for hon- 

 ey. An excluder prevents the queen Irom 

 laying in the.se combs, and the drones 

 are allowed to fly through a hole bored in 

 the upper story. By keeping the colo- 

 nies droneless which furnish the drone 

 brood used, a comb of sealed drone brood 

 may be procured every 10 days to remove 

 to the queen mating apiary. Mr. Pen- 

 berthy, at the convention where Mr. Pen- 

 der's paper was read, said that a queen 



will please herself whether she will be 

 mated or not by throwing out a smell. 

 His experience was that his queens went 

 two or three miles away to where there 

 were black drones. The strongest queens 

 were mated furtherest away. He had only 

 three out of forty queens purely mated, 

 although black bees within a mile away 

 were rare, and his home apiary of 140 

 Italian colonies had plenty of drones. 



Mr. Pender also said in his paper that 

 it is desirable to have queen cells raised 

 in an apiary away from the nuclei, be- 

 cause then young queens do not get in- 

 to queen rearing hives, destroying their 

 queen cells. He has carried hundreds of 

 queen cells during the last two seasons 

 to his mating apiary, and had the young 

 queens fertilized there with the best re- 

 sults. Mr. Seabrook said carrying queen- 

 cells wa? a great mistake, as one has to 

 very careful in carrying them, and the 

 least jerk often produces deformed 

 queens. 



controlling SWARMING WITH THE 

 HEDDON HIVE. 



Mr. Bolton uses Heddon hives. Two 

 or three weeks before swarming time, he 

 makes a round in order to apportion to 

 each colony the right number of hive sec- 

 tions which its strength calls for, and any 

 colony having two hive .sections has 

 the upper one inverted, thus securing the 

 abandonment of any young queen-cells 

 that may have been started. That means 

 no swarming at that apiar}' for the next 

 nine days. On the ninth day the hives 

 are again inspected, and whatever ones 

 have no queen-cells, or have queen- 

 cells apparently under eight days old, 

 again have their upper sections inverted. 

 Those which have cells nearly read}' to 

 seal, or being sealed, are swarmed arti- 

 ficially by shaking them off in front of a 

 single hive section, with starters, on the 

 old stand, and are given their own super 

 above an excluder. The two stories of 

 brood removed are used in adding to one- 

 story colonies. The same process is re- 

 peated in the apiar}* at the end of another 



