THE BEE-KEErERS' REVIEW. 



203 



was always a small, insignificant looking, 

 half-worker, half-qneen, sort of an insect. 

 Possibly you mean that better queens re- 

 sult if the queens are fertilized and begin 

 laving in strong nuclei, rather than in 

 weak nuclei, although I fail to see why. 

 By the way, some l)ee-keeper at the 

 ^Minnesota convention, last winter, assert- 

 ed that tlieprolificness of a queen depend- 

 ed largely upon the opportunity afTorded 

 her to lay when she first began laying. 

 If prevented from laying to her full ex- 

 tent, she would always remain a poor, or 

 a moderate, layer. Perhaps this is the 

 point you wish to make. You see, there 

 are several constructions that may be put 

 on that sentence. 



I presume that there are now queen 

 nurseries, in which the young queens are 

 warmed and ca-ed for l)y the bees, that 

 are the equal, or, perhaps, the superior, 

 of the lamp nurser}-, but when you say 

 that the lamp nursery is "too much trou- 

 ble," it affords me pleasure to cross swords 

 with you. The same in regard to e.xam- 

 ining the cells at night to see if any of 

 the occupants "kicked." Yes, and the 

 pin-dial record is all right in my plan. 



Oueen rearing is a business that must 

 be thoroughly systemized, and each breed- 

 er is quite likely to develop some S3Stem 

 that is peculiarly his own, and, as he be- 

 comes accustomed to it, he learns to feel 

 that it is the best. Almost every women 

 thinks that her sewing machine is the 

 best. I beg the indulgence of my non- 

 queen rearing readers, if I briefly touch 

 upon some of the points in the system 

 that I employed in those happy, queen- 

 rearing-days of long ago. First the lamp 

 nursery: It was a foot square inside, and 

 the walls were about an inch and a half 

 apart. That is, the space for the water 

 was about that much. The space between 

 the bottom walls was more than that. I 

 know that it required between five and 

 six pails of water to fill it. It was fast- 

 eiieil in the top ot a box about four feet 

 high, the warm air being able to pass up 

 all around the sides of the nursery. It 

 was kept in a closed room on the north 



side of the shop, and the temperature of 

 this room did not vary greatly between 

 night and day. The lamp was of tin, 

 and held about a gallon and a half of oil. 

 I turned the wick down slightly in the 

 morning and up again a little at night. 

 There was a hole bored through the wood- 

 en cover that was hinged to the top of the 

 box containing the nursery, and just be- 

 low the hole, to the lower side of the 

 cover, was fastened a thermometer, and 

 a slip of glass fastened over the hole al- 

 lowed me to glance at the mercury with- 

 out taking the trouble to lift the cover. 

 From spring until fall the mercury did 

 not vary five degrees from 95°. It never 

 went down to 90° nor over 100°. The 

 nursery zV^^//" certainly gave no trouble. 

 It was almost automatic. It was simply 

 a warm place where cells could be placed 

 until the queens hatched. If I were now 

 rearing queens, I presume that I should 

 adopt the Doolittle plan, but the plan 

 that I then used was not so very bad. In 

 extracting when I ran across a light color- 

 ed comb, one that had had brood in it 

 once or twice, I laid it aside to be used 

 in queen rearing — to have cells built up- 

 on it. Such combs were given almost 

 daily to the colonies containing choice 

 queens; and it was an easy matter, at 

 almost any time, to find a comb filled 

 with eggs in which the first laid eggs 

 were just beginning to hatch. By cut- 

 ting six or seven holes through the comb, 

 just where the eggs were beginning to 

 hatch, the cells would be started on lar- 

 vie that was very nearly the same 

 age. It was a rare thing when all of the 

 cells in a batch did not hatch on the 

 same day. One or two days before a 

 batch of cells was due to hatch (and, by 

 the way, "a record was kept, upon a large 

 card hung near the shop door, of *&\\ col- 

 onies building cells and when they were 

 due to hatch) the cells were cut out and 

 placed in the lamp nursery. And now 

 let me tell how the cells were placed in the 

 nursery: A slrip of brood-frame stuff, 

 about a foot long, had common pins driv- 

 en through it, in two rovvs, one row near 



