m 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Jttse 



along— look shaiii — to your new hive. If 

 you want as many queen cells as you can 

 get, it will be a good iden to cut an oblong 

 piece out of the comb, just under the eggs 

 and lan'je. If it is inconvenient to move 

 your hive (as in the house apiary) you ciin 

 take only the combs with adhering bees, and 

 in fact you need take only so many of tlie 

 combs as are necessaiy to get all the brood 

 and the queen. 



In 12 days aftei' the eggs are given the 

 bees, the queens may some of them hatch, 

 therefore if you design saving the extra 

 <}iieens you will need to remove all the cells 

 but one, or the first batched queen will de- 

 stroy them all. We have Imd a young que«n 

 destroy as many as twenty fine cells in a sin- 

 gle day, when we were so careless as to de- 

 lay attending to them just at the right time. 

 About 10 days after the (jueen hatches, you 

 may expect her to begin to lay, and then you 

 are as far along, as when you purchase a ! 

 laying queen to start with, except that your 

 bees have been gi'owing old all the time— see I 

 AGE OF BEES — and unless they are supplied 

 with fresh eggs or brood, will be pretty 

 weak, before any young bees will be liatched 

 to take their place. Now if you wish to j 

 have matters progress, lively, you can give 

 these bees a comb containing eggs every ' 

 two or three days during the whole time 

 they are waiting for the queen to be hatched : 

 and fertilized ; they will do much better if ; 

 they are thus employed, and they will be 

 quite a i)rosperous colony by the time the ' 

 (jueen is ready to lay. To get these eggs, 

 you have only to insert an empty comb in i 

 the centre of a populous colony until the 

 (|ueen has deposited as n^any eggs in the 

 cells as are recjuired. 



80 far, all is very simple, and to swann a i 

 large apiary, we would only have to repeat ; 

 the process as many times as we have colo- | 

 hies, and we also succeed in Italianizing all | 

 our new stocks. But how about the surplus 

 queen cells that we ciit outV This is just j 

 where the complication comes in, yet if we 

 look into the matter very carefully, we think ': 

 it will l)e found (juite simi)le. These queen ; 

 cells if cut out shortly before hatching and | 

 inserted into the combs of any queenless 

 colony, will usually furnish them a queen as 

 soon as the one left where it was built, and ' 

 if an artificial colony was made at the time ; 

 the cells were cut out, it is i)lain we should ' 

 liave them supplied about ten days earlier ' 

 than the one that was obliged to start their ; 

 cells from the egg. Bees usually seem to ' 

 have a preference for building their own I 



cells, instead of having them furnislied, but 

 as they can by no possibility get a queen, 

 luitclied in less than ten days^perliaps nine 

 in extreme cases— the queeu from tlie in- 

 serted cell will be out and destroy the others, 

 {almost as soon as they are stjivtetl, and s«> 

 we need be to no trouble to get all the un- 

 desirable brood out of tlie way, as in our 

 first experiment. Unfortunately, there is 

 an if in the matter and it is ii the bees do 

 not destroy, this cell you have given them, 

 and proceed to raise one of their own in tlie 

 good old way. Many contrivances have 

 been invent<3d to prevent them, such as ca- 

 ging the c 11, &c., but we think you will do 

 well to waste no tin>e in experimenting with 

 such machinery. The lamp nursery, ena- 

 bles us to hatcli alnvost any i>umber of queen 

 cells, with safety, but occasionally the queens 

 ar€j lost in introducing even then ; see lamp 



NUIISEKY. 



The plan we would recommend for begin- 

 ners, and perhaps for everybody else as well, 

 is to procure as many combs of hatching 

 brood from different hives as you have queen 

 cells and to insert a cell in each, the manner 

 of inserting the cells, will be found in 

 (iUEEN REAiiiNG. Tliesc couibs are to be 

 all put in the one hive in which the cells 

 were built, and if you have more than ten 

 cells, put on an upper story, or even a third. 

 As there are no bees in the hive except those 

 that built the cells and the young ones just 

 hatching, we shall have no cells torn down, 

 and in a few hours, they will have waxed 

 them all firmly in their places. 



Now with these combs of hatching brood, 

 every one containing a cell nearly ready to 

 hatch, we are in excellent trim to go on witli 

 artificial swarming. We can, not only re- 

 move hives and put empty ones in their 

 places as in our first experiment, but we can 

 take combs of bees and brood from any hive 

 in the apiary, blacks, hybrids, or anything, 

 and put them into a new hive located any- 

 where, put one of tlie frames with the queen 

 cell among them, and presto ! we have a 

 good colony, recjuiring no more care what- 

 ever. Four coml)s of bees and brood, will 

 make a good colony at any time of the year, 

 and they will be at work like an old colony 

 in ten days. We have never known a cell 

 destroyed when given an artificial swarm in 

 the manner we have stated. In substituting 

 a new hive for an old one, we should, if pos- 

 sible, use a new hive i)recisely like the old 

 one, or much trouble nray be found in get- 

 ting the bees to go into it. If we cannot do 

 this, make it look like the old one. 



