188 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUEE. 



July 



all plain, without much exi>lanation. Your 

 cells must be tjtted in nicely, and pretty s?- 

 curely, or the bees will tumble them down 

 to the bottom of the hives, for they are (piite 

 inquisitive in regard to the way things are 

 done in their homes, I onc3 thought I liad 

 made quite a discovery when I foimd that 

 cells could be hatched safely by laying them 

 just mider the quilt on the top of the frames, 

 or even at the entrance during very warm 

 weather, but I soon found that a nmcli larg- 

 er part were torn down, than if they were 

 nicely inserted in the midst of the brood. 

 Where it can be done, I always insert a cell 

 in place of one they have built in, and I have 

 never found sucii ones destroyed. A cell 

 that has been broken open in cutting apart, 

 will usually be destroyed, but not always. 



If your cells w'ere cut oiit at just about the 

 proper time, you will very likely find same 

 of the queens hatched by the next day, and 

 in ten days more on an average, they will be 

 laying. I took a dollar (pieen froni one of 

 these nuclei just ten days ago, inserting 

 a queen cell at the time, and to-day the new 

 queen is laying. Now 100 of these little 

 hives would at this rate give us 10 laying 

 queens per day, and I think that an apiarist 

 should consider it fair wages, even if half 

 the wliole number were lost, in different 

 ways ; and one person can veiy easily take 

 care of 100, if he will follow tlie directions I 

 shall give. 



When I first conunenced queen reanng, I 

 thought it necessary to lumt up the young 

 queens every time a cell was found open, or 

 every time 1 looked into their liives — which 

 by the way was about every day, and some- 

 times oftener. If you are keeping bees just 

 for the fun of it, it may do to spend a quar- 

 ter of an hour looking for a queen just to 

 see if she is a nice one, but if you are trying 

 to show your friends wlio worry about the 

 time you " fuss with your bees'' that there 

 are dollars in the business, you need never 

 see your queens at all until you wish to send 

 them off. After inserting the cells, yoii 

 have notliing more to do with them for about 

 three days, and then you should provide 

 yourself "with a fresli lot of cells, and also 

 "with some pieces of comb containing larvse 

 just right for cjueen rearing. Take tlie hives 

 in regidar order and do not skip about. If 

 you find a cell oi)en at the end, your (jueen 

 'is probably all right,* and if there is no lar- 

 vaj in the hive, insert a piece; as soon as 

 anytlnng happens to a queen, they will start 

 queen cells on this brood, and therefore we 

 always look at this piece of brood instead of 

 looking for the queen. Should they by any 

 possibility rear a cpieen of their own, it wiil 

 always be from your choice brood. When 

 in your examinations you find, eggs in the 

 cells — your eyes will soon become sharpened 

 for these in'dications of greenbacks — you 

 will turn tlie queen register to laying, and 

 use her the first time you send otf cpieens. 

 As we wish to keep up the i»oi)ulation of 

 these little hives, it may be well to allow her 

 to fill up her two combs pretty well before 



* If you find the cap hanfrinsr as in the cut, you 

 may be sure a queen has gnawed lier wav out : some- 

 times this cap sprinsrs back and the uovicf waits day 

 after day, while the nueen is running- about the 

 combs. 



taking her out. When she is re moved, in- 

 sert a cell, and if all goes well you may have 

 another cpieen in the hive the next morning. 

 Always keep your queen register set, that it 

 mtiy show the state of affairs within, and be 

 sure the bees always have brood in their 

 combs, by giving them a fresh piece every 

 three or four days. If you are faithful in 

 this, you will never know an^'thing about 

 fertile 'workers, those pests of queen rearing. 



CAUTION. 



In selecting brood for queen reaiiiig, be 

 sure you have no drone larvae, for the bees 

 by some stran^-e i>erversion of instinct, will 

 very often build (pieen cells over tliem, re- 

 sulting always in nothing but a dead di-one. 

 The poor drone seems mtable to stand tli^ 

 powerful dose of concentrated food that is 

 retpiired to perfect a ipieen from a workei" 

 larvse, and so dies wlien he is abotit half 

 grown. Should a queen cell have been start- 

 ed over a drone larvje, you can always tell 

 it from a good one by its smooth exterior, 

 while a genuine cell has a roughened sur- 

 face like the drawing we have ^iven. 



If you suspect a cell is not going to hatch, 

 do not tear it down, but insert another one 

 beside it. If you have two or more, cells so 

 close together tliat they cannot be separated, 

 insert the wliole, and look often to them:, 

 yon can very often ' find the first one wliile 

 she is biting out, or so soon after she has 

 come out as to save • the others. We have 

 often by this means saved all of three that 

 were built close together. 



For convenience of inserting brood so 

 many times, w^e use a sipiare '"cake cutter" 

 as it were; this is made of tin, with the 

 edges very sliaii). Press it in the comb far 

 enougli to mark it, and then you can cut out 

 pieces all of a size. ^\^ one piece always 

 goes in wiiere another comes c^ut, you can 

 keep all unsightly lioles in your combs closed 

 up, a.nd have no odd bits of comb lying about 

 the apiary. 



We are to-day a family of 2,043. June 38th, 1877. 



A SHEET of fdn. was put into a two frame nucleu.^ 

 late Saturday evening-. Monday morning- it was a 

 beautiful sheet of worker comb! with every cell tilleiJ 

 withhoney. Great numbfrs of similar reports art- 

 received daily, an<Mt ma.\- transpire after all that ;: 

 sheet of fdn. is of more value to a bc'e-keeper than iui 

 empty natural com!) of the same size. 



HOAV TO FASTEN THE SHEETS OF FOtlNDATION IN THK 

 BROOD FRAMES. 



Cutaboai'd so that it will just slip inside your 

 frame, and then fasten cleats on the board so that it 

 may g-o into the I'raine ,iu<t half way and no farther ; 

 in other words, the board is to come vip inside the 

 frame just even with the comb g-uide. Have your 

 sheets of fdn. cut so as to leave ^i inch space at "each 

 end, and ^i inch at the bottom. Lay the sheet on the 

 comb guide, close up to the top bar. A short stia 

 piiinted l)ut<-Iier kiiite seems to be about the thing-to 

 fasten it with. Itij) the blade in honey, and "butter" 

 tlKMs'a.x to the ciinib guide. To prevent the sheet 

 slidiim- aloii'j-, >()u nni,'-;t rub it int;) the wood at: in- 

 ter\als b.\- dabs with the point of the knife, before 

 you can stroke it from one end to the other. This 

 last stroke is g'i',-en witli force enoug-h to sink the 

 point of the knife clear down to the wood, and makes 

 the wa.v as secure as cnulil p issiblj- be done by heat. 

 As the sheets can be jMit in at the'rate of four in a 

 minute, it is perhaps t)i-el'eralile to using- any kind of 

 machinerv, and we would ne\cr think of using- melt- 

 ed wa.v after having- ouce learned to work it on the 

 above plan. For section boxes, we Hnd nothing- tn 

 e(iual the plan g-iven with the samples we send out. 



