138 



THE BEE-KEEPER'S REVIEW 



days later she was laying' — no, lying, on 

 the lower wall of the cage dead. 



During the past season we enjoyed the 

 best honey flow that we ever knew; dur- 

 ing 1905 we experienced our worst fail- 

 ure, and in both instances an unusually 

 large per cent, of queens were lost in in- 

 troducing. 



Perhaps Mr. Chantry will not object if 

 I illustrate and describe his cage. 



THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE CHANTRY CAGE. 



The cage is made from a pine block ^s 

 thick, 2^ inches wide and 3 '2 inches 

 long. In a diagonal line, from corner to 

 corner, three inch-holes are bored with a 



y& hole is packed full of candy, and the 

 inch-hole that it intersects is filled per- 

 haps '5 full of candy. 



The queen is put into the cage by slip- 

 ping back the slide, when the cage is 

 hung between two combs in a cluster of 

 bees. In a day or two the bees will eat 

 out the candy through the bit of exclud- 

 ing zinc, and gain access to the queen, 

 but the queen can not yet escape. In 

 perhaps two days more the bees will 

 have eaten out the rest of the candy, 

 thus releasing the queen through the 

 open end of the ;Vs hole. In the mean- 

 time, a great many bees have been in 

 and out of the cage, through the bit of 



The Chantry Introducing Cage. 



The cut at the right is a sectional view, showing cage sliced down through the middle, and each 



half turned baci<. 



Foerstnor bit. The first hole at one cor- 

 ner is bored clear through, and so near 

 the edge of the wood that an opening is 

 left in the edge of the cage. The other 

 two holes are bored not quite through. 

 The opening in the cage made by boring 

 the first hole is covered by a bit of wire 

 cloth. A slide of wood made from a 

 piece of section box covers the entire lot 

 of holes. Lengthwise of the cage, along 

 the edge opposite to the bit of wire cloth, 

 is bored a )s hole the whole length of the 

 cage; this hole intersecting the inch-hole 

 that was bored nearest that edge of the 

 cage. A bit of queen-excluding zinc. 

 with only one opening, is nailed over the 

 end of the ^ hole that is nearest to the 

 inch-hole that it intersects. This long. 



queen-excluder, and when the queen does 

 gain her liberty, neither she nor the bees 

 are excited. 



Meridian, Idaho, Feb. 10, 1907. 

 [Several years ago I successfully intro- 

 duced a large number of queens by us- 

 ing a cage that embodied the same prin- 

 ciple as the Chantry cage. That is, it 

 allowed the bees to have access to the 

 queen before she was released, but it 

 was not automatic in its action, as is the 

 case with the Chantry cage. It is a 

 curious fact that bees will not attack a 

 queen when they have crawled into the 

 cage where she is confined, and in this 

 way the queen and bees become ac- 

 quainted before she is actually released. — 

 Editor.] 



