1878 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



295 "1 



IiAl^F NVTLSmB,Tt. Many have ob- 

 served that, in hot weather, if queen cells 

 iire taken out just before they are ready to 

 hatch, the queens will sometimes gnaw out 

 just as well as if they were with the bees. 

 It is also known, that queens just emerging 

 from the cell may generally be allowed to 

 •crawl among the bees of any hive, and will, 

 as a rule, be well received. Taking advan- 

 tage of these two facts, our neighbor, Mr. 

 r. R. Shaw, of Chatliam, Medina Co., O., in 

 the fall of 1873, constructed the lii-st lamp 

 nursery. This first machine worked well 

 enough to demonstrate the feasibility of the 

 plan, but, as he depended entirely on hot air 

 to keep up the requisite temperature, it was 

 quite liable to destroy the cells by the un- 

 evenness of the temperature. The day after 

 I visited him, I noticed that the copper res- 

 ervoir on our Stewart stove was sufficiently 

 warm to hatch queens, although no fire had 

 been in the stove for more than 15 houi-s, 

 and the last night had been cool. This gave 

 me the idea of using a considerable body of 

 water ; and before night, I had a hive made 

 with double walls of tin, as shown in the cut 

 below. 



LAMP NURSERY. 



/'he space between tlie two walls is. per- 

 liai)S, one inch, and extends under the bot- 

 tom, as well as around the sides, that the 

 body of water may entirely surround the 

 contents of the nui-sery, except on the top. 

 The top is to be covered with a quilt, or a 

 warm blanket. The whole should be used 

 in a room well protected from the changes 

 i>t the weather. It may be kept in a large 

 liox, but it is not near as convenient sis a 

 room. As accidents sometimes happen to 

 lamps, I would set the lamp in a tall stove, 

 one of the kind that will admit of the top's 

 being taken off, and set the nursery over it. 

 The top of the lamp chimney should b*^ 



1 about a foot below the nui-sery. A second- 

 j hand stove, such as was mentioned for mak- 

 ing €ANDY FOR BEES, will auswer every 

 ! pun)ose. Such a body of water between two 

 sheets of tin, will cause them to bulge badly 

 j unless we put a brace across from one to the 

 [ other in the centre on each side ; the posi- 

 I tion of these braces is shown by the tin cap 

 I that covei-s them in the cut. Liglit your 

 lamp, turn on a strong blaze, and watch un- 

 til the thermometer, which should be kept 

 inside the nursery, shows between SO and 

 100- , then turn down the wick, until the 

 temperature remains about there^ If it gets 

 much above 100, the cells may be injured ; 

 and it should not be allowed to fall much 

 below 80. We are now ready for our queen 

 cells. 



HOW TO GET CELLS FOR THE NURSERY. 



You can cut out queen cells, from any 

 place in the apiary, and lay them in the nur- 

 sery, but as we wish to avoid cutting such 

 unsightly looking holes in our combs, it is 

 better to take the whole frame, cells and all. 

 Shake and brush off every bee, and hang the 

 frame in the nui-sery just as you would in 

 the hive. Get frames from different hives, 

 until you have the nursery full, if you like. 

 The reason we have the nursery so large, is 

 that it may contain a great number of 

 frames having queen cells. Now you find a 

 trouble right here; the worker bees will 

 hatch and bite out in this warm temperature 

 just as well as the queens ; and very soon 

 we shall have a smart hive of bees, and be 

 no better off, than in an out door hive. You 

 can take out these young bees as fast as 

 they hatch and give them to some colony 

 that needs them, or start nuclei with them, 

 but this is so much trouble. I would advise a 

 better way. 



HOW TO AVOID HAVING ANY WORKER BEES 

 IN THE NURSERY. 



You will recollect that a worker bee can- 

 not hatch out in less than 20 or 21 days from 

 the egg, while the queen hatches in aboiit 

 16. Well, if we get all of our cells, by giving 

 a frame of very young larvae to the colony 

 building them, the queens will be all out of 

 the comb several days before a worker can 

 hatch. This is the way we do it. Get a 

 clean, new, worker comb, or better still, a 

 sheet of fdn., and place it in the centre of 

 the hive where your best queen is. Let it 

 remain until the fii-st eggs laid in it have 

 hatched into minute larva;, as explained in 

 ARTIFICIAL SWARMING. Hang this frame 

 in any queeuless colony, having no other 

 unsealed brood, and they will at once build 



