374 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUEE. 



Nov 



J\EW COITIBS VERSUS OLD FOB QUEEN 

 KEAKSING, AND CANJDV FOK BEES. 



f|HE queens ordered for myself and neighbors 

 all came in g-ood condition. Six of them have 

 I been successfully introduced; the last two we 



will try to introduce this day. I think your bottle 

 cag-e and system of packing- as near perfection as 

 you can make it, without consldei'tible walking' 

 around the stairway. 



I notice in this No. of Gleanings, page 340, the 

 problem of F. W. Cumings in regard to the color of 

 queens from the same mother. 



in June, 1877, 1 had some combs break down in an 

 American hive, that were full of brood and eggs; 

 and, the combs being hard to put into the old frames, 

 I put them into the Gallup frames and made a nu- 

 cleus. The combs did not fill the frames out in the 

 upper corner, under the top bar, and the bees built 

 new comb in the open space, and queen cells in the 

 new comb, and also cells in the old comb. The 

 ditference in the time of hatching out was not more 

 than oO minutes. The one in the new comb was very 

 light yellow, and the one in the old comb was al- 

 most black. The eggs were from a good Italian 

 queen, rather dark colored. Being green in bee 

 business, 1 let them both stay in the hive, and when 

 I opened it again the yellow queen was gone. The 

 dai-k one is very prolific, and that little nucleus is 

 now one of my strongest swarms. Since then, 1 

 have paid some attention to this matter, and am 

 now of the opinion that old, dark comb has some- 

 thing to do with the color of queens. 



I have expected to hear something of the success 

 of feeding candy in winter, but so far I haAC not 

 seen it in print. I think that it did well for me last 

 winter, but 1 know very little practically aljout bees, 

 candy, or anytliing else in apiculture. 



There is one tliiuu-, however, 1 know; I had to give 

 the swarm to whidi 1 fed the candy more space in 

 March, and the other 7 had all the room the\- needed. 

 1 made my candy of granulated sugar and 1-5 wheat 



flour. p. (iKAUAM. 



Johnstown, Pa., Oct. If, 1878. 



The idea lias long been advanced that old 

 combs give darker queens ; if this is so, 

 does it not indicate that color is an accident- 

 al quality, and rather an unimportant mat- 

 ter, ot itself ? The Hour candy will incite 

 brood rearing, without a doubt, and where 

 one wishes to increase his number of stocks, 

 or even the number ot bees in his hives, it 

 gives him, at any time, a control of the mat- 

 ter, that we never possessed before its dis- 

 covery. If you look over back numbers, 

 you will hud many reports similar to your 

 own. 



ANOTHER BOY BEE-KEEPER. 



^ THOUGHT I would give you a short history of 

 /'([ rny experience in bee-keeping, as a boy apiarist, 

 ■rSi and then ask a few questions which I have not 

 yet seen answered in Gleaninos. 



My father bought one colony last April, one year 

 ago, for Italians, and paid $10 for it. He told me to 

 take care of them, and follow the directions of Quin- 

 by, as I had just bought one of Quinbv's books. 1 

 paid as good attention to them as I could under the 

 eu-cumstances, for, although they were in a movable 

 frame hive, the combs were all in diamonds, by be- 

 ing made crosswise of the frames. 



June 5th, they sent out a good swarm. I hived 

 them, and they did well. In U days, they swarmed 

 18 times, sometimes going back without clustering, 

 sometimes letting me put them in a nice new Lang- 

 stroth hive; finally, they concluded to accept the 

 situation, by giving out a second and third swarm. 

 The last two did so little that I united them in Nov., 

 and they were yet too small, but I found a man that 

 was going to murder a colony, so I begged him to let 

 me drive them, which I did; and, while the ground 

 was frozen, I united them with the above named 

 colony, then fed all winter, carrying them through 

 nicely. 



Father also purchased a colony in a box hive, at a 

 sale in Nov. It had not one pound of honey, but he 

 gave 40c. for it. The people laughed at him for pay- 

 ing 40c. for such an old box, as the bees were not 

 worth one cent. He told me to trv my luck on them. 



and if I could take them through the winter, he 

 would believe something in "Beeology." I fed them 

 about .*l.'_'r) worth of sugar syrup, and had the queen 

 laying eugs at New Year. 



They did well this season. I transferred the two 

 colonies father purchased to frame hives, and he 

 now has 11 colonies, one of which I made by divid- 

 ing. They are all hybrids, as was the old one he 

 purchased for Italians. We did not then know what 

 full bloods were. • 



We have taken 200 lbs. of box honey this year, as 

 we had no extractor, but will have one next j'ear, if 

 our bees live. 



Last April, I purchased a colony of full blooded 

 Italians of Valentine & Son. I now have three; one 

 full blood and two hybrids, all in good condition for 

 the winter. 



Will a hybrid queen make pure Italians, if she has 

 met a full blood Italian drone? If a hybrid queen 

 produces bees some black, some one, some two, and 

 some tlirec banded, will the eggs that produce the :^ 

 banilcd workers make full blooded queens, if fed 

 with the royal jelly? 



I should visit you the (joming season if I had the 

 means to take me there and back, and go to Sunday 

 school with you. I like to read "Our Homes" in 

 Gleanings. Would it not be well for us boys to 

 have a part of a column of Gleanings, telling us 

 what to do to our bees each month, or in other words 

 telling us the work for each month. &c. 



E. Jas. Hinshaw. . 



Lynn, Ind., Oct. 31, 1878. 



Your i)eri)lexity, my young friend, comes 

 from our calling a queen hybrid, because 

 she produces hybrid bees. A queen whose 

 fatlier (if I may so express it) is not a pure 

 Italian, can never produce pure l)ee's, but if 

 she is pure and has mated with a Itlack drone, 

 her drones will be pure, Init not her workers. 

 The egg from a hybrid queen that produces 

 a o banded bee. would pro))ably produce a 

 queen a])])arently pure, but not in reality. 



I have thought of a boy's de]iartment, but 

 we are all boys, in Bee Culture., at least. 



THE IJOTTOIMS OF THE CELLS OF HONEY 

 COMB. 



Since my article on honey comb, I came 

 across a cut in the British Bee Journal, that 

 explains so nicely the way in which the loz- 

 enge shaped plates form the bottoms of the 

 cells, that our engraver has reproduced it. 

 Of course, the cut shows only the bases, of 

 the cells, and none of the side walls. Is it 

 not pretty? 



