ILLINOIS STATE BBE-KEOEHEJRS' ASSOCIATION 



207. 



honey ; it is abou£^ as heavy, I think, 

 as a little skinny fellow like me ought 

 to handle! After we have selected 

 the very best possible queens we can 

 find — those are trie ones we breed 

 from, because if this plan is carried 

 out to all its intents and purposes, 

 such a thing as a natural cell will 

 hardly be seen during' the season. 

 About May 15, I go to my colonies 

 that I have selected for rearing the 

 drones, and I rear any quantity of 

 drones. This reating, two or three 

 frames of brood is the principal ex- 

 pense of my queen -rearing. Now, we 

 come to the other swarms. 



About the time apple-trees blossom, 

 I come along wilh my colony that is 

 strong enough, and raise it up, and 

 put a hive of empty combs under- 

 neath. I do that to save the animal 

 heat. I believe that the place to 

 keep them is at the top. The queen 

 lias the full run of everything until 

 about June 1. The 1st of June, I be- 

 gin to prepare for queen-rearhig. I go 

 now to all my hives through the yard 

 and get up about three-fifths of the 

 brood in the upper chambers, with 

 the queen below, and a zinc between 

 the two. I have found a great many 

 advantages in putting part of the 

 brood in the upper chamber, and es- 

 pecially for extracted honey produc- 

 tion. 



About June 10 I select about 10 per 

 cent, of the strongest colonies I have, 

 and I simply take this queen away 

 and set it on a new stand, and set 

 this part down on the stand occupied 

 by the old field-bees. It is a strong 

 colony to begin with, and now its 

 forces are augumented by all the forces 

 of the field. Its brood is all ten days 

 old. Tou see it has plenty of brood; 

 it is hatching out one or two thousand 

 eggs a day, and it is hopelessly queen- 

 less. Those bees soon discover that 

 they are queenless, and they are in 

 desperate straits for a queen, and it 

 is a powerful colony. 



Let me digress. I go to my colony 

 that I am to rear the queens from, 

 and take a good share of their brood 

 away, and put in some combs which 

 I don't value very highly; I do this 

 along any time between the 1st and 

 10th of June. That makes the age 

 come right along in order, so that I 

 can find just the kind of brood I want. 

 I can find a frame of just eggs, I can 

 find another frame (perhaps nearly 



all of it) just larvae which have start- 

 ed. I don't believe we can rear as 

 good queens from brood that is one, 

 two or three days in larvae, as if we 

 make the start from the eggs. I go 

 to this breeding colony, take out this 

 comb, and cut ,sbme strips off where 

 the eggs are, and put the, cells the 

 other way, looking up and looking 

 down; put them right in between the 

 frames, anyway. There is no objec- 

 tion to your transferring this brood 

 by the Doolittle method if you care to 

 do it, but by this other method you 

 can do it in a quarter of the time. Last 

 year I had two colonies that made 52 

 queen- cells almost as long as my 

 finger. After this these queens are 

 in here about 48 hours. If 5'^ou have 

 the time, examine, and if you haven't, 

 destroy part of those cells as Henry 

 Alley has directed, you will find lots 

 of those cells so close together you 

 can't separate them. If you will 

 take one of those plugs or a rake- 

 tooth and make a hole in the comb 

 any place, and take the dipping spoon 

 and dip that larvae out, and dip it 

 right in this hole, or in the queen-cell, 

 or any-where, that does away with the 

 queen-cellsi you can't use, and you 

 have got them separate and apart. 

 Now, I have always found about 10 

 per cent of my colonies give me an 

 abundance of cellfe. 



Now, about June 20, our honey is 

 coming, our clover begins to open, 

 and now we are ready for operations. 

 At this time all these chambers are 

 set off on a new place; that lets the 

 old bees come back in the old hive, 

 and these cells are put in a cell-pro- 

 tector to hatch out; it doesn't stop 

 those bees from making one ounce of 

 honey. 



To get at the box-honey part of it, 

 I use a very shallow chamber; three 

 frames of that would take one sheet 

 of Langstroth foundation. About June 

 10, we will say, I shake this old queen 

 off into this little bit of a shallow 

 chamber, and put a queen- excluding 

 board over, and right above that I put 

 all their brood. If I should put the 

 queen in that little bit of a chamber, 

 without this great quantity of brood 

 on top, they would swarm right away. 

 We all know that. Then the queen 

 must lay eggs in the cells; it takes 16 

 days for them to hatch. I figure on 

 only about 10 or 12 days. The 20th 

 of June comes, and we are ready 



