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ILLINOIS STATE BEE-KEEPERS' ASSOCIATION 



85 



is fourteen miles from home and 1 

 don't get to it very often. 



The President: I would like to ask 

 if the three queens produced as much 

 brood in one hive as they would if 

 they were in separate hives. 



Mr. Miller: I believe they produced 

 more. This was an off year with us. 

 This year they didn't produce two- 

 thirds. Usually they produce a full 

 brood. We got a short dearth between 

 raspberry and sumach and we got a 

 clover flow, so that the thing was just 

 going along by a jerk at a time. This 

 colony gave more brood than one where 

 there was only one queen in it. 



The President: If the individual 

 queens had been separate would the 

 sum total of the brood have been more 

 than where they were collective? 



Mr. Miller: Couldn't have been. It 

 was a ten frame hive with one exclud- 

 ing- zinc. 



The President: The question is 

 whether the individual queens could 

 have filled more if they had had sepa- 

 rate frames than the three queens to- 

 gether? 



Mr. Miller: Yes. 



Mr. Pratt: I have succeeded in in- 

 trr>ducing several queens in a colony 

 by shaking the bees into a swarm box 

 on to combs containing no brood, tak- 

 ing these bees from a queenless col- 

 ony and keeping them confined in the 

 swarm box two hours. When I go 

 to make nuclei I take the queens di- 

 rectly from these boxes and run them 

 in one after another, let them stay 

 one night, in the morning release them, 

 and the queens go on laying. 



The President: Will they continue 

 to lay without interruption from one 

 or the other? 



Mr. Pratt: They did with me for 

 several weeks, but there were not 

 enough bees for me to tell anything 

 about the brood. It was during the 

 honey season. 



Mr. Root: Mr. President, not being, 

 in at the beginning of the discussion, 

 I don't know exactly what the drift 

 of it is, but I have a fair idea. The 

 first I saw on a large scale was at 

 Mr. Alexander's yards, where I saw 

 some four or five hundred, each with 

 two queens; they were two story hives 

 with perforated zinc honey board be- 

 tween, a queen on each side. This 

 was worked very nicely, and I raised 

 the quefction with him, "Why do you 

 do that';" He said: "To get more 

 brood." I said, "Isn't it possible a 



good queen could lay eggs and supply 

 ycu with the eggs faster than the bees 

 cuuld take care of them?" He didn't 

 think so. It was his opinion he gained 

 by having two queens, because it was 

 easier to have two medium queens 

 than one extra queen that could lay 

 the same amount of eggs. 



At our own apiary we have for a 

 number of years reared two queens in 

 a perforated hive, that would be with 

 queen c^lls on both sides. The young 

 virgins would each have separate en- 

 trances, but the same bees would have 

 access on both sides to queens. We 

 did it early in the season before the 

 bees were working on the blossonas. 

 It seems to me that one important 

 point about this thing is, as Mr. Alex- 

 ander has said, it is easier to raise 

 two medium queens to do the same 

 work than to raise a special queen 

 to do a special work of that kind. 



We have also been conducting ex- 

 periments by running several queens 

 together. Mr. Pratt has said you can 

 run bees together without comb or 

 brood and put them in a box. We 

 also find we are able to do this. Take 

 several nuclei and unite them with 

 other queens, putting them all into 

 one hive. If the combs are put next 

 to each other for a number of days 

 they will come aiong very nicely, but 

 as soon as the honey flow stops or 

 conditions become unfavorable they 

 immediately seem to reduce the num- 

 ber. We have tried this experiment a 

 number of times, but after the honey 

 flow there would only be one queen. 

 With a view of determining whether 

 we could run several queens together, , 

 we did it again in the manner I have 

 explained, and just before I came here 

 I looked in the hive and there was 

 just one queen. 



While we can do certain things in 

 bee culture, that is, while we can in- 

 troduce one or more queens, I doubt 

 whether it can be made a permanent 

 sucess. After the honey flow is over 

 or the conditions become unfavorable 

 they will reduce down to one queen. 

 But I think they will continue longer 

 with the perforated zinc. I am not 

 quite sure even with perforated zinc 

 whether we can continue this much 

 after the honey flow. 



Mr. Pratt: I never had any trouble 

 in continuing queens in a hive with 

 the perforated zinc between them. 



Mr. Holterman: I always feel very "^ 

 sensitive in a measure about our api- 



