W'~--' 



86 



SEVENTH ANNUAL, REPORT OF THE 



cultural knowledge in this country, 

 and I do think we, as bee-keepers gen- 

 erally, those who read more exten- 

 sively, would do well if they would 

 read more cf the European Bee Lit- 

 erature. There are many things which 

 come up which are of very great in- 

 terest, and sometimes they come up 

 in a way perhaps that they are not 

 connected with something that is very 

 practical at that time, and that same 

 thought brought into our own conti- 

 nent is turned possibly into practical 

 use. 



Now, I see it stated that this is a 

 new thing that has been brought out, 

 that is, a plurality of queens in the 

 hive. It was in 1881 that I first spent 

 a season with a bee-keeper to learn 

 bee-keeping; that was Mr. D. A. Jones 

 of Beeton, who had visited Europe 

 and brought ideas with him. I think 

 he was the first one to introduce per- 

 forated metal on this continent. Any- 

 way, I very distinctly remember ex- 

 periments carried on at that time with 

 a plurality of queens in one hive. The 

 information he brought from England 

 was that experiments were conducted 

 with perforated metal between the 

 queens in the four compartments sep- 

 arated by this perforated metal. The 

 queens were safely introduced in many 

 cases, but there was that same un- 

 certainty that we never knew when 

 some of those queens would disappear. 

 I felt satisfied then and do now that 

 the bees have more to do with doing 

 away with the extra queens than the 

 queens themselves. Now, when it 

 comes to the practical advantage to 

 be derived from that, I am theorizing 

 quite a bit, and yet it is not all theory. 

 I am satisfied that the average bee- 

 keeper does not give the queen credit 

 for the powers she possesses of pro- 

 ducing eggs under favorable conditions; 

 and that the fault lies with our man- 

 agement, and our hive and so on, rath- 

 er than with the queen in many cases 

 when more brood is not produced. 



Mr. Alexander, in his short but ex- 

 cellent paper, refers to another point 

 which has not been touched upon, and 

 which is very important. It is very 

 dangerous to say that a person is the 

 father or the first one to bring out 

 certain ideas, but I remember some 

 time ago that the idea I brought out 

 at the time was the danger of allow- 

 ing brood chambers to be clogged with 

 honey so that there was no room for 

 the production of young bees. If we 

 will be careful and see that the queen 



has plenty of easily available room so 

 that eggs can be deposited there, and 

 that there is loose food, honey and 

 pollen there for it to feed the larvae 

 with — because I know there are many 

 bees that do not readily uncap honey 

 to feed to the larvae, and the larvae 

 will be only partially fed; and there 

 won't be the same number of bees fed 

 with the honey when it is capped as 

 there will be when tjiere is honey loose 

 in the hive — if we will see that the 

 brood chamber is not clogged, and that 

 there is plenty of honey with which 

 they can feed the larvae, and pollen 

 in the hive, I think that will be of 

 far greater use than the plurality of 

 queens. It is really astonishing if you 

 give them room how much more room 

 the queen can occupy in the way of 

 brood than we have given her credit 

 for in the past. I am not going to 

 condemn the matter of plurality of 

 queens. Mr. Lockhart, who, I think, is 

 a pretty good bee-keeper, is a strong 

 advocate of it, and a strong advocate 

 of having in the spring of the year 

 more queens in the hive than one and 

 wintering more than one, and he 

 does it successfully; and when Mr. 

 Alexander and Mr. Lockhart have done 

 a thing successfully we want to be 

 pretty cautious about condemning it. 

 There may be more in it than what I 

 am prepared to say at the present 

 time. 



The President: Will it pay to open 

 up the hives and uncap the combs? 



Mr. Holterman: At certain seasons, 

 yes. That is one objection I have to 

 pure Italian bees. I don't think any 

 of us have any reason to falsely advo- 

 cate certain varieties of bees that are 

 so readily changeable, and that there 

 are not vested rights in connection 

 with that there are in breeds of cat- 

 tle and so on; but the objection I find 

 to the pure Italian bees is the tendency 

 to pack honey about the brood cham- 

 ber, and as the season advances, cur- 

 tail the l)rood room; and if we have 

 a fall fiow we haven't got the bees we 

 should otherwise have. That is why 

 I like to have some camiolan blood in 

 my varieties of bees; and with the 

 number of bees I keep it is not an easy 

 matter for me to see that the brood 

 chamber is not clogged; it is much 

 easier for me to take a variety of bee 

 that will itself see to that. 



The President: You notice a differ- 

 ence in the seasons with reference to 

 the clogging too. 



