STATE BEE-KEEPERS ASSOCIATION. * : 43r 



If you wait until spring when the queen is once laying, there 

 is just as much chance of robbing, and I believe it is better 

 to do it in the fall. Then another advantage, you have got 

 no brood to lose when you open the hive to find your queen. 



Mr. Abbott — Let me make that a little clearer. Now, ,. 

 what I mean, I won't open the hive but once. I sometimes 

 have four or five queens. I sell queens, to illustrate. There 

 are four or five that I want to get. I take these cages and 

 put them on top of the frames under a cloth and turn them 

 down so that the bees can get at them. May be I want to 

 introduce one of these to that colony. After they have^been 

 on the hive 48 hours I take any one of the five or six I had 

 on there. I first hunt out the old queen and kill her, and 

 make it so the bees can get at the candy. I want them to 

 do it in about an hour, and if I don't think they will do it 

 in an hour, I make a hole so I think- they can eat it in an 

 hour, and I go on about my business, and I have never lost 

 a queen by that process. 



Mr. Whitney — I have no doubt it is a good way to in- 

 troduce a queen, but we seem to digress from the subject. 

 The question is not how to introduce a queen, but what is 

 the best time. I read in Gleanings, "I think you can easily 

 Italianize your bees in the fall ; in fact, that is the best sea- 

 son of the whole year in which to do it." Now, I haven't 

 listened to any argument here yet that has satisfied me that 

 it is. It may be the experience of others, possibly, but, in 

 our locality, we haven't had good success in introducing the 

 queen in the fall. It was almost impossible to keep the bees 

 from robbing the colony after you open it in a certain season. 

 I thought I could manipulate a colony of bees and do almost 

 anything I wanted to with them, but I came pretty nearly 

 being beaten trying to introduce a queen in the fall, and I 

 never had any trouble introducing a queen during the sum- 

 mer-time; I have never had any successful robbing during 

 all my experience of seven or eight years, until this fall. 



Dr. Miller — I want just to refer to that point. With 

 Mr. Abbott's plan" he saves 48 hours of the queen's laying 

 because he puts the cadged queen in there, and leaves her 

 there with the old queen, and he saves that 48 hours' laying. 

 Now, don't settle down right away to that. When he takes 

 away the old queen and liberates that queen, that queen 

 doesn't commence laying right away, and the interference is 

 more than two full days, because if the queen does as they 

 do with me, they will sometimes be several days before they 

 begin to lay, and when they do they begin on a small scale, 

 and he saves that, too, and that makes his plan that much 

 better; and after all there isn't so very much difference, and 

 you cannot put in a new queen and have the laying go on 

 without any loss. Set that down. 



The convention then adjourned to meet at i '.30 p. m. 



FIRST DAY — Afternoon Session. 



After Pres. York called the meeting to order, the audit- 

 ing committee made its report thus, which was duly approved, 

 and the committee discharged: 



