January 17, 1866.] 



JOUKNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



61 



in case the queen should not have joined tliem, liberate 

 them, when they will unquestionably wend their way to the 

 hive prepared for their reception. Having done this I shall 

 remove each hive of black bees, subjected to this rough and 

 depopulating process, a mile or a mile and a half from my 

 apiary. This will, I hope, if thoroughly carried out in my 

 apiary, according to my present intentions, remove, or at 

 all events very much diminish, the probability of the young 

 Ligurian queens becoming impregnated with any but Ligu- 

 rian drones. I am fully aware that in this way I shall 

 increase the chance of having, in some few instances, per- 

 haps, only drone eggs laid in some of the hives ; but even 

 taking this into account, are there any other means so 

 simple and at the same time so efficacious for accomplishing 

 my pui'pose of getting immediately an apiary replenished 

 with the pure Ligurian stock ? I once tried an analogous 

 experiment in a partially-lighted room, although not for the 

 purpose of raising artificial swarms, and it answered admir- 

 ably. It will, of course, be understood that my project em- 

 braces the entire removal, to as great a distance as possible 

 of all my stocks of black bees. — W. L. 



[It requires, in my opinion, two seasons to ligurianise an 

 apiary. The first should be devoted to fui'nishlng all your 

 stock with Italian queens, paying but little heed to their 

 impregnation, since no matter how that takes place, all will 

 breed pure Ligurian drones next year,* when all that do not 

 breed true Italian workers should be weeded out and re- 

 placed by young queens, which, amid the multitude of 

 Ligurian drones which will then exist, will have every chance 

 of true impregnation. Thus mnch by way of preface. I will 

 now consider the details of the plan submitted to me. 



When you take out a brood-comb to make an artificial 

 swarm in the way you propose, you should select one 

 which contains brood in every stage from the egg to the 

 sealed nymph, and should also take all the bees that are 

 on it at the time, otherwise the attempt may fail from the 

 lack of young bees which constitute the class of nurse-bees 

 described by Huber. If the vacancy in the Italian stock 

 can be at once supplied by a comb of black worker brood, 

 the abstraction of bees will scarcely be missed, and may be 

 repeated almost ad infinitum about every other day ; but 

 every comb of black brood should be marked with the day 

 of the month on which it is inserted, and not employed for 

 breeding Ligurian queens until say twelve days afterwards. 

 If combs of black worker brood are unattainable, the place 

 of those extracted should be occupied by empty worker- 

 comb, which will be rapidly filled with eggs ; but if no 

 worker-comb be attainable, the remaining combs must be 

 brought together, and the vacancy left on one side. In 

 order to avoid the possibility of risk to the Italian queen, 

 do not be content with not being able to find her on the 

 comb about to be removed, but make sure of her not being 

 there by ascertaining her presence on another comb at the 

 time. 



Putting the new artificial swarm in the place of a strong 

 stock in the way you describe will, together with the ad- 

 hering bees, generally insure a sufficient population without 

 the aid of after-manipulation, but it should be furnished 

 with enough combs to obviate the necessity of comb-buildino- 

 for the first fortnight, since all combs built before a queen 

 is hatched are pretty sure to be drone-combs. 



Artificial swarms wUl frequently raise a great many royal 

 cells. On the ninth or tenth day, all but two of these may 

 be extracted and employed in the formation of other swarms, 

 which will thereby gain a considerable advantage in point 

 of time. They should be cut out with a triangular bit of 

 comb attached (apex downwards) and inserted in a simUarly- 

 shaped hole cut in a brood-comb taken from either a com- 

 mon or a Ligurian colony ; the latter of course being prefer- 

 able as a dernier resort in the event of the failure of the 

 inserted royal cells. In all these operations the greatest 

 care is necessaiy to avoid bruising or c hilli ng the royal 

 embryos and for this reason they should be conducted as 

 rapidly as possible in the middle of a warm day. 



If in the spring you can manage to transfer two or three 

 of your stocks of common bees into frame hives, it wiU be a 

 great assistance, and will, I think, go far to render the task 

 of ligurianising your apiary as easy as it is interesting. 



* ride my papfrs oa parthemgenes's in No?. 25 and 30 of The JoDaMAi 

 oy HoETicuLTURF, for the explanation of this turioasfsct. 



Instructions for performing this operation were given in 

 No. 75 of " our Journal." 



Any further information will be most readily afforded by 

 — A Devonshiee Bee-keeper.] 



A NEW CHAPTER IN THE NATUEAIi HISTOET 

 OF THE BEE. 



BEE COMMOTIONS AND QUEEN ENCASEMENTS. 



(Continued frow, page 42.) 

 Langstroth has admitted that during one season he 

 lost a great many young queens artificially reared ; though 

 he attributed the circumstance to his having sited his hives 

 so closely together that the queens, on returning from their 

 aerial excursions, unable to discriminate their own domioQea, 

 went astray and perished. I quite admit that it is a matter 

 of some importance to have hives sited a little apart from 

 each other, and to have those which are uniform in shape 

 somewhat distinguishable in colour or appearance ; but 

 the proximity and similarity of hives are not, as Lang- 

 stroth states, the entire cause of such losses. An experi- 

 mental apiary must always be conducted upon the principle 

 of a full knowledge of circumstances and probable results. 

 I never think of calculating upon invariable success in all 

 cases of artificially-reared princesses, and certainly never 

 feel much disappointed when some of them fail by reason of 

 any of the contingencies to which I have hinted they are 

 liable. In cases where queens are reared naturally, not from 

 compulsion but from choice, I very seldom indeed find them 

 go wrong. 



Now, it may be asked. How is this ? The answer is easy. 

 When a queen is reared with the view of swarming, it is a 

 crowning point in a long series of preparatory doings all 

 tending to such a climax. Drones are reared just to suit 

 the necessities of the case, and when the swarm leaves all 

 the elements and conditions of success are left behind which 

 Nature requires. Seldom indeed in such circumstances have 

 I found a failure. Not so, however, in cases of an artificial 

 character. Here the rearing of a queen is a new idea, so to 

 speak, towards which the bees are not, it may be, entirely 

 prepared. Some elements or conditions of success may be 

 wanting. Even though a queen is reared, there jnay be 

 such a scarcity of drones not only in the apiary, but more 

 especially in the hive, which by necessitating the queen to 

 continued flights for weeks, as I have seen her, may in 

 the end lead to accident and death. Nay, my experience 

 would lead me to go a step further on this subject when I 

 say, and it is not a haphazard statement, that a want of 

 drones in the young queen's own hive, though abundant else- 

 where, is a condition too often detrimental in its results. 

 This, in my opinion, renders impregnation sometimes tardy, 

 if not uncertain, and is the cause of her frequently going 

 astray altogether. 



Just look through the glass of the unioomb on such occa- 

 sions, and see the preparations for the youthful queen's 

 departvu'e. See her led, if I may so express mysejf, by an 

 escort of her subjects to the very entrance of the hive, where 

 she is literally beckoned away by the clearest signs. See, 

 too, the drones, fully alive to the exigencies of the moment, 

 precede and follow her. Ah ! it is not in such circumstances 

 as these that I fear a successful result; it is only when 

 these natural elements are absent in the hive that I often 

 dread the consequences. What will be thought of the fact 

 that this very season out of fifteen young princesses I reared 

 fi"om the eggs of one queen, and placed at the head of so 

 many hives, six disappeared in consequence of being ex- 

 posed, as I believe, to the unfavourable conditions to which 

 I have here referred ? 



But to return. After such experiences as above detailed, 

 I set myself anew to the task of reconsidering the whole 

 question in all its varied characteristics and aspects. I 

 found that no uniform principle could be applied so as to 

 account for all the commotions and encasements occurring 

 in the apiary, originating as they evidently did from a dis- 

 similarity of causes. The foreign element of stranger bees 

 could not account for all of them, neither could it be said that 

 age and debility as affecting the queen applied to many of 

 them. The question then occurred to me. Is it necessary to 



