18 



Italians are very good workers and produce an abundance of brood 

 and honey. The great objection to them is that they develop an 

 excess oi drones and these cross-bred drones are not vv^anted m 

 the apiary as they will eventually bring down the stock. Only 

 drones from the best hives should be left t&fly, all others may be 

 caught in drone traps and destroyed. 



INTRODUCTION OF QUEEN CELLS AND QUEENS INTO COLONIES 



AND NUCLEI. 



In Porto Rico honey is produced at all seasons of the 

 y^ar. ' In tira-pasTtwo years^ the writer has observed that there 

 w§?Fonly a few short periods when the bees did not seem to be 

 storing a surplus. With these conditions one has to have a know- 

 ledge of what is taking place in the hives at all times. Our flov^^s 

 of honey may not be as long as some of the honey flows in 

 colder countries, but there are certain seasons of the year 

 when the flow is as heavy. Working under these conditions we 

 mustseetoitthatthe brood chamber does not become overcrowded 

 with honey, that the queens do not stop laying thus crippling 

 the brood. Another point which should be looked into is the re- 

 placing of old or undesirable queens. It has been noticed by 

 some of our bee-keepers that the queens have a tendency to stop 

 laying, thus lessening the brood. In the writers opinion queens 

 have to be replaced much oftener m Porto Rico than in northern 

 countries, as they are called upon to lay all months of the year 

 and are worn out in a much shorter time than if they had a rest 

 of four or five months. At the experiment station it has been 

 noticed that queens having a considerable amount' of black 

 blood show a greater tendency to cease laying than do pure 

 Italian queens. 



When a colony becomes queenless the bees at once start to 

 produce a new queen. Often a bee-keeper does not wish to wait 

 until a colony can raise its own queen, as it takes about three 

 weeks before the new queen would begin to lay. He, therefore, 

 introduces a queen cell, virgin queen, orilaying queen. Ip nature 

 queen cells are only produced at swarming times when the brood 

 becomes over-crowded or when the hive becomes queenless. 

 Hives become queenless for various reasons. The queen may be 

 killed by being crushed between two frames of brood when 



■ manipulating them, or she may be killed by the bees themselves, 

 or sh':' may die a natural death. 



Whpn one wishes to increase the number of hives by artificial 

 means he takes one of the capped queen cells and gives it to a 

 nucleus which has already been queenless one or two days. Queen 

 cells are placed in the nucleus in a number of different w^ays. One 

 of the center frames is taken outand a hole is cut into it the size of 

 the piece of comb with the queen cell iattached. The queen cell is 



■ then inserted into the hole and pinned in place with small pins or 

 hits of wood. If the nucleus has been queenless for a few days 

 th? bees readily accept this new queen cell. Generally, when a 

 colony has been queenless for three or four days, the bees com- 

 mence to prepare queen cells, but they are usually small and not 



