THE beekeepers' DIRECTORY. 



129 



I had need for drones. It was necessary to keep the only breed- 

 ing queen in a ftill colony in order to obtain them as well as 

 eggs for queen cells ; but later in the season, when the old 

 lady had made up her mind that she had mothered all the 

 males she thought necessary for that year, she refused to de- 

 posit more eggs for that purpose. Well, I was in a bad fix ; 

 yet it was necessary to do something and that quickly, as the 

 supply of drones on hand would not last long and others must 

 be had, or queen-rearing must go to the walls for the season. 

 This prompted me to experiment. Though all the bee-books 

 and authors tell us that young queens will not lay drone eggs 

 the first year, I thought they could be made to do so. In this 

 opinion I was right. I had one colony that had just finished 

 a batch of queen cells, and as they saw the need of drones, 

 the idea struck me that the bees had as much to do with the 

 needs and desires of the colony as the queens. So I arranged 

 a plan by which I forced the young queen to deposit her first 

 eggs in drone cells. This is how I did it. The bees were re- 

 moved from one of the best colonies I had, all the combs, 

 save one, were placed in the hive again, the centre or middle 

 comb being left out, and a nice, clean fi-ame of drone-comb 

 was placed directly in the middle of the brood-chamber. I 

 then placed the queenless bees in the hive and gave them a 

 fine, young queen, one of the brightest, golden Italians I could 

 find in the hundreds of nucleus hives in myyard. In a fewdays 

 I opened the hive and drew out the frame of drone-comb and 

 to my surprise and great delight, I found that nearly every 

 cell ha,d an egg in it. This comb was then removed to a col- 

 ony rearing queens, and the drone eggs were welcomed and 

 nursed by the queenless bees. Another frame of drone-comb- 

 was placed in the hive with the young queen and more drone 

 eggs were obtained, and thus the supply was kept up for the 

 season with little or no trouble. 



I believe it is generally understood that young queens will 

 not deposit drone eggs the first year of their existence. This 

 statement is handed down from one author to another, not 

 one of them knowing that such is not a fact. Very few authors 

 of bee-books have had experience covering all points in bee- 

 keeping ; hence the reason why wrong statements and quota- 

 tions are made and go the rounds. 



One other experiment to obtain drone eggs resulted in a 



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