68 ALEXANDER'S WRITINGS ON PRACTICAL BEE CULTURE 



all drones from as choice queens as you rear your queens from. In 

 other words, drones must be developed the same as the queens. This 

 may seem like an unnecesssary amount of trouble; but there is little 

 of value In this world that does not cost labor to acquire. 



There are many bee-keepers who might make great improvements 

 in their bees if they would only start in the right way. They seem to 

 think that, if they buy a breeding-queen once in a year or two, it is 

 about all that is necessary; and if her colony swarms they will! try 

 to save some of the queen-cells, and then think they are improving 

 their bees. Such a line of management is no improvement; and if that 

 Is the best that can be done, then it would be better to buy all the 

 queens from some one who is doing better. The whole subject turns 

 on this point: The best queens, bought or home-reared, are none too 

 good, and the aim should be to make them still better with each suc- 

 ceeding generation. 



February, 1908. 



NUCLEI FOR REARING QUEENS. 



Our nuclei have three combs each, size 5x9 inches, and about a pint 

 of bees; they filled their combs so full that it was necessary to extract 

 them frequently in order to give the young queens a chance to lay 

 after they have become fertilized, and this was done some time before 

 our August harvest. 



Now, when little nuclei of less than one pint of bees can fill up 

 their combs with honey in this way when there is no special harvest on, 

 and that in an apiary of 750 strong colonies, it does seem to me that 

 this fear of overstocking was only imaginary. A few years ago when 

 we thought our bees went only a mile or so from home to gather 

 nectar, we had some e.xcuse for believing it was easy to overstock a 

 location; but as it is now, when we have an abundance of good proof 

 that our bees will work to a good advantage on flowers five or six 

 miles from home, and sometimes still further, it changes the whole 

 subject. Just think of the millions of honey-producing flowers, when 

 the weather is favorable, within a circle of ten or twelve miles in 

 diameter. This is the turning-point of the whole subJect^"When the 

 weather is faovrable." And when the weather is unfavorable for the 

 secretion of nectar, it makes no difference how much bloom there is 

 or how few colonies there are in the apiary. 



In regard to these nuclei I spoke of above, we find them very 

 useful. My son fixed up fifteen about the 1st of July, and by Sept. 10 

 we had taken out 63 choice laying queens from them to use in large 

 colonies, besides some extracted honey, and the actual cost of these 

 queens was not ten cents apiece. 



We have tried many different sizes of combs for nuclei; but, all 

 things considered, we prefer small combs, of which three will fill one 

 of our standard frames; then when we put them in our nucleus-boxes 



