BEE MANUAL. 225 



INTRODUCING VIRGIN QUEENS. 



This is a matter in which I cannot claim to have had special 

 success. To introduce successfully a mated queeu is an easy 

 matter compared to introducing an unmated one. Sometimes 

 I have had fair success with a considerable number ; at other 

 times, and under similar conditions as far as I could judge, I 

 have lost fully 50 per cent. However, several experienced 

 apiarists have lately given the matter much thought, and 

 experimented in different ways, and some now claim to be able 

 to introduce unmated queens without difficulty. 



The principal feature in Alley's method appears to be making 

 the colony queenless three days before attempting the intro- 

 duction. He says : — 



"In order to introduce such queens (virgins) successfully the colony 

 should remain queenless three days (seventy-two hours) ; then give 

 the bees a pretty good fumigating with tobacco smoke. Remember 

 the bees must remain queenless three days at the least, and during 

 the meantime no queen must be near them, otherwise the operation 

 will prove a failure. Virgin queens can also be introduced successfully 

 by daubing them with honey and using no tobacco smoke. . . . This 

 is a much slower process than by fumigating them with tobacco smoke, 

 but just as successful." 



In another place he gives the ordinary plan of introducing 

 queens, only laying stress upon the point of keeping the bees 

 queenless for three days. 



Mr. Doolittle, who claims to have introduced several 

 hundred without having lost one, says : " To secure the best 

 results the queens should be about three days old when placed 

 in the introducing cages, but a difference of two days either 

 way will make no great difference." After removing the 

 queen which he wishes to supersede, he places a caged virgin 

 queen, well supplied with food, on the top of the frames, and 

 leaves her there for five days, when he opens the cage and closes 

 the hive, leaving the queen to come out of the cage at her 

 leisure. Twenty-four hours afterwards he examines the combs 

 and removes any queen cells that have not been already 

 destroyed by the bees. Both Alley's and Doolittle's plans 

 appear to be specially meant for introducing to nucleus colonies. 



Mr. D. A. Jones, of Ontario, stated at the Toronto Con- 

 Tention that he had introduced fifty queens into fifty hives in 



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