March 1908. j 



255 



Apiculture. 



If you are breeding a large number of 

 queens, you will need small nuclei in 

 which a few bees can tend the sealed cell 

 until the queen is mated. But if you are 

 only raising a few, you can, as soon as 

 the cells are sealed, remove the cell-bar 

 and stand nursery cages (previously sup- 

 plied with "queen-candy") on the hori- 

 zontal bar, and insert a sealed cup in 

 each. Then you can deal with the 

 hatching queens at your leisure. 



I said above that the queen of the nur- 

 sery hive was to be removed. But it is 

 better to cage her, leaving her in the 

 hive. Then, when you have all your 

 queen-cells, caged, you can release the 

 old queen for a fortnight or so before 

 caging her again for another operation. 

 Large breeders insert two queen-rearing 

 frames at a time ; and some of them 

 utilize the horizontal bar as a second 

 cell-bar. Thus they can raise about 

 sixty queens from a hive every six 

 weeks or so. 



In order to get your young queens 

 mated, you must have a few nucleus- 

 hives ready. As these require a certain 

 number of bees that would otherwise be 

 employed storing honey, many breeders 

 now utilize quite diminutive hives tor the 

 purpose, with only a cupful of bees in 

 each. But until you gain experience, I 

 would recommend the employment of an 

 ordinary hive, contracted by dummy- 

 boards to hold just three frames — the 

 two outer ones containing honey and the 

 centre frame brood. Six hours after 

 forming this nucleus (having, of course, 

 been careful that you have not placed 

 an old queen in it) you can run one 

 of your virgin queens in, and she will 

 almost certainly be accepted. But, if she 

 is of great value, it will be better to 

 introduce her by means of a cage. A 

 few days later she will be laying, when 

 she can be taken out and sold or used to 

 replace an old queen in one of your other 

 hives ; and a second virgin can be supplied 

 to the nucleus. If you go on using a 

 nucleus for a long time, you will have, 

 now and then, to introduce a few more 

 bees to it, in order to keep up its strength. 

 Or you can unite the nucleus back to its 

 parent hive and take fresh three combs 

 of bees. 



There are still two points that may 

 require elucidation. I said you were to 

 line the cell-cups with wax, and recom- 

 mended dressing them with "royal jelly." 

 For the first, fill the cup with melted 

 beeswax, and, while it is still not quite 

 hard, press down into the cup with a stick 

 shaped as in Fig. V. The wax will then 

 squelch up above the level of the walls 

 of the cup and so form a beginning of the 

 cell wall. The stick must be moistened 



with the tongue to prevent its adhering 

 to the wax. And once a cup is formed, so 

 long as it be kept clean, it can be used 

 again and again for queen-cells. As re- 

 gards royal jelly, this is the special food 

 provided by bees to their embryo queens. 

 One newly-sealed queen-cell will yield 

 enough jelly to dress twenty cups or 

 more; and once a queen has been raised 

 in a cup, the cup retains the scent of the 

 jelly and so does not really require 

 re-dressing. If you have not a queen-cell 

 from which to obtain jelly to start you 

 off, you can easily get your bees to make 

 one. I will leave it to your reasoning 

 powers to decide how this is to be done ! 



SELECTING DRONES. 



You may take it as certain that, at the 

 immediate close of the monsoon, no stocks 

 of bees will contain drones unless under 

 the direct control of man. As a period 

 of wet weather prevents the bees from 

 foraging, it is natural that they will not 

 tolerate the presence of lazy and greedy 

 drones, which only consume stores that 

 might mean life or death to the colony. 

 Thus drones, at such a season, are unna- 

 tural ; and man is the only creature that 

 can force Nature out of her usual groove. 

 Therefore, if you see drones immediately 

 after the monsoon, you may take it as 

 practically certain that they are the 

 result of man's interference. Now, no 

 man is going to be such a fool as to breed 

 up a lot of useless drones without some 

 object ; and his only object can be for 

 breeding purposes— in which case you 

 may say that he has selected those drones. 

 Hence, though you may not know who it 

 is amongyour neighbours that is breeding 

 drones, you need not be alarmed at the 

 idea of one of your virgin queens mating 

 with such a stranger; for you may depend 

 upon it that the drone has been selected 

 for some special quality— probably gen- 

 tleness. 1 must warn you, however, that 

 a wild stock may easily have drones at 

 that season, even without man's inter- 

 ference ; but that will be because the 

 stock is queenless — and, having regard 

 to the season, the stock is almost certain 

 to be hopelessly queenless, or at least so 

 near to it that the bees are losing heart. 

 So that such drones would not stand a 

 hundred to one chance of mating with a 

 virgin queen, if there were any competi- 

 tion from drones bred in a strong and 

 hopeful hive. Thus, if you have been 

 careful to rear drones, then you may be 

 certain that your virgin queen has mated 

 with one of your well-fed and well-cared- 

 f or drones to the exclusion of any mangy 

 and ill-fed creature from a chance stock. 

 Hence you will see that you can almost 

 certainly insure your queens mating with 

 a selected drone. And the probability is 

 greatly enhanced if the hive containing 



