BEE-KEEPING

Grey River Argus, 19 January 1922, Page 3

BEE-KEEPING

(By “Drone.”) The art of breeding, mating, and I rearing queens is an important branch of up-to-date beekeeping, more particularly in a large apiary, and. one which is run as a commercial business. It is then very necessary to have a supply of young queens, to replace losses that may occur, and also to supersede those that are getting too old. It is not necessary for beginners, or those keeping a few hives as a hobby, except perhaps as an interesting study of modern bee culture. There arc many beekeepers who make the rearing of queens an interesting and profitable side line, and often get fancy prices for queens. The Post Office has special mail bags for the posting of young queens, and I have received, queens safe and well after being in the mail bag from Monday morning until Friday afternoon. Queens can be raised any time during the swarming season or when drones are flying. In order to raise early queens the colony selected should be pushed on by slow feeding and giving them emerging brood from another colony early in September. As soon as the colony is strong enough insert clean empty drone comb in the middle of the brood chamber. Note the time when the drone brood is capped, and in eight or nine days later place a frame of clean new worker comb in the middle of the brood chamber of the hive containing your choicest queen. The colony being pretty strong with plenty of brood in the combs the new comb will soon be attended to by the queen and in three or four days will be full of her eggs. ! As soon as t he eggs commence to hatch remove the comb to a. warm room and place another in the hive. Have a special frame of three horizontal bars. That is space for three rows of queen colls ready. Lay your sheet of comb on a table and cut the comb through every second row of cells. This will leave a strip of perfect cells. Next crush every alternate egg with the head of a match. Then fasten the strips under the top and two centre bars of the frame with a little melted wax, Heaving the cells in which the alternate eggs have been destroyed to point directly downwards. My idea is to leave one egg in every third cell, it gives more room for cutting them out later on. The next move is to remove the queen and all uncapped brood from one of your strong colonies and place the frame of strips in the middle of the brood chamber. The colony being deprived of queen and eggs must now devote its whole attention to raising others and they are thereby compelled to raise queens from those supplied by the beekeeper. In less than 24 hours after the frame has been giv-n several queen cells will be start ; over them, and a safe average of s: y 15 or 20 will be in course of constriction. After several days, as soon ; s t ie cells are forward enough to be plainly seen, destroy all except 10 or 12 of the largest and best looking ones. Having now done everything possible to ensure the rearing of the best queens we must leave the re. • to the bees. is a marked difference between queen cells, some are long pointed and dense looking, while others are stunted and are reckoned to contain poor queens, and the beekeeper is recommended to use only the well-formed rough-looking long-pointed ones. In connection with Queen rearing, a nucleus colony is formed for the purpose of caring for a young queen during her maidenhood. A good strong colony with eggs and larvae in every frame ' will make ten nucleus hives, or two or three frames can be taken from a- colony with the adhering bees and placed in a new hive. Empty slides replacing those taken out. Make sure that the old queen is not with the bees forming

the nucleus colony. Then cut a queen cell from your rearing frame and place it into the comb of the nucleus, pointing downwards, of course. When cutting the cells from the frame as much as possible of the base should be taken clear up to the wood of the frame just about the day the young queen is due to hatch. Cut a small hole in the comb just large enough to put in the cell without pinching it in any way, and fit as nicely as possible. As soon as the cell is inserted place the comb within the centre of the nucleus hive, and close it down. Be sure the entrance is closed with wire cloth so that no bees can escape. Keep-them closed till the evening of the second or third day after that on which the cells were inserted. The wire doth can be removed from the entrance a little before dusk; by this time the bees will be reconciled to their new quarters, and few, if any, will try to return to their old home. By this time the queens will be about a day old. In four or five more they will take their honeymoon trip, just when our select drones are about 14 days old. If our plans have been carefully matured there will be no other drones about. The young queen leaves the hive and flies straight up in the air. The drones are flying round and as soon as she is out they fly after her, and the best and strongest flier reaches her, and she returns to her hive fertilised for life. Next we wish to place our choice queen in charge of a colony, or in the case of a commercial beekeeper he posts her to a customer hundreds of miles away. She is placed with a few bees in a small cage covered with wire gauze and has a small apartment containing soft sugar and honey. We wish to introduce her to a new home, so the old queen is caught and killed. The cage containing the new mother is then hung down between two of the frames in the hive and the hive is closed down again. The bees can see her a,nd even feel her with their antennae through the wire gauze, but, ,theg cannot >ting hot as

some would be apt to do before they get used to her. If no honey is being gathered the colony should be fed to keep them busy and content while they are reluctantly accepting their new mother. In the introducing cage there is a small hole about large enough to admit one bee at a time. This is filled with candy and honey and the bees have to gradually eat their way into their new mother. It is usually a couple or three days before their task is completed, and by that time they are quite used to her, and she marches out and takes her place as Queen of the Hive. Beginners are sometimes too eager to see if the bees have accepted the new queen and in order to satisfy their curiosity the bees are disturbed, and sometimes they form a ball round her. If this happens it shows that the bees are not friendly to her and the best thing to do is to break the ball with smoke, or throw the lot into a basin of water when the bees will soon loosen their hold. Secure the queen and cage her again and if any new queen cells have been formed in the hive destroy them. By the same method a colony can be changed from Hack Bees to Italian Bees, simply by he intreduetion of an Italian Quean.