BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
It will be seen that an hour before they were feeding thousands of working-larvae besides the queen-larvae, when, all at once, they are obliged to hold the accumulating chyme, and feel a great anxiety for a queen, as will be shown by their running all over the hive, flying in the air, and otherwise telling of their distrest condition, when you come with the prepared frame to put it in the hive. By now supplying them with from twelve to fifteen larvae, all cradled in queen-cells, upon which they may bestow all the provisions and carcasses
Figure 4: The Division-Board Feeder.
that they were bestowing before on a whole colony, it could hardly result otherwise than in producing as good queens as could be produced by any plan not exactly in accord with Nature's ways.
On placing the frame in the hive, on this my second trial, I had great confidence of success, while the next day on opening the hive I was assured of it, by seeing all of the queen-cells accepted, except those that I had made of beeswax. These accepted cells were completed in due time, and from them I obtained queens which were as good mothers as any I had ever had up to this time, outside of queens reared by natural swarming. I now used this plan for many years, and if properly done, it never fails of giving fairly good queens. At all times when honey is not coming in abundantly, feeding is resorted to, and when the mercury is lower than \(85^{\circ}\) in the shade, all operations with the larvae are done in a room of that degree of temperature, or a little higher.
But I think that I hear some one ask, "How old a larva do you use? and, how about the occupant of a cell being fed royal food, from the time it is hatch from the egg?" I have conducted many experiments to see how old a larva may be, before being placed in the royal cell, and yet have it produce a good queen. Some who advocate that queens should be reared from the egg, claim that, in natural swarming, royal jelly is deposited around the egg before it hatches, so that the larva literally swims in jelly from that time until after the cell is sealed up; and also that whore an egg or larvae is selected, from which to rear a queen in a queenless colony, adjoining cells are torn down, so as to make room for a large amount of royal jelly at the start.
I have carefully watcht, time and time again, to find out if an egg laid in a queen-cell was treated any differently for the first four days (after it was deposited in such cell by a queen), than an egg laid in a worker-cell, and as yet I have failed to find any difference; so if any bee-keepers have seen what is described above, they have seen something that I have never been able to discover.
I also find, that where a colony is made queenless, the larva is floated out with royal jelly, till near the end of the cell, when a queen-cell is built out and downward over the comb, rather than that the bees tear away cells, as described ; especially is this the case with old combs.
At this time of hatching, the nurse-bees begin to feed the larvae; but, so far as I am able to judge, the larva in a worker-cell is surrounded by three times the food it can use, for the first thirty-six hours of its existence. Somewhere from this, to the time the larvae are three days old, the bees begin to stint them as to food, so that the organs are not development as they would be if fed abundantly during the rest of their larval period.
**I** also claim that the food fed to all larvae, up to the time they are thirty-six hours old, is exactly the same, whether the larvae are designed for drones, queens, or workers ; and that the difference comes by the queen-larva being fed large quantities of this food, all of its larval life, while the others are fed sparingly later on, or else a different kind of food given after they are thirty-six hours old. Some experiments which I have conducted point in this direction, but as yet I have not completed them fully enough to warrant the giving of them here.
**If** the above is correct (and I firmly believe that it is) it will be seen that the larva in a worker-cell has all of its wants supplied for the first day and a half, and is developing towards a queen just as fast, prior to this, in a worker-cell, as it possibly could in a queen-cell, surrounded by ten times the food that it can consume.
Hundreds of experiments in using larvae from three hours old, up to those of thirty-six hours, prove that queens from the former are in no way superior to those from the latter, while the bees always choose the latter, where the power of choice is left to them. As all of my plans of rearing queens require the changing of small larvae, I have dwelt thus largely upon this very important point, so that the reader might know just where I stand in this matter. Years of success in producing the best of queens, together with the result of many experiments, conducted by some of our best queen-preceders, go to prove that I am correction the above conclusion.
A little practice will enable any one to know about how old the larvae are, by glancing at them in the bottom of the cells. Bear in mind that a larva but thirty-six hours old is a small affair, as the rapid growth is made at the latter end of its life; and if you think that there is any chance of a mistake on your part, in not knowing larvae of that age, or younger, you should put a frame in a hive and watch for eggs, then watch for the eggs to hatch into larvae, when, by looking in the cells from twenty-four to thirty-six hours afterward, you will know to a certainty, just how such as you should use will look. If you have been as correct as to the age of larvae used, as you should be, all of the queens will hatch from the prepared cells, in from eleven-and-a-half to twelve days from the time the frame was given to the queenless colony. An expert can judge so closely that he can figure the time of hatching to within three or four hours.
In taking care of these cells, I generally do it on the after noon of the tenth day, if it is pleasant; for if deferred till the eleventh day it necessitates taking care of them on that day, no matter what the weather may be.
As soon as the cells are taken from the hive, I go to the colony which had the brood given them (when it was taken from this colony in preparing it for queen-rearing), and take three frames well filled with brood, on one of which is the queen, and place them back in the now queenless and brood-less hive, being particular to see, in putting the frames of brood in the hive, that the queen is on the center comb, so that the bees which go with her will surround and protect her, till all the bees become thoroughly mixt.
If it is early spring, I shake the bees in front of their own hive, from off the combs which do not have the queen on, so as to keep this colony as strong as possible; for in three days from this time, this colony is to go through the same course that the other did, in rearing more queens.
At the end of three days, all the brood that was left, is to be carried to the hive which now has the queen, so it will be seen that no colony will lose over thirteen days of time, by this process of queen-rearing, before it is back in nearly as good condition as ever. If we wish to save still more time to this colony, some colony can be kept purposely to care for the cells by keeping it queenless and giving brood occasionally to keep up the population. Into this colony the frames of queen-cells can be placed as soon as sealed, thus keeping none of the queen-rearing colonies queenless for more than eight days.
Some tell us that a queenless colony will rear four or five lots of queen-cells before the young bees get too old to rear perfect queens; but I say, do not rear but one lot of cells from any colony, at one time, if you wish to have good queens.
The reason is obvious, why a second lot of cells will not be as good, if you will take pains to read over what was said about getting the colony in condition to rear good queens. It would be nearly as bad as causing all old or field bees to rear queens, for the nurses have now been six days without anything that should cause them to prepare chyme, hence they have none in their stomachs to feed the lasvae, so they must go to work to produce more before they can do this work. By the time they could give them chyme, the larvae would receive a check from which they would never recover, even if they could be fed as much and as good food afterward, which is unreasonable to suppose.
Since I adopted the above method, what is known as tne "Alley plan of queen-rearing " has been given to the public ; but after a thorough trial, I fail to find any point wherein it is superior to the one given above, while in some few points I consider it inferior. However, good queens can be reared by the Alley process --very much better ones than those reared by any of the old plans that were used by most of the queen-breeders before he gave his to the world. For this reason, Mr. Alley should have a prominent place assigned him, among the ranks of those who have done much to advance the cause of apiculture during the Nineteenth Century.
## Chapter VII.
THE NEW WAY OF REARING QUENES.
While rearing queens, as given in the last chapter, I became anxious for some plan by which I could get queens reared by natural swarming, so that the cells would be all on one comb, and in shape to care for as easily as were those whlch were built from the queen-cups that I gave to queenless colonies. For years I had practiced taking the larvae out of queen-cells, which the bees had under way, and substituting larvae from my best queen, by the transposition process; but in all of these cases I had to take up with the cells where the bees had built them, besides, in many instances, after going over all of the combs in a hive I would find only three or four cells, so I had to do a great deal of work without receiving much benefit from it; while in cutting off the cells, I was obliged to mutilate many of my very best combs. This did not please me, so I set about seeing what could be done by way of having cells built where I desired them.
To this end, I prepared cells the same as I had done in giving them to queenless colonies, after which I placed the frame in a hive where the colony was preparing to swarm. I then waited two days, when I opened the hive, hoping that the bees had taken the larvae which I had given; but in this I was disappointed, for every one of them had been removed, while, much to my surprise, I found that every cell but two contained an egg deposited therein by the queen. In this I gained a point,even if it was not just what I had been looking for.
I now watch these cells, to see what would become of them, and found that they were treated the same as others.
sre--the colony swarming on the sealing of the first cell. As these cells were brought to perfection, I was not long in comprehending that in this I had a plan that would give me the cells all on one comb, the same being reared by natural swarming, and by it I could secure at least twice the number that I had ever been able to obtain before. By getting the colonies, having the best queens, to swarm early, and keeping them at it as late in the season as possible, I could rear fully four times as many splendid queens by this process as before, besides having the cells in such shape that every one of them could be saved with very little trouble.
In this way I kept on until I found that I could not find sufficient embryo queen-cells to keep up with my now increasing calls for queens, hence I must manage in some way to increase the supply of these, or else go back to the old way of queen-rearing for a part of my supply. The latter I very much disliked to do, which led me to go over the ground of making cells again, as I had formerly done.
While thinking of this matter, it came to me--why not dip the cells, the same as my mother used to dip candles? This thought so waked me up, that I wondered at myself for not thinking of it before, and immediately I had some wax in a small dish, over a lamp, to melt. While this was melting, I hunted up the old stick that I used in forming the cells at my first trial, which was nothing more than a tooth out of a common hand hay-rake. This tooth was now fitted to a queen-cup, as perfectly as I could do it with knife and sand-paper, while a mark was made around the tooth where the open end of the cell should come, so that I could know just how deep I wanted it to go in the wax, to give the desired depth of cell.
By this time the wax had melted. I then got a dish of cold water, and after dipping the end of the stick in the water (up to where it was mark, or a little deeper), and giving it a quick jerk, to throw off the water not needed, it was quickly lowered into the wax up to the mark, and as quickly lifted out, twirling it around and around in my fingers, so as to cause the wax to be equally distributed over the wood. I now had a film of wax over the stick, so frail that it could not be handled, but in it I saw the commencement of a queen-cell, which would, I was sure, be a boon to my fellow bee-keepers, for the wax much resembled the very outer edge of a queen-cup built on new comb.
I then dip it again, not allowing it to go as deep within one-sixteenth of an inch as before, and in twirling the stick after taking it out, the end having the wax on was held lower than the other, so that the lower end, or the base, would be the thickest, as the wax would flow toward the lowest point.
**DOOLITTLE ON QUEEN-REARING.** 85
off the combs? I feared not ; and in this I was right, $s the first trial proved. This was a disappointment to me, altho I had thought it might be so.
**Fig. 5.--Some of the Paraphernakta used by a Queen-Breeder.**
**[Explanation of the above Engraving:--Beginning at the right hand side, we have 1st, a mailing cage used in shipping queens; 2nd, the three forming-sticks, laid on the notcht-block while the wax is cooling; 3rd, the dish for cold water; 4th, the lamp having the dish of wax on top; 5th, a wire-cloth cage used in introducing queens; 6th, (near thefront edge of the table) the earspoon used in scooping up the royal jelly; 7th, the stick used to place royal jelly in the queen-cup; 8th, a queen-cell protector, showing a hatch cell in the same, with the stopper in place; 9th, (at the back side of the table) a stick having wax queen-cups attachment, showing their position on the stick.]
While studying over the matter, it came to me one night as I lay awake--why not put some royal jelly into these cups, the same as there was in the cells that I had always been successful with, when transferring larvae in the swarming season? This seemed so reasonable that I could hardly wait forthe middle of the day to come, when I could try it. At 10 o'clock the next day, I had a dozen cells prepared, each having some royal jelly in it; then larvae were placed in the royal jelly, the same as I always did when using the transposition process in swarming colonies. In this way the larvae had an abundance of queen-food, even tho the workers did not feed them in from two or three hours to half a day, which was quite a step in advance of setting them in embryo queen-cups, with only the food that I could take up with the toothpick, as previously stated.
To get the royal jelly in the cups, I dipt a little of it out of a queen-cell that I took from a colony-building cells, taking one that was nearly ready to seal, as such had the most jelly in it. After the large queen-larva was thrown out, the whole jelly was stirred up in the cell, so as to get all of one thickness, for that in the bottom of the cell will be found much thicker than that about the larva.
When thus mixt, the jelly was taken up with the ear-spoon on a pair of tweezers [Fig. 5, page 35], which was then transferred to the hollowed-out end of a little stick, by drawing the bowl of the ear-spoon over the end of the stick, until about one-elighth inch in diameter of the jelly was standing on the end of it. The end of the stick having the royal jelly on it, was then lowered into the bottom of the wax-cup, when it was twirled a little so as to make the jelly stay on the bottom of the cell, the same as it does when the bees place it there.
The amount of jelly used for each cup, was about the size of a "B B " shot, when on the end of the stick, before lowering into the cup, or one-elighth inch in diameter, as stated before. To get the first jelly of the season, a colony must be made queenless ; but after this, it is secured by taking one or two of the prepared cells at any time before they are sealed up.
Having the frame in readiness, it was given to a colony that was preparing to swarm, and left for two days. When I opened the hive this time, and drew out the prepared frame, you can imagine my pleasure at seeing twelve as nice queen-cells under headway as I ever saw, all looking like so many queen-cells built out of new comb--they were so light colored. In three days more these twelve cells were capt, and, in due time, twelve as splendid queens as I ever saw, hatch from them. There was now no need of searching combs for embryo queen-cells, for I had something very much better, and something which would stand more rough usage than the other cups ever would endure.
My next idea was to have all of the queen-cells built on a stick, or piece of frame-stuff, the same as I had read about; so when I again made some, instead of taking the cup off the form, I only loosened it enough so that it would slip off the stick easily, when it was again dipt in the wax and immediately placed on a mark on the piece of frame-stuff, which mark I had designated as a place for a cell [Fig. 6]. In an instant the cup had adhered to the frame-stuff, when the forming-stick was withdrawn. This cell was placed near the center of this stick, as to its length, but close to one side of it, as to width.
The next cell or cup was placed one and one-half inches to the right of the first, while the third was placed the same distance to the left, and so on until six were on the stick. I
Figure 6: Affixing the Wax-Cups to the Stick on which they are to be Bull.
then put the next on the opposite side from the other six, and half way between them, so that when I had six more cups on, or twelve in all, the cells alternated with each other, which gave more room to each cell when occupying a given space, than would have been given, had I placed each along the center of the stick [Fig. 5, page 35.]
To get the designated places for cells, set the dividers the distance apart that you desire the cells, and after having put one of the points where you desire to have the first cell, "walk" them along until you make the number of point-marks that you want cells, and, in dipping, set a wax-cup over each point-mark.
Having the cells thus first, helptin several ways, as it gave the bees a better chance to cluster among them in building, while it gave me a better chance to manipulate the cells in transferring the royal jelly and larvae to them, taking them off, etc., and especially in getting them off the stick; for, when first in this way, all I had to do was to push gently on, the outside of the base of the cell with my thumb, then off it came, without any danger of injuring it in anyway.
After dipping cells for some time, the forming-sticks will get so coated with wax that the water will stand in drops, instead of flowing freely over them, thus causing the cups to stick so as to spoil them in taking off. When this is the case, the stick is dipt in the water, and immediately placed between the second and third fingers of the left hand, close up to the hand, and twirled around once or twice, which causes the water to spread out over the stick; when it is dipt in the wax, and will work again as well as ever. When working continuously I am able to make from 150 to 200 cups in an hour, so it will be seen that but little time is required to make all that will be needed in any queen-rearing establishment.
I now had easy sailing all along the line, for all I had to do was to prepare the frame with these wax-cups, put in the royal jelly, which was now very easily done by laying the stick of cells bottom-side up on a table {Fig. 5, page 35} or chair before me, while the royal jelly was being disht into each; and before removing from the table, transfer the larvae, taken from the hive having my best breeding queen, into each cell. When all was ready, this stick of prepared cells was crowded between the side-bars to a frame of comb, which had been previously cut so that the cells would come in the center of the comb, while the ends of the stick slipt through a slot cut in the comb for them. I keep several old combs, say ton or twelve for this purpose, which are used as often as cells are needed. This is a great convenience, and saves destroying or mutilating a valuable comb every time we want cells built.
**By doing the whole in a warm room, I was independent of the weather, for in carrying the frame to the hive, I wrapt it in a warm flannel cloth, when it was at all cool outside. In this way I was sure to get a large proportion of the cells completed, whether used in a colony preparing to swarm, or in a colony which I had flat for queen-rearing.**
**Before carrying to the hive, a slight shaving was taken from the top-bar of the frame, and the date placed on it, so I**
**Fig. 7.--Frame with Stick of Queen-Cells.**
**Explanation.--Frame showing how the stick of queen-cups is fitted into it, and how the cells look after being built from the cups. The illustration is less than one-fourth size, as the frame used is for the Gallup hive, which is 11%x11% inches.**
**could know just when these cells would hatch. If the figures on it read ""7-20," I knew that the cells were prepared July 20, and should be cared for on the 30th of that month. I then wrote in a small book kept for this purpose, ""7-20 placed in hive No. 40 " (if that happened to be the hive they wereplaced in), so that by looking at this book at any time, I knew where each frame of cells was, and when put there. If cells were started with larvae from any but my best queen, the name of the queen was also placed on the frame and in the book, so that I knew just what I was about at all times. By looking in this book, I knew just when and where I should go to get these cells, so that none were destroyed by the queens hatching before I expected.
In getting larvae for queen-rearing, when very cool, I placed the piece of brood under my clothing near my body, as soon as cut from the comb, and kept it there while carrying it to the room, so that there was no danger of chilling the larvae; or, if handler, as was sometimes the case, I placed it in a box having a heated Iron in it, as will be explained farther along. A small room especially adapted for the handling of cells, brood, etc., which can be kept warm in cool weather, is almost a necessity to the man who makes a business of queen-rearing. When only a few queens are reared, the family kitchen can be used, as there is almost always a fire there--providing the " better half " is willing.
After working successfully along this line, with both swarming colonies and those made queenless for queen-rearing purposes, I chanced one day to find a colony which was about to supersede its queen, and gave evidence of being one of those colonies which might have two queens in a hive. I was not long in deciding to try my process of cell-building in this colony, so I at once destroyed the queen-cells which the bees had started, having royal jelly in them, using the royal jelly to put in the wax-cups I had prepared for them. I soon had the frame of prepared cells in the colony, when I waited rather impatiently for the next two days, till I could see what the developments would be.
At the end of two days, I went to the hive, and upon lifting out the frame I found that eleven out of the twelve cups prepared, had been accepted, and were now on the way to completion, as perfect queen-cells. Two days before the cells were ready to hatch, I had them photograph, and I have given the reader a fairly good picture of them [Fig. 7, page 89], which also represents these cells as built in an upper story over a queen-excluding honey-board, as about to be described.