BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
Baby Nuclei--Of late years diminutive nuclei on combs less than full size have come into vogue, and if a few simple details in their management are understood and followed, it is possible to get a larger number of queens fertilised in an apiary of given strength and comb area by the use of such nuclei than by the use of nuclei on full-sized combs. It is true that small nuclei can be also kept on full-sized combs, but with miniature hives and frames the cluster is somewhat more compact. As the baby hives are quite small they are very handy for transportation to out apiaries, and especially to isolated mating stations in making attempts to get queens mated by special drones. Indeed, properly packed to prevent the escape of bees, they may even be sent by parcel post.
The chief disadvantage of these baby nuclei is that only a small quantity of brood can be reared in them, and, therefore, they are almost useless for building up into colonies. Almost every queen-breeder wants bees as well as queens. Then the various disadvantages of having two sizes of frame must also be taken into account. But when there is a pressing demand for queens, a few baby nuclei will prove profitable.
The best size of frames for baby nuclei is half size, so that two combs together will make a full-sized comb. The two half frames fastened together hang like an ordinary standard frame in an ordinary colony, and are there filled with honey and brood. Metal clasps may be used to hold the two half frames together, or they may be hinged together so as to make a folding frame (see Fig. 27), but a folding frame, though convenient, is not so satisfactory as a divisible frame, because it is an advantage to be able to separate the little frames in the nuclei.
Fig. 28 shows a baby nucleus hive that has been used successfully in Ripple Court Apiary for a good many years. It holds two nuclei each on two half frames, with entrances on opposite sides, each measuring \(\sin\). by \(\sin\). The floor is in one piece with the hive. The nuclei are separated by a close-fitting folding Frame for Baby Nuclei.
division board, having spikes in the bottom to fix it to the floor, and there is also room on either side for a division board, which does not quite reach the bottom in order to avoid crushing bees during manipulation, together with an extra half inch of space for working. The two nuclei may be united by removal of the central division board. A rack (not shown) is made to hold down the quilt during the confinement of the bees, and a tin f-eder, constructed on the same principle as that described on page 36, is encased in the hollow wall supporting the projecting ends of the top bars of the frames.
As many as eight or nine baby nuclei, each on two half frames, may be made from one strong colony. In stocking the hive, sufficient bees should be put in to crowd on one of the half combs, and it is even more important that the bees should be young, and that there should be plenty of honey and, if possible, sealed brood in the combs than in the case of ordinary nuclei. For the home apiary it would be an advantage to make the baby hive large enough for each nucleus to take an extra half frame if required.
A serious disadvantage of baby nuclei occasionally noticed in America is that the bees may leave the hive _cn masse_ with the queen when she flies out to meet the drone. This, however, has never occurred in my experience in England.
VIII.--SENDING QUEENS BY MAIL AND INTRODUCING THEM TO COLONIES.
**Sending Queens by Mail.--** The postal regulations of most countries now allow live bees to be sent by mail, and a great number of queens are distributed in this way every summer. They are sent in small cages, introduced by Benton, containing a special kind of soft candy called " queen candy," described below. The queen and her attendants will live for several days in one of these cages. Indeed, they will often live for two weeks or more, provided young Italian or hybrid workers of the age at which they are only just distinguishable from adults by their slightly lighter hair, with undastended abrolnens, are chosen. If they are not overcrowded, the bees in the cage will stand a temperature up to odeg., there being always sufficient air for them in the mail bags. Each cage weighs less than two ounces with the candy in it. The queens can therefore be forwarded expeditiously by post to any address at a merely nominal cost.
The cage consists of a block of non-resinous wood--foris filled with the queen candy. This hole is lined with wax to prevent the wood absorbing any moisture from the candy. The queen, with her attendants, occupies the two other rim, holes, the end one of these having a saw cut, or several little holes, to provide ventilation. A piece of wire-cloth of the kind used in America for screening windows covers the cage, and this is fastened down securely, together with an outer lid or card, by means of a few fine wire nails. It is convenient to insert the queen and her attendants through the end of the \(\lx@sectionsign\)in. hole shown in the figure, each bee being picked up in the fingers by the wings and popped head first into the hole. A small square of tin plate is afterwards tacked over this hole.
In the case of a virgin queen not more than about thirty hours old the workers need not be taken from the same hive as she. But in the case of putting a fertile queen with strange workers, the latter must be caged about four hours beforehand and well fed, and then when the queen is about to be introduced they must be well shaken and made to run about the box until they hum and expose the scent organ. If they continue to do this when the queen is introduced she is safe from attack.
The above travelling cage is perfectly suitable for queens dispatched during summer and autumn, but in March, April and May, when the nights may be cold, and in June also, if the queen is an old one and oviposting rapidly, she being then in a delicate, easily chilled state, it is better for the queen to be accompanied by about roo workers in a little box containing a small piece of tough comb filled with sealed honey, fastened in a little frame by means of waxed string.
**Queen Candy.--**This useful article is made by kneading finely |mwdetel white cane sugar with warm honey to the consistency of putty. It takes the sugar some days to absorb the honey, so a little fresh sugar should be kneaded in on several successive days. The peculiar property of this candy is that it will retain its moisture for a long time, and yet it is too 'firm to fall out of shape at ordinary temperatures.
**Introducing Fertile Queens.--** A colony is in the most favourable condition for accepting a strange fertile queen when it has been deprived of its own queen from one to three days previously. Although the queen will sometimes be accepted if she is simply dropped among the bees it is always advisable to employ some method of introducing her that will reduce the risk. The method that is on the whole the most satisfactory and is most extensively employed is to keep the queen in a cage, in which the workers cannot molest her, until she has acquired the scent of the hive, and they have become accustomed to her. Food must, of course, he provided for the queen in the cage. The new queen may be caged in the hive at the same time that the old one is taken out.
**Introducing Cage for Pressing into the Comb.--** This simple and efficient cage (Fig. 3o) may be made from a piece of stiff wire cloth (with about twelve wires to the inch) $1in. square, $1by cutting $in. squares out of each corner, and by bending down the sides so formed. The queen is placed in the cage by herself or with one or two freshly-hatched workers, and the cage is pressed into one of the middle combs so that one or two cells containing unsealed honey are enclosed in the cage. The cage will sink better into the comb if two or three strands of the wire are pulled off the edges. In spring a caging of 24 to 36 hours is generally long enough, but in the autumn double that time is often necessary. If, when the hive is opened to remove the cage, the bees are seen to be clustering closely around the cage,the queen should be left in it longer. After the queen has been liberated the bees should not be disturbed for four or five days.
**Candy Introducing Cage** (Fig. 31).--With this cage (called in America the "Miller", cage) the queen is liberated by the bees eating through a plug of queen candy on which the queen feeds. The time taken by the bees in eating through this plug is usually about eighteen hours, but it may be lengthened by tacking a slip of pasteboard over the candy. The bees are made aware of the presence of the candy by a pinhole pricked in the pasteboard. The commencement of the liberation of the queen may be delayed for any length of time by keeping a strip of tin over the candy. The queen is inserted in the cage by the removal of the wooden block \(e\). This cage is made thin enough to be slipped between the combs. The tin strip above \(e\) rests across the top-bars of two frames. A cage on the same principle is illustrated on page 24.
The travelling cage illustrated on page 45 can be used as a candy introducing cage without taking the queen and workers out, but the presence of the workers slightly increases the risk, and it is better to introduce the queen alone in a fresh cage. If it is not known that the apiary from which the queen has come is free from disease, it is always best to introduce the queen in a new cage with fresh candy.
Other methods that have been successfully employed to reduce risk in introduction are exciting the bees by shaking them or smoking them, stupefying them temporarily with tobacco smoke, and smearing the queen with honey.
A queen should never be introduced to a colony that is short of stores, unless the latter has been fed liberally for several days.
A colony that has been queenless for a long time will not accept a queen so readily as one that has been deprived of its queen or queen-cells only one or two days before. It must be remembered that a colony that has been queenless over ten days will probably have reared a young queen if there were young larvae in the hive when the old queen was lost. In such a case any queen that might be introduced would certainly be destroyed, unless the young queen was found and removed beforehand. When there is doubt about the presence of a queen in a hive, it is a good plan to give a frame of young brood, and if the bees start forming queen-cells on this it is generally safe to introduce a new queen.
Black bees accept queens more readily than hybrid bees. It is not easy to introduce a black queen to hybrids: even after she has been received she may be attacked and stung, and so killed or paralysed for life.
IX.--RACES OF BESS.
Of the genus _Apis_ three perfectly distinct species are known: _A. dorsata_, _A. Horca_, and _A. mellifica_.* The two first are found in India, Ceylon, and the East Indian Islands,and have not been domesticated. In the winter of 1896-97 I spent a month in India investigating them. _A. dorsata_ is larger than our honey-bee, and its comb, which is several feet in length, is suspended, without any covering whatever, from the horizontal limb of a large tree or from an overhanging ledge of rock. Its wax is an article of commerce. _A. forea_ is much smaller than our honey-bee, and builds a comb no larger than a man's hand on the branches of shrubs. The drone of _A. forea_ has the metatarnsus of the hind leg biobate.
_Apis mellifica_ is indigenous to Europe, Asia, and Africa. The following are its most useful varieties :--
**1. The British Black Bee.--**The native bee of the British Isles has the ground colour of the whole body black and has the bands of short white hair on the abdominal segments weak and narrow. In the cool and windy summer climate of the British Isles it is unsurpassed by any other pure race for industry in honey-gathering, working early and late. It also caps its combs beautifully white. It is good tempered if pure, but rather excitable under manipulation, the bees rushing to the corners of the hive like a flock of sheep, but connected with this is the good quality that they are easily detached from their combs by shaking. The queens are not so prolific as those of the other races considered below.
Black bees also occur in France, Germany, and Spain, and a black variety, which the late Mr. W. H. Ashmead, of the U.S. National Museum, told me he believed first came from Spain, has spread over North America. The qualities of all these blacks appear to differ little from those of the British Black bee.
**2. The Italian Bee.--**In Northern Italy and Italian Switzerland there are to be found some very good varieties of bees having the first three segments of the abdomen semi-transparent orange-yellow at the base* and having broad, pronounced bands of short white hair on each of the segments except the first and the last. The Italian, as these races are called, is very good tempered and quiet under manipulation, clinging tenaciously to its combs, and it defends its 30 Queen-Rearing in England.
home well from rubber bees. Working in temperatures of 75 degrees and over, it is more industrious than the black bee and will travel long distances in search of nectar when flowers are scarce. The queens are more prolific than black queens and the colonies more populous than black colonies. Italians withstand cold winters well ; they can also endure great heat in summer and do not die so quickly in confinement as English blacks ; but they dwindle in cold springs. Wax moth larvae do not flourish in their combs. The vast majority of bee-keepers in America, Australia and New Zealand esteem Italians more highly than any other race.
The half-breds produced by Italian queens mated by English black drones are hardy and energetic, and in average seasons in England will yield heavier weights of honey per hive than the blacks, but in damp cold seasons they consume much honey and will starve if not fed. Their temper, too, is rather uncertain, though an experienced bee-keeper can easily manage them.
**3. The Carniolan Bee.--**This is a bee that occurs in Carniola, a small, mountainous province of Austria. The ground colour is entirely black, but the abdominal bands of short white hair are very strongly developed, giving the bee a grey appearance. It is a very good-tempered bee, but in the English climate has been found to be too much given to swarming and to be not such a good honey gatherer as the native bee. In America, however, it has been reported to be a good honey gatherer, but probably most of the reports have been of colonies that were not pure. It caps its comb white. The bees produced by Carniolan queens mated by English black drones are hardy and good honey gatherers.
**4. The Cyprian Bee,** from the Island of Cyprus, is rather smaller than any of the preceding, and has the testa-ceous bants on the abdominal segments wider. It is quick-tempered. The queens are extremely prolific. The British summer climate is too cold for Cypians to gather much honey ; they also swarm freely. Over a hundred queens are often reared in preparation for swarming. On loss of queen, fertile workers are readily developed. The half-breds produced by Cyprian queens mated by British black drones are industrious and fairly hardy, but very irascible, stinging the operator badly on the least provocation ; they continue to rear brood extensively until quite late in the autumn. Further crossing with blacks is said to produce a very industrious and hardy bee.
**5. The Caucasian Bee** has lately been tried in America, where it has been reported by a few to be the most gentle race of bees known, a good honey producer as a rule, and more prolific than the Italian, but it gathers great quantities of propolis and builds brace combs freely, and the number of its supporters does not seem to be increasing.
**Sprians and Tunisians** are bad propolisers and have other faults.
So far we have considered only the varieties of the honey-bee that occur in nature. But a list of varieties would not be complete without the golden bee, a remarkable breed that has been produced in America by selection for colour from Italians or, some say, a cross between Italians and Cyprians. In this variety the testaceous or golden-yellow colour spreads further over the abdomen than in any European race, giving the bees a striking, and many think, a very handsome appearance. Pure goldens have proved less vigorous than blacks or Italians, and they dwindle badly during long winters and chilly springs. They do not store much honey in the cool summer climate of Britain.
**X.--Drones and Drone-Rearing.**
During the swarming season, there are in most places sufficient drones for the fertilisation of all queens. The rearing of drones is, however, important, both for fertilising queens by drones of a particular strain, and for getting the queens quickly fertilised before or after the swarming season. After the swarming season, it is possible to get a larger proportion of the queens fertilised by the specially-reared drones than during the swarming season, as these drones can be kept in queenless colonies, or in colonies containing unfertilised queens, for some time after the workers of colonies containing fertile queens have, in accordance with their instinct, turned their own drones out to die.
**D**zierson's theory (published about 1845) that the drone is always produced parthenogenetically--_i.e._, has no father QUEST-Rearing in England.
(although be his a maternal grandfather)--is now generally accepted; this teaches us that it is the characters of the colony that produced the drone's mother that we must expect the drones to transmit. The drone influences his queen and worker progeny very much, and it is of course most desirable that queens of the best strain should be selected for drone-rearing, and also that the drones should be reared under the most favourable conditions. To be of value the drones must be reared in very large numbers and kept in strong colonies.
To rear drones during the natural season (April to June), it is only necessary to place a frame of empty drone comb* in the centre of the brood-nest of a strong colony. The queen will soon lay drone-eggs in this comb, and the drones reared from these will be flying about a month after the eggs were laid.
Drones are not easily reared late in the season, and in order to have plenty of drones then, the drone-breeding queen should be induced to lay drone-eggs about the end of June or beginning of July, and either she should be removed as soon as her presence is likely to prejudice the rearing or presence of the drones, or the drone-broad, soon after the eggs are hatched, should be given to a queenless colony to be reared; another drone-comb may then be given to the drone-breeding queen. The locality and season will determine the date up to which this work can be continued. If there is no honey-flow, the colonies in which the drone-eggs are laid and in which the drones are reared and kept must be constantly fed. The feeding induces egg-laying, helps to prevent the destruction of drone-broad and drones, and also helps to make the drones fly freely in favourable weather. Virgin queens may be allowed in the colonies containing the drones. To prevent destruction of the drones, these queens, directly they are fertilised, must be removed and other virgins given.
The production of undesirable drones in the queen-rearing apiary may be largely prevented by using full sheets of worker-comb foundation in all bives except those in which it is intended to rear drones. Any drones that may be pro duced by unfertilised queens and by fertile workers, being reared in worker cells, are abnormally small, and their production should be avoided.
## XI.-Breeding for Improvement.
### Crossing and Selection
All animals that man has domesticated have been more or less improved by breeding. Two methods have been employed, _crossing_ and _selection_, and the best results have usually been obtained when they have gone hand in hand, the one followed by the other. Crossing effects a change at once, but it is only by selection that any permanent gain is obtained.
Unfortunately, very little permanent improvement has been yet obtained in the case of bees. This is chiefly due to the difficulty of controlling the mating of the queen. Mating takes place during flight, and a queen may be impregnated by any one out of the thousands of drones flying from colonies of all kinds dwelling within a radius of two or three miles. The obvious way to overcome the difficulty is to get the queens mated in a spot where none but drones of selected parentage are flying within the necessary radius for isolation, which has been estimated at from three to six miles, but no doubt varies under different conditions of temperature and weather. There is probably no spot in Great Britain or Ireland where isolation could be obtained except on high moors, bleak coasts, or islands, where low temperature and strong winds would render mating very precarious. Several mating stations have, however, been lately established, among the mountains of Switzerland, 1yr the Swiss Bee-**K**eepers' Association, and no doubt Canada, with its vast tracts of unsettled country enjoying high summer temperatures, abounds in suitable places.
In Ripple Court Apiary selection by isolation has, of course, been impossible, but a method of selection by colour, described below under the heading of Mendelian, has been devised and carried out with some success.
The objection may be raised that, considering the impossibility of knowing which drone out of hundreds a queen may meet, breeding by selection on the male side cannot be properly accomplished. But if we look at the work of plant breeders, we see that a similar uncertainty often exists as to which flower will supply the pollen by which the seed is fertilised. Further, in cases where characters that do not show themselves in the flowers, such as the size, shape, or other qualities of seeds or fruits, are bred for, the selection of flowers is useless. It is only essential that no flower shall be employed that is not of the selected parentage or strain. I think that even were it possible to select single drones for breeding from, it would not be advisable, for we may suppose that the honey-bee depends partly upon natural selection of drones for its vigour and usefulness. It is not asserted that one drone transmits exactly the same characters as another, but this uncontrolled element of variation is reduced to a negligible quantity by the employment of pure stock and continuous careful selection.
**Mendelism.**--Our knowledge of the laws of heredity has lately been much advanced by Mendelism, so named after its discoverer, Gregor Mendel, monk, and afterwards abbot, of Brunn in Austria, who announced its principles in 1865. In any attempt to improve livestock or plants by breeding, a knowledge of Mendelism is of great value.
Nendel made his classic experiments with the common garden pea. In one series of experiments he crossed a tall pea with a dwarf pea, and found that all the resulting hybrids were tall, like their tall parent. He named the character that prevailed in this first generation of hybrids--in this case of tallness--the _dominant_, and the character which disappeared, namely, shortness, the _recesive_. He sowed the seeds from these hybrids, and found they produced talls and shorts in the proportion of three to one. He was able to prove that the talls in the second generation of the hybrids were of two kinds, those that produced talls only, and those that produced talls and shorts in the proportion of three to one, like the talls in the first generation of the hybrids, and also that the latter kind of talls were twice as numerous as the former kind; and that the shorts produced shorts only. Mendel showed that this remarkable train of inheritance was true for six other pairs of characters in the pea, namely,shape of seed--whether rounded or wrinkled, position of flowers--whether distributed along the stem or terminal, shape of rip pod--whether inflated or constricted, and colour of seed skin--brown or white, cotyledons--yellow or green, and unripe pod--green or yellow.