BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
A. The clipping of the queen's wings will not make a particle of difference about a swarm issuing. A swarm will issue exactly the same as if the wings were whole. Cutting out queen-cells every ten days may make a great deal of difference and it may make a very little. In the ordinary course of events a prime swarm is likely to issue when the first queen-cell is sealed. If, at any time before this, you cut out all cells that are started, the bees will be likely to start fresh cells, but this second time they may not wait for the sealing of cells, and the oftener you cut out cells the more eager they may be to swarm, so that finally a swarm may issue immediately after you have cut out cells. Sometimes, however, cutting out cells once or twice in the season may prevent swarming entirely. I think the character of the bees has something to do in the case. Some bees are more given to swarming than others.
Q. Will a queen's wings grow again after they are clipped?
A. A queen's wing that is clipped will not grow again; never, never; no, not the least little bit.
Queens, Chilled.-Q. Will a queen that was chilled coming through the mails be all right next spring?
A. Hardly; but if you want to breed from her you may get good stock, even if she lays so poorly as to be of little value for honey.
Queens, Color of.-Q. Do queens change color or get much larger?
A. There is considerable change in the appearance of a queen. After she is three or four days old she is smaller than when she first leaves the cell, and will be larger after she gets to laying. A queen often is darker after having gone through the mails.
Q. I am told that "the color of a queen has nothing to do with the bees she will rear;" that "pure Italian queens may be yellow, leather-colored, or jet black, but their bees will be yellow." Is this so?
A. That's not so very far from the truth. Some of the best Italian queens are quite dark, although their workers are yellow.
Queens Destroying Cells.-Q. Will you explain what is to me still a contradictory mysticism? (a) It is said that the first queen out destroys the other queens before they emerge; hence, there should not be afterswarming.
(b) Yet the very fact of there being afterswarming shows that the first queen does not stay to destroy subsequent ones, but one flies off after the other.
A. There is nothing mystical nor difficult of understanding when you get the whole story. When a virgin emerges from her cell, her first care is to find the cells of her younger royal sisters, with full intent to murder them in their cradles. With such frenzy does she seem possessed in this regard that I have many a time seen it the case that when a sealed cell was caged, the virgin, after gnawing her way out would dig a hole in the side of the empty cell, just as she would if a live virgin were in it. Always you may connt on this murderous impulse on the part of this royal young personage, and if she were left to have her own way there would never be any afterswarming.
Now, however, comes the part that you have left out. She does not always have her own way. In fact, calling her a "queen" is a neat little fiction; the term "slave" would be about as'appropriate. The government in the hive is not a monarchy, but a democracy of the most democratic sort, run by a lot of suffragists, and the male person has no vote. If the workers vote that the time has not yet come for the destruction of the young rivals, then a committee stands guard over each cell, driving away the young queen as often as she makes an attack.
In the meantime several of the occupants of the cells may become sufficiently matured to emerge, but they are not allowed to do so. The guards maintain a neutrality strict enough to suit President Wilson; they will not let the young queen get out of the cell, although she may have the capping of her cell gnawed away all but a slight hinge; and no more will they allow the queen at liberty to get at the defenseless sisters in their cells. The free queen rnns about frantically from one cell to another, at intervals crying, "Pe-e-e-ep, pe-e-ep, pe-ep, peep," in a shrill voice, each shorter than the preceding one, and then the prisoners reply in a coarser tone, an apparently hurried "Qaahk, quahk," and this piping and quahking will be kept up until a swarm emerges with the free queen. Then it depends upon the vote of the suffragists what further shall be done. If they vote for further swarming a single virgin is allowed to emerge from her cell, and she in turn will go through the same performance as the one who preceded her. But if the vote is for no further swarming, then the guards relax, allowing the cells to be attacked, and also allowing their inmates to emerge. Then there will be a free-for-all fight, one after the other each queen will be killed until only one is left, the victor in each case coming off unscathed. Sometimes a number of the virgins will go off with the swarm, where they can settle their differences as well as if they had stayed in the old home.
**Queen, Failing.--Q**. Please state some of the indications of a poor, failing, or old queen.
A. Some of the brood in worker-cells may be drone-brood, as shown by the raised cappings of the cells; the brood may be scattering, or it may be scanty.
**Queens, Feeding.--Q**. Can a queen eat as other bees or do the bees have to feed her? It is said that the bees feed the queen.
A. A queen can eat as other bees, as you can easily determine by caging one for a short time and then offering her a little honey. During the time of year when she is not laying she may help herself like other bees, but in the season of busy laying the bees feed her with food that is no longer undigested. If she were obliged to digest all the food she takes during heavy laying, I'm afraid the daily quota of eggs would decline very suddenly.
**Queen, Finding.--Q**. Can you give any suggestions to a novice as to how to find the queen?
A. Experience is the best thing. After some practice you'll spot a queen on a comb very readily. Don't do anything to set the bees to running. If they get to running, you may as well close the hive till another time. The two things most likely to set them to running are too much smoke and too rough handling. So use just as little smoke as will keep the bees under subjection, and be slow and gentle in all your movements. G. M. Doolittle says that from 9 o'clock till 3 the queen is most likely to be found on the outside of the comb that has brood in, either on one side or the other. If you lift out two or three frames and set them in an empty hive, that gives you room in the hive to glance over one side of each comb before you touch it at all. That is, when you lift out a frame, before carefully looking it over, glance over the exposed side of the next frame in the hive. Often you may see the queen thus in the hive, when with gentle haste you will put down the frame in your hand and lift out the one with the queen. After looking over the combs two or three times without finding the queen, it is generally as well to close the hive till an hour or two later, or till another day.
Q. I sent for a queen the past summer. I took all the frames out of the hive, but I could not find the old queen, so I put the new queen in and they killed her. How can I use a queen-trap to find her?
A. Fasten your trap at the entrance of the old hive. Lift out all the frames with adhering bees, and pnt them in an empty body close by. After all the frames are taken out of the hive, make sure that the queen is not in it, if necessary brushing all the remaining bees out of the hive upon the combs. Now lift one of the combs, shake and brush all the bees from it upon the ground in front of the old hive, and as soon as you have all the bees off the comb put the comb in the old hive. Proceed with all the combs in the same way, brushing all the bees in front of the trapped entrance, and putting the brushed combs into the old hive. The bees will crawl into the hive through the trap, and Madam Queen will be found trying to get in the same place.
Q. What is the best way to find and catch the queen in a box-hive?
A. Drum the bees out, put them in a movable-frame hive with a frame of brood in it, give the bees time to settle, and then look on the frame of brood for the queen. Or, you may sit out the queen with an excluder. Usually if you shake the bees in front of the hive you will see the queen running toward the entrance.
**Queen Introduction.-Q.** Can I introduce new queens at any time, and how will I have to proceed?
A. Yes, you can introduce queens any time, so long as the weather is warm. The proceeding is the same as at any other time, but introducing is not always so successful in a dearth as when honey is coming in freely.
Q. Could I safely introduce a new queen to a swarm hanging to a limb, by killing their queen and placing the new queen on the cluster of bees?
A. It might succeed, sometimes.
Q. Is it any safer to introduce queens to one or two-frame nuclei in place of a four-frame or a colony of bees?
A. Perhaps there is no difference, but if there is any difference it is safer to introduce to the weaker.
Q. What difference, if any, is there in acceptance of a queen in a colony that has been queenless for some time (no laying worker), and in case of increase by division of a colony, as to queen given to the queenless part?
A. Introduction would be quite a bit more likely to be successful in the second than the first case. It is generally found that it is more difficult to introduce a queen to a colony that has been queenless for some time than to one from which the queen has been recently removed. The reason may be because of the age of the bees, for it is the older bees that make trouble when a new ruler is introduced. It is better that they should not be queenless for any length of time.
Q. How should bees act when favorable to accepting a queen introduced to a colony that has been queenless perhaps ever since the swarm was hived last May? (October.)
A. It is easier to tell by looking at them whether they feel like accepting her than it is to tell how one tells. If the bees are hostile to her, they may be grasping the wires of the cage as if trying hard to get at the queen, while if they feel kindly toward her they will sit quietly and loosely on the cage. That's not telling you very much, is it? Well, I may as well tell you that if the case were right before me, I couldn't always tell for certain. They might appear to be looking as sweet as you please at the queen, with murder in their hearts all the while.
Q. I have had trouble in introducing laying queens on account of the bees starting cells. I have always lost about half of the queens I tried to introduce. Would it be perfectly safe to shake about a pound of bees taken from three or four different colonies into an empty hive containing about three combs with no brood, and confine these bees three or four days; in the meantime introduce a queen in the regular way, brood to be given later? Would these bees be likely to swarm out after they were released?
A. The plan has been used, the bees being put in the cellar or other dark place. They ought not to swarm out afterward.
Let me give you one of the kinks I have used in introducing a valuable queen. It is the old bees, and not the youngsters, that make trouble when a step-mother is given them. So the thing to do is to get the field-bees out of the hive before the queen is given. That is a thing very easily done. Just set the hive in a new place, and leave on the old stand a hive with one of the brood-combs. When the gatherers return from the field they will go to the old stand, and in 24 hours the old hive will have in it no bees more than 16 days old. As a matter of convenience, I lift the old hive from its stand, setting it close by; put the new hive with one frame of brood on the old stand, put on this the cover,and then set the old hive over all. At the same time the caged queen is put into the upper hive. By the time the bees have eaten out the candy and liberated the queen, or some time before it, all the field-bees have joined the lower hive, and the queen is kindly received by the younger bees. In two or three days, when the queen has begun to lay, the hive may be returned to its original place, and the fielders will make no trouble when they enter.
Q. What is the best way to introduce a valuable queen?
A. With a very valuable queen, if you want to be entirely safe, proceed in this way: Put two, three, or more frames of brood in an upper story over a strong colony, having a queen-excluder between the two stories. In about eight days all the brood will be sealed. Now lift the upper story, take away. the excluder, and cover the hive with wire-cloth, which will not admit the passage of a bee. Over the wire-cloth set an empty hive-body. One by one lift the frames out of the removed upper story, brushing off upon the ground in front of the hive all the bees from each comb, and putting the brushed combs into the empty upper story. Put your new queen into the upper story and cover up, making very sure that not a bee can get in or out. Your queen is now alone in the upper story, but will probably have company within five minutes, for young bees will be hatching out constantly from the sealed brood. No bee can get from one story to the other, but the heat can rise from below to keep the upper story warm. In about five days you can set this upper story on a new stand, giving it entrance for only one bee at a time. If your bees act like mine have done, and the circumstances are favorable, before night you will see some of the five-day-old bees entering the hive with pollen on their legs.
Q. Please explain the Abbott plan of introducing queens.
A. Put the new queen in a hive with a provisioned cage with the candy protected so the bees of the hive cannot get at it. In about two days remove the old queen and give the bees access to the candy so they may liberate the queen.
Q. I wish you would explain as clearly as possible how to introduce a queen by the smoke method.
A. In "Gleanings in Bee Culture," what you call the smoke plan of introduction was thus given by Arthur C. Miller, of Rhode Island: "A colony to receive a queen has the entrance reduced to about a square inch with whatever is convenient, as grass, weeds, rags, or wood, and then about three puffs of thick, white
month, perhaps two months, in a queenless colony, or a queen-right colony, if the bees would feed her. Indeed, she might be kept in a candied cage if the bees did not feed her, only in.that case bees having a queen of their own might be hostile to her, and this nervous irritation might be bad for a queen. I am not sure that it has ever been claimed that the cessation from laying was an injury to queens sent through the mails.
It doesn't hurt a queen to remain all winter without laying. Nor is it likely she is injured by ceasing to lay in a dearth long continued. She may be injured by being jarred and frightened in the mails, by sudden cessation from laying, and especially by being flung about when heavy with eggs.
**Queens, Laying.-Q**. How soon will a queen begin to lay after being fertilized?
A. Generally in two or three days, but she may be longer.
Q. I have an observation hive. The bees were put into this hive about June 1, and I have been looking closely for the queen, but have never seen her. Is she covered by the workers while laying. They have brood and honey sealed.
A. No, she is not covered when laying; but she may be hid
Figure 23: The queen laying, surrounded by her retinue of bees.
* A. Yes. Q. If a queen is never allowed to mate with a drone, would she lay fertile eggs? A. If she lays eggs at all, they will produce only drones. Q. How many times does a queen mate? A. Once for life; but some cases have been reported in which a queen mated the second time. She may, however, make several flights before mating. Q. How long will it take after a queen is hatched for her to mate? A. Five days or longer. Q. Do you agree that a queen is never mated after she is two or three weeks old? Last March I had a colony of bees supersede its queen, and this colony contained just a small patch of drone-brood which did not hatch till the queen was about 10 days old, and there was no other drone-brood in the yard. The queen commenced to lay when she was about two months old, and now she is the mother of one of the strongest colonies. I give this simply for what it is worth. I examined this colony once every two days, till the queen started to lay, and so these figures are accurate. A. As a general rule a queen is never mated after she is 10 days old--perhaps not after she is a week old. But there are exceptions, and how far those exceptions extend I don't know. If your queen did not lay till two months old, she may have been fertilized only three days before she began to lay, and she may have been fertilized sooner, but likely she was at least a month old when fertilized. This is exceptional. Q. Do you think queens would mate with drones a mile away? There is a big woods between us. A. Yes, a distance greater than that would not prevent mating. Q. How far away from other bees would we have to place a colony to insure pure mating? A. You might be safe at two miles, but to be entirely safe you might have to be five miles or more. No one knows exactly how far. Q. Please say how queen-breeders mate queens purely while bees of other "nationalities" are present. A. They don't; at least not always. For if it is desired to keep a certain kind pure, they do not have any other kind in the apiary. Put something may be done toward getting what you want in this way:
animals adapted to its particular climate and locality, and those of tropical regions do not well endure the rigors of the far North. So it is natural to suppose that bees in the South become less hardy. But characteristics do not change over night, and if bees become less hardy in the South it would be only through a long course of years. Even if a southern breeder should have stock that had been bred in the South for a hundred years, if there was any suspicion that it had become less hardy, it would be the work of a few weeks at most to have that stock entirely changed through getting one or more queens from the North. So the usual reply that queens reared in the South are just as hardy as those reared in the North may be counted correct for all practical purposes. Italian bees are from a country with a warm climate. It freezes but little in any part of Italy, and the climate is certainly less severe than that of Texas.
**Queen-Rearing--Q.** How late in the season can queens be reared and mated?
A. That depends on the season. If honey is yielding, any time through September. But you are not likely to have good queens if your rear them too late, and losses on wedding flights will be grcater.
Q. I have been considerably puzzled by a case called to my attention in which a party claims that a hive of bees swarmed with a virgin queen, leaving a clipped queen at the head of the colony. I have been under the impression that the bees or the virgin queen generally killed the old queen on account of her inability to leave with the swarm.
A. You are right in your impression as to the bees or the virgin putting out of the way the old queen; at any rate, when a colony with a clipped queen swarms, and the beekeeper does not interfere, you may count upon the old queen turning up missing a week or more after the issuing of the prime swarm, and the colony swarming with the virgin. But I think I have seen reports of rare exceptions. At any rate, it is not impossible that the old queen might be suffered to remain, perhaps both queen and virgin going with the swarm, and then the old queen crawling back into the hive.
Q. My frames are about 9 inches square, inside measure. I have some small hives that hold four and five frames each. Will they rear strong queens if given eggs? These hives are used to build up.
A. A hive containing four or five frames, each 9 inches square,would not hold a very strong colony, and a queen reared in it would not be so good as one reared in a strong colony, at least up to the time of sealing the cell. After the queen-cell is sealed it is not so important that the cell be in a strong colony and in hot weather it will do very well to be in a nucleus.
Q. Do you consider forced queen-rearing (as used by those who transfer the larvae) as good as natural methods given by you in your book? Are the queens as long-lived and as prolific?
A. In the hands of skillful men I don't see why just as good queens cannot be reared by the methods in vogue among queen-breaders but I don't see how they can be any better. But I would lay stress upon having cells started under favorable circumstances, with a good yield of honey, and in a colony in the humor for starting cells. No colony is too strong or too good to rear queen-cells.
Q. Are not queens reared from the egg better than those reared from the grub?
A. I don't believe they are if the grub be young enough. Scientists tell us that during the first three days the food to the queen larva is the same as the worker larva, only in larger quantity. But it is likely the worker gets all it can eat; so theoretically a queen reared from a worker larva three days old should be as good as one reared from the egg. I think, however, that a larva of less age is better, because when bees have their choice they select one younger; I think not more than perhaps a day and a half old. Such a queen is probably as good as one reared from the egg.
Q. I wish to rear queens as soon as practicable in the spring. How can I tell when the proper time comes?
A. Not until about the time the most advanced colonies begin to start cells of their own accord. Or, to take it on another basis, not until bees are gathering enough so as to begin building comb. You can begin a good deal sooner than either of those times, but your queens will not be worth rearing, and they may have trouble in becoming mated.
Q. Which is the simplest way, rear queens in nuclei, or requeen the selected colony by inserting a frame with queen-cells?
A. It is much simpler to hang in the hive a frame with a queen-cell, or to put in a queen-cell without the frame. Only in that case you will have to wait ten days to two weeks before the young queen begins to lay. You also run some risk that the young queen may fail.
\(Q\). I am working my bees for extracted honey exclusively, and use a three-story hive. Can I requeen my apiary by rearing young queens in the upper story by employing two queen-excluding honey-boards, one over the brood-nest, and one under the top story in which the new queen stays? Of course, I must bore a hole in the back of the super from which the young queen can fly. Will I get rid of the nuisance of finding my young queen killed, or at least gone, when I take a notion to hunt out the old queen and decapitate her?
\(A\). Years ago I was delighted to succeed in the way you outline, but of late years failures have been the rule, so I have given it up. I don't know what makes the difference, unless it be that originally the upper story with the young queen was more isolated. The farther up the top story, the better. Indeed, the first time I had a queen reared and laying in an upper story was an accident, and there was not even an excluder in the case. I put three or four stories of empty combs over a colony to have the bees take care of the combs, and in order to make the bees traverse the whole, I put some brood in the upper story--no excluder anywhere. After some time I was surprised to find a young queen laying in the upper story. The bees had reared her from the brood, and it happened that there was a leak under the cover which she could fly through. In my later attempts there has not been so great isolation, and it might be worth while for me to
Figure 24: Gluech-cells built on a comb specially prepared.
try again. At any rate, it is worth your while to try it, keeping in mind to have your upper story high up.
Q. I am thinking of re-queening by allowing a queen to be rcared above the excluder and then allow her to come back and enter the hive below after she is fertilized. Will she kill the old queen, or be killed? If you think this is not a good plan, what would you advise?