BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
But the average beginner would find it more satisfactory to use for cell-building a strong _quentless_ colony that has been made queenless, broodless, and eggless four or five days previous to the giving of the cups. But it is important at the time of making this cell-building colony queenless to begin stimulative feeding, giving them half a pint of syrup daily. \(\Lambda\)Iter the lapse of four or five days a frame of prepared cell-cups as before directed should be given, when the bees are almost criying for a queen or for something from which they may start cells. Under such circumstances they will immediately accept the cups and draw them out, feeding then lavishly with royal food, and the cells will be equal to any swarming cells, if liberal feeding has been continued until all the cells are capped over.
Another excellent cell-building colony outside of the swarming season is one having a queen which it is trying to supersede. One or more such colonies will be found in a large apiary, but as a general rule the queen is hardly good enough to use as a breeder. Having found our colony, we begin giving it daily feeds at once, being a prime requisite for the best results in cell-building with any colony, either with a queen or without one. This supersedure cell-building colony will not only draw out and complete one set of cups but several sets in succession; but it is best not to give any one such colony more than a dozen or a dozen and a half prepared cups at a time. Allow it to finish up one batch, and then, if necessary, give it another.
To one of our supersedure colonies, as we call them, we gave one batch of Doolittle cups after another until they had completed over 300 fine cells; but we were careful to take away each lot before any could hatch, of course, for a young virgin would very soon make havoc of the other cells unhatched, and besides would get the colony out of the notion of trying to supersede the old queen.
Just how far supersedure bees will continue to build out batches of cell cups one after another, we are not able to say; but if they are fed half a pint of syrup daily they appear to be willing to keep up the work indefinitely, in the hope that they will some day be able to rear a virgin that will supplant the old queen that appears to be failing.
_REARING QUEENS IN LARGE NUMBERS._
Thus far we have considered the old original Doolittle system of rearing queens; and where one desires only a few for his own use he may find this method more convenient than the one we will now describe. But if he has any number to rear he should by all means carry out the following plan. The method of preparing the colonies for cell-building will be the same.
Instead of dipping the cells one by one with a stick, or dipping several sticks at once, compressed cell cups are made on a plan originally devised by E. L. Pratt. With a suitable die, cells more nearly perfect than can possibly be dipped by the slow process already described are punched out at the rate of 2000 an hour. These are furnished by dealers, and, generally speaking, it would
The compressed cups are forced into the hole in the cell-holders by means of a little plunger-stick. When enough of them have been prepared, and secured to a cell bar by means of nail-points forced into the soft wood, we are ready for the grafting, which process is much the same as that already described in the Doolittle method, except that a much smaller quantity of royal jelly is
be better for readers of this work to buy cell cups than to attempt to make them by the dipping process.
To facilitate general handling, the modified Doolittle system calls for wooden cell-holders, which may, under certain circumstances, be used as direct cell cups.
These are nothing more nor less than cylindrical pieces of wood, if inch in diameter, \(\sharp\) inch long. A suitable drill bores out one end of the right size to receive one of the compressed cell cups. These wooden cell-holders can likewise be purchased by the thousand.
outine so long as there is a surplus of virgins.
This is really high-pressure queen-rearing, and should be practiced only when there is a surplus of virgins, or when there are rush orders for cheap queens. We say cheap queens, because the queens introduced on the dual plan may or may not be the equal of those introduced in the regular way where a single queen is introduced at a time and is confined in a cage not more than a couple of lays. If the virgin is very young, just hatched, and the nucleus has been queenless a couple of days, she can be let loose into the entrance of the hive without any caging; but care should be taken not to allow her to touch the hands, for the seent of the human body sometimes causes the bees to attack and kill her.
Some queen breeders prefer to give ripe queen-cells to their nuclei direct, claiming that too many of the virgins that they introduce any where from one to four and live days old are lost. It is doubtless true, the average beginner will succeed better with cells than with virgins; but if cells be given make sure that the nuclei are strong in bees. In some cases it will be necessary to use West queen-cell protectors to keep the bees from gnawing holes into them.
The long spiral cage shown at the right is designed to slip under the queen-cell projector, and when the young queen batches out she will pass into the long cage, where she can be held secure from bees or other virgins in the colony that might kill her.
## 10.3 Baby nuclei, and how to mate queens in large numbers.
After securing a large lot of nice cells in the cages already shown and described, it is next in order for us to consider the mating box or hive. As already explained, one can use one or two full-sized Langstroh frames and put them in a three-frame box or hive, or in a full-sized hive, by using a division-board to reduce the space; or, better still, take an eight-frame hive-body and divide it off into three equal compartments by inserting two tight-titting division-boards lengthwise that will reach clear up to the cover. Each compartment will then be just wide enough to take two full-sized Langstroh frames. The under side of this hive should have a wire-cloth bottom, for reasons to be given later. The two outside compartments should each have an entrance, one on each side of the hive along the center. The center compartment should have one at the rear of the hive-body. These entrances should be made with a half-inch bit, and have a cleat nailed just below, forming a narrow doorstep.
When complete we shall have an ordinary eight-frame hive-body with wire-cloth bottom, having three two-frame divisions with an entrance on each side and one in the rear. Each of these compartments is to receive two frames of brood and bees, after which it is set over a strong colony of bees. The heat passing from the bees beneath will keep the three clusters above perfectly warm, no matter if the weather should be a little cool. Queens or cells may be given to each one of these nuclei, as already explained, and queens will be mated from the upper story in the regular way. Where the climate is a little uncertain and the season short, there is nothing better than this divided-off upper story.
But where one desires to secure the largest number of queens possible from a given force of bees, a twin-mating nucleus on a much smaller scale is to be preferred.
The illustration shows one the authors use. It is just right so that one of its compart
After the baby nuclei are in full operation, we give ripe queen-cells, as shown in Fig. 3, in place of virgins given at first. The two frames are spread a little apart when the cell is placed in postit n and secured.
At the time of forming these baby nuclei, a thick syrup of about 21 parts of sugar to one of water is poured into the feeder compartment at one side. At other times, if it is a little cool it is given at night, not, when it will all be taken up before morning. This feeding may be required off and on during the season. In some years the baby nuclei will gather enough to supply their own needs. At other times they will require a little help.
These little twin nuclei serve only the purpose of mating. No cells are reared in them, and the comparatively small number of bees in each compartment makes it easy to find a laying queen or a virgin if present. If in doubt as to whether the nucleus has a virgin, another cell is given; and even should the virgin come back from her flight she will take care of that cell by drawing a hole in its side and killing its occupant. Should she be lost in one of those flights the cell will provide another virgin, which will come on in due course of time. It is better to have a surplus of cells than to lose time.
These baby nuclei have been carefully tested in one of our yards, and have given us good results; but one needs to remember a few things in handling them or he may become disgusted with the whole plan.
1. If the force becomes a little weak, give a frame of hatching brood; or if this can not be had, after the last queen is taken out dump in a few more bees from a strong copy of the main yard. While some of these will go back, many will remain.
2. After the young queens begin to lay they should be taken out almost immediately, otherwise they will fill the two small combs with eggs and lead off a little swarm. If not convenient to take the queen out at once, the perforated zinc slide should be shoved around to shut her in.
3. \(\Lambda\)ways make up these little nuclei with bees from some outward.
4. Do not allow one side of the nucleus box to become empty of bees. The combined heat of the two clusters brings about a better state of contentment. Where there is only one compartment of bees in a mat
Figure 2:=scooping bees with a small dipper into baby nuclei.
ing-box we find they can not do as well as when there are two.
5_aOne should understand that these small mating nuclei are much more difficult to handle than larger ones on full-sized Langstroth frames; but the fact is, queens in them are more economically mated with one-third the bees and brood of the ordinary two-frame full-sized Langstroth nucleus.
6. Last but not least, give _cells_ rather than virgins to these twin nuclei. While just-hatched virgins can be run into colonies and nucleus hives with a _single_ compartment they can not be let loose in one of the compartments of a double or twin nucleus without incurring too great a percentage of loss. However, when forming both sides at once a young virgin can be dropped into each side.
**QUENS, HOW TO FIND.** See FRAMES, to Manipulate.
**QUENS.** The most important personage in the hive is the queen, or mother-bee. She is called the mother-bee because she is, in reality, the mother of all the bees in the hive. So much has already been said of queens, in Drones, and Queen-reaking, that we presume our A B C class is already pretty well acquainted with "'her majesty," as she is frequently designated.
When we deprive a colony of their queen, the bees set to work and raise another so
time the egg was laid. In seven days more, fifteen or sixteen days in all from the time the egg was laid, the queen will hatch out, a perfect insect. C is a cell just vacated. Now bear in mind exactly what we say, or you will get confused. When larvae three days old are given the bees instead of eggs, they will rear a queen, and, in this case, she will hatch in only ten days after the larvae were given the bees. These ten-day queens probably are not as good as those reared from younger larvae; and we think it well to supersede them as a rule.
There are some queer things about quencells, as you will notice. After the cell is sealed, the bees put a great excess of wax on it, make a long tapering point, and corrugate the sides something like a thimble, as shown at C, and in the enlarged view on the previous page. This corrugation, or roughness, when closely examined, will be seen to be honey-comb on a very small scale. Now right here is a point that you will not fail to observe : bees, like other folks, sometimes make mistakes; for they do not seem to know any better than to use a drone-larva for rearing a queen, if such happens to be present.
Now, it is very handy to be able to tell nearly when any queen-cells you may happen to find unexpectedly will be likely to hatch ; and the bees are very accommodating in this respect also ; for, about the day before the queen hatches, or may be two days, they go and tear down this long peak of wax on the tip of the cell, leaving only a very thin covering, similar to the bottom cell here shown. We don't know why unless they are anxious to get a peep at their new mother. It has been said, they do it that she may be better able to pierce the capping: but sometimes they omit the proceeding entirely, and we have not been able to see that she has any difficulty in cutting the cap off. If the cell is built on new comb, or on a sheet of foundation, and be held up before a strong light at about the fifteenth day, or a little later, you will see the queen moving about in the cell. Afterward, by listening carefully, you can hear her gnawing her way out. Pretty soon the points of her sharp and powerful mandibles will be seen protruding, as she bites out a narrow line. Since she turns her body in a circle while doing this, she cuts out a circle so true that it often looks as if marked by a pair of compasses. Now observe that the substance of which the cell is made is tough and leathery, and, therefore, before she gets clear around her circle, the piece springs out in response to her pushing, and opens just about as the lid of a coffee-pot would if a kitten should happen to be inside crowding against the lid. We have often seen them push the door open and look out, with as much apparent curiosity as a child exhibits when it first creeps to the door on a summer morning : often, after taking this look, they will back down into their cradle, and stay some time. This is especially the case when other queens are hatching, and there is a strife as to who shall be sovereign.
We will now consider the strange substance royal jelly.
The milky food before described, which is given to the young larvae, and which is supposed to be a mixture of pollen and honey partially digested, is very similar, if not identical, in composition with the royal jelly. Bees are not the only examples in the animal kingdom where the food is taken into the stomach by the parent, and, after partial digestion regurgitated for the use of the offspring. Pigeons feed their young precisely in this way until they are able to digest their food for themselves. It has been stated that bees use a coarser food for the worker larvae, after they are a few days old, and also for the drone larvae during the whole of their larval state. What we mean by "coarser food" is, a food not so perfectly digested ; in fact, drones are said to be fed on a mixture of pollen and honey, in a state nearly natural. This may be so, but we have no means of proving it to our satisfaction. It has also been said, that queens receive the very finest, most perfectly digested, and concentrated food that they can prepare. This we can readily believe, for the royal jelly has a very rich taste--something between cream, quince jelly, and honey--witha slightly tart and a rank, strong, milky flavor that is quite sickening if much be taken. See Royal Jelly, under the heading Anatomy of Bees.
What does the queen do while sealed up?
Candidly, we do not know very much about it, although we have opened cells at every stage after they were sealed until they were ready to hatch. One day after being sealed they are simply ordinary larvae, although rather larger than worker larvae of the same age; after two or three days, a head begins gradually to be " mapped out," if that is the proper expression, and, later, some legs are seen folded up; last of all, a pair of delicate wings come from somewhere,we hardly know \(\left(egin{array}{c} ext{wh re. Two days before hatching we have taken them out of the cell, and had them mature into perfect queens, by simply keeping them in a warm place. We have also taken them out of the cell before they were mature, held the white, still, corpse-like form in the band while we admited it as long as we chose, then put it back, waxed up the cell by warming a bit of wax in the fingers, and had it hatch out three days after, as nice a queen as any. Mr. Langstroth mentions queens.
having seen the whole operation by placing a thin glass tube, open at both ends, into the cell, so as to have it inclose the queen, the bees being allowed to cap it as usual. This experiment was first made by Huber. With several such glass queen-cells, we presume the whole operation could be watched from beginning to end.
In the month of August, 1874, after I had discovered how to send larva for queen - rearing safely by mail short distances, our friend, Mr. J. L. Davis, of Delhi, Ingham Co., Mich., wrote that he would get a,large number of queens from the piece we sent him, for he was going to remove the larvae from the combs and place them in queen-cells already started in his hives--of course, removing the original larvae first. We caught at the idea at once, and went to some hives of hybrids that had persisted in tearing down all the cells given them, and building others from their own brood, and removed the larvae from all the cells, substituting larvae from the imported queen in its stead. We used a quil
Wesince, and now call it "'grafting." See Queen-learning.
What becomes of the queen after she leaves the cell?
We can tell you, by personal observation, pretty nearly what a queen does after she pushes open that hinged door, which you will find illustrated under the head of Queen-learning. She generally begins by poking her head into the cells until she finds one containing unsealed honey, from which she takes a sup that, at least, indicates she likes that kind of provision.
After she has had her supper she begins to crawl about, partly to enjoy using the long strong legs God has given her, and partly because she knows that it is her allotted task to tear down the remaining queen-cells, if such there are. If other queens have hatched before her, it is one of her first and foremost duties to look them up, and either reign suprene or die in the attempt. When all other cells have been removed, as they usually are where queens are wanted for other purposes, she has nothing to do but to promenide over the premises, nomarch of all she surveys. If she ever sits down to take a rest, or takes a rest in any other position, during the first week of her life, we have never been able to discover it.
But suppose she does find another cell--what then? Weli, she sometimes runs around it a while; sometimes the bees tear it down, and sometimes she tears it down herself, with the same strong mandibles that she used to cut her way out of the cell at first. She usually makes the opening in the side of the cell, as shown at E in cut on page 35.
Now, it is said that the queen immediately stings her helpless immature sister to make a sure thing of her destruction; but of this we are not certain, for we never have caught her in the act. We have seen spots in the side of the queen that lowed much as if she had been stung, but we have also rescued cells and put them into a wire-enge nursery after they had been torn open, and had them mature into nice queens. As these immature queens are very soft, the workers will soon pick them out of the cell, piece by piece, and we have sometimes placed them in the nursery and had them mature, minus a wing or leg, or whatever portion the miselievous worker had pulled away. We judge from many such observations that the queen generally tears a hole in the cell, or titles into it in such a way that the workers take hold of it, and tear it all down, much in the way they do any mutilated or broken piece of comb. When queen-cells have been cut out, all the larvae that are in any way injured are at once thrown out, and none but the perfect cells preserved. Iees never fuss with cripples, or try to nurse up a bee that is wounded or mained. They have just the same feeling for their fellows that a locomotive might be expected to have for a man whom it had run over. They battle against any thing that threatens the extinction of the colony, it is true; but we have never been able to discover any signs of their caring for one of their number, or even having compassion on their helpless brood when it is wounded and suffering. If a hole is made in a queen-cell by the queen or by anybody, they are almost sure to tear it down and throw it away. When a queen hatches the remaining cells are very soon torn down, as a general thing, but there are many exceptions. Where two queens hatch out at about the same time they also generally attempt to kill each other; but we have never heard of both being killed. This probably results from the fact that they can sting their rivals only in one certain way; and the one that, by strength or accident, gets the lucky position in the combat is sure to come off victor. This explains how a very inferior virgin queen, that has entered the hive by accident, may sometimes supplant an old laying queen. Two queens, when thus thrown together, generally fight very soon, but this does not always happen. Several eases are on record where they have lived in peace and harmony for months, even when hatched at about the same time, and it is quite common to find a young queen helping her mother in the egg-laying duties of the hive, especially when the mother is two or three years old. If the season is good, and the hive populous, they may divide up their forces, and we have After-swarming, which see.
Sometimes the queen will pay no attention to the remaining cells, but will let them hatch out, and then their "little differences" are adjusted afterward, either by swarming or by the usual "hand-to-hand" conflict "until death." We once looked for a queen, and, not finding her, concluded she was lost. Another cell was inserted, and in due time hatched out. We were much surprised to find this new queen laying when only one day old; but a little further looking revealed two, both on the same comb. Many losses in introducing queens have resulted from two queens being in the hive, the owner being sure his hive was queenless--because he had removed one.
QUeens' voices.
Queens have two kinds of voices, or calls, either one of which they may emit on certain occasions. It is almost impossible, on the printed page, to describe these sounds. One of them is a sort of z-e-e-p, z-e-e-p, zeep, zeep. Some call it piping, others teeting. Whatever it is, it consists of a prolonged tone, or, as we might say, a long zeep followed by several much shorter, each tone shorter than the preceding one. This piping is made when the queen is out of the cell, either virgin or laying, but usually by a young one. The older ones are generally too digitized, or too something, to give forth any such loud squealing; but they will squeal, and lustify, too, sometimes, when the bees ball them and grab then by the legs and wings. They shout just as we would when surrounded by enemies on every side, and in mere fright give a yell of alarm.
The other note that queen-bees are known to give forth is what is called _quohking_, for that more nearly describes the actual sound than any other combination of letters we can put together. If we mistake not, it is emitted only by a young queen in the cell, before she is hatched, and is made in answer to the piping or zeep, zeep, of one of the virgins that has already hatched, and is trying perhaps to proclaim about her sovereignty. The quahk will be heard, then, only when there are queen-cells in the hive, At other times the note will be a series of long z-e-ej, z-e-e-p, zeep, followed by short-er tones, as explained.