BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
Besides what is known as the " swarming plan," the bees have another way of rearing the best of queens, which, together with the former, are the only plans by which queens are reared, except where the bees are forced to do so by some abnormality of the colony. My experience goes to prove that where such abnormality exists, queens which are then reared 'do not come up to that high standard that they do where reared as Nature designed they should be. However, there are very few queens reared except when the colony is in a normal condition, only as the colony is interfered with by man; so that we find the usual plans adopted by nearly all queen-rearers of the past, going in the direction of these few exceptions rather than along the line which Nature designed. While rearing queens by the " forcing process " (at times when they could not be reared by natural swarming), I came across a colony in early spring, which had, as far as I could see, a good queen, yet on the combs there were two very
## 4 Doolithic on queen learning.
nice queen-cells under way, with larvae floating in an a' undance of royal jelly. As queen-cells which were formed in my queen-rearing colonies, when workt by the "' forcing process," were not supplied in this fashion with royal jelly, I decided to keep watch of this colony and see if I could not learn something.
In due course of time these cells were sealed, when, to all outside appearances they were just as perfect as I had ever seen in natural swarming; while the cells which I was compelling the bees to build by taking their queens away from them did not so appear. One of the cells I transferred to a nucleus, just before it was ready to hatch, while the other was left where it was, to see what would become of the matter. The queens hatching from both cells proved to be every bit as good as any queens I ever reared in the height of the honey harvest by natural swarming, even altho it was by dint of coaxing that I could get queens reared at all by the "'forcing " plans, as adopted fifteen years ago; while none of the "'forced "queens would compare with these two in beauty, vigor, or length of life.
Soon after the young queen which was left in the old hive commenced laying, the old mother began to decline, and, in the course of a week or two was gone; yet had I not opened this hive for a month, at this time I would never have known that a change had taken place as regards the queen, from the appearance of the brood which was in the hive.
Right here let me say, that from all of my experience with bees, I am led to conclude that 999 queens out of every 1,000 reared, where man does not interfere with the bees, are reared by one of these two plans; yet there are those persons among our number who claim that they are along the line of Nature; or rearing queens by a still better plan than these two, where they take away the queen from a colony at any time they think best, and compel the bees to rear others, often when it would be the last thing the colony would wish to do. Gentlemen, your position is not a consistent one, nor is it one that you would adopt along any other line except queen-rearing ; and I hope that this book will open your eyes, so that in the future you will try to be in accord with the wants of the bees, and thus be rearing queens of superior quality instead of those which cannot be other than inferior.
To return : After I had this experience with the colony that had "two queens in a hive " (which was a surprise to so many fifteen years ago, when it was thought that no colony ever tolerated but one laying queen at a time), I began to watch for a like circumstance to occur, which happened about a year from that time. In the latter case, as soon as I found the cells they were sealed over, and not knowing just when they would
## 20 Doolithic on queen-Rearing.
hatch, I at once cut them out and gave them to nuclei. In a few days I lookt in the hive again, when I found more cells started, which were again cut off and given to nuclei just before it was time for them to hatch. In this way I kept the bees from their desired object for some two months, or until I saw that the old queen was not going to live much longer, when I left one of the cells which they had under headway to mature. By this plan I got about sixty as fine queens as I ever reared, and laid the foundation for my present plan of securing queens, which is about to be given in this book.
As time past on I was always on the lookout for such cases of building queen-cells, with the old queen present in the hive, where there was no desire to swarm, and in this way I have secured hundreds of splendid queens with which to stock my own apiary, and to send to those who desired queens of the best grade. If there is any difference between queens reared by this last of Nature's ways and those reared by natural swarming, that difference is in favor of queens reared to replace the old mother, when she shall get past being of use to the colony; so that I have no hesitation in prononuncing queens thus reared of the highest grade which it is possible for the intelligence of man, combined with the natural instinct of the bees, to produce.
Having decided that queens thus reared were superior to any other, the thing next to be done was to get some plan that the bees would accept, whereby queens could be so reared just when and where the apiarst desired. To accomplish this I have studied hard and workt faithfully, putting into it all of my best thought for some six years past, till I have perfected a plan whereby I rear queens by Nature's best method, in the same hive with a laying queen, and that, too, just when and where I wish to have them reared, having queens in a single colony in all stages of development, from the just-hatch larvae to virgin queens, and those just commencing to lay. All about how to do it will be told in this book, but, before doing so, I wish to take the readers over some of the ground which I have traveled, so that they can see some of the steps taken; for, in thus seeing, perhaps some new thoughts may be suggested to them which will lead in other directions from what is here given, which, when followed out by some other person than myself, may be of great help to the bee-fraternity.
## Chapter V Old Methods of Hearing Queens.
My first experiments at queen-rearing were tried in 1870. During the month of July a second swarm issued having two queens, and as I saw them on the alighting-board of the hive, the thought came to me that here was a chance to save a nice queen, which, when she got to laying, could be used to replace an old one that I had in the apiary. Accordingly, I detacht the alighting-board, as soon as I saw one of the queens go in, and took the board with all the adhering bees to another hive, in which I put an empty comb, hiving the little lot of bees and queen in it.
At night I read up on queen-rearing (as far as I could with the books which I then had), from which I found that the way to rear queens was to place little colonies in small or nucleus hives, they having frames from four to six inches square. As I wanted to do things as they should be done, I went to work the next morning and constructed a little hive that held three frames about five by six inches. Into these frames I fitted comb, then went to the hive containing the little swarm and shook them out of it into this small hive. In due course of time the queen commenced to lay, and was used as I had designed.
I then began to look up what I was next to do with the little colony, and found all that was necessary was, to leave them alone, when they would start two or three queen-cells, which would be well taken care of, and make just as good queens where but a small nucleus was used as would a larger number of cells in a full colony. Queen-rearing now lookt very simple and easy to me, so I left the nucleus to mainly care for itself for the next five days. From time to time, as I lookt into the little hive (for I was so anxious about the matter that I could not keep away from it), I expected to find queen-cells started, but every timo I opened the little box not a cell could be found.
The fifth day after I took the queen away, a bee-keeper came along who was considered quite a queen-breeder in those days, and to him I told the story of my trial at queen-rearing. He ask to see the little colony, and when I showed it to him, he quietly cut a hole in one of the combs where the smallest larvae were to be found, saying that "now they would start some cells," which they did. He also said that "while the most of the queens then reared were reared in just such little nucleus hives, yet he believed that it was better to rear them.
In full colonies, as he thought queens thus reared were better fed, and that the warmth of a full colony was conducive to a better development of the royal occupants of cells built, hence we secured more prolific and longer-lived queens."
In due time one of the cells hatch in the nucleus, and the queen was so smaTl and so poor that I decided if I must have such inferior queens as that I would let the bees do their own queen-rearing, as I had done in the past.
When the next season came I found myself again longing to "'dabble " in queen-rearing, so at It went, altho I never again tried the nucleus boxes in doing so; for when I came to look into the matter more thoroughly, I was convinced that the best nucleus that I could possibly have was one or two frames in an ordinary hive. In this way all work done by the nucleus was readily available for the use of any colony, after I was through with the nucleus.
In trying this the next time I simply took the queen away from the colony I wanted to breed from, at a time when there was plenty of honey and pollen in the fields, for by this time some were opposing the plan of rearing queens in nucleus boxes, and also claiming that the only proper time for rearing queens was when plenty of honey and pollen were to be had by the bees, as it was natural for the bees to rear queens only at such times. I succeeded in getting a fine lot of cells from which some extra-nice queens were obtained--as I then considered them.
This caused the queen-rearing "'fever " to run high, which, together with my procuring some Italians, caused me to work at it many times during the summer, altho I determined not to spoil my prospects of a crop of honey by using too many colonies in the business. Altho using Italian bees for queen-rearing (as it was then claimed that black nurses would contaminate the young queens), yet during this summer I succeeded in getting as high as 157 queen-cells built on one comb, while the usual number built by one colony would be only from three to twenty on all of the combs in a hive. If I could have had the Syrian bees at that time the number of cells might not have been so much of a wonderment to me. I thought this a great achievement, and something well worth being proud of, so I told my neighbors about it, and gave it to some of the beepapers also.
All went on "swimmingly "until the spring of 1873, when, without any cause as far as I could see, one-half of all the queens that I had in the aplary died, leaving the aplary in poor condition for the honey season, which caused me to meditate a little on what could be the reason for such a whole-sale death of my beautiful queens. A careful looking into the matter revealed that of all the queens that had died two-thirds were those which had been reared the previous season, while not one had died from those that had been reared by natural swarming.
What seems strange to me now, in looking back over the past, is, that all of these queens died so suddenly, and the bees made no effort at superseding them. They all had brood in abundance for the time of year, and the first I knew that all was not right was when I would find them dead at the entrances of the hives. After this I began to try other plans of queen-rearing, none of which pleased me any better than the one I had been using.
About this time there came a general dissatisfaction with most of the plans then termed "artificial queen-rearing," and the reason given for queens so reared not living any longer, or doing any better, was that such queens were not reared from the egg for a queen, but were fed worker-food for a time, and queen-food afterward, thus producing a bee that was part worker and part queen : hence, it could not be as good as a bee that was a perfect queen in all her parts.
Then came the following process, which I often see given at the present time, as one by which prolific and long-lived queens can be obtained :
Take a frame of new comb and put it in the colony having the breeding queen, leave it there till you see the first larva hatch, when it is to be taken out, the bees shaken off, and then placed in an empty hive that is to be put on a stand of a populous colony, after moving the colony away. This is to be done in the middle of the day, when plenty of bees are flying.
After trying this method of procedure a few times, I came to the conclusion that it was one of the very poorest ever given to the public, for the queens so reared were very nearly, if not quite, as inferior as were those reared in the little nucleus boxes.
And how could it well be otherwise? For by such a plan only field-bees were obtained as nurses, while Nature designed young bees to do this work. While in early spring old bees do nurse brood by their being brought up gradually to it, yet in this case bees that had gone out in search of honey, with no idea of ever again being called upon to nurse brood, and with a good mother in the hive when they left, were suddenly confronted with starving larvae from which they must rear a queen. at once, while chyme or royal jelly was the most remote thing which their stomachs contained. This is one of the many plans which go almost in direct opposition to Nature's laws, and one that I claim should never be used, if we want to have our bees improving instead of retrograding.
I might give many other ways by which good queens are
## 24 DOOLITTLE ON QUEEN-REARING.
said to be reared, which are as inconsistent with the best quality in queens as darkness is when compared with daylight; but I forbear. I have gone over this ground of the past only to show how queens used to be reared, and how some bee-keepers still rear them, so shat those who read the methods soon to be given may compare them with those formerly used, and see how we have been advancing along this line of our pursuit. I wish to say to any reader of this book who is still practicing any of the old, poor plans, Don't do it any longer; for you must know, it seems to me, that only inferior stock can result from the longer continuation of such practice.
## Chapter VI.
LATE METHODS OF REARING QUEENS.
After testing all of the then known plans, as given in the previous chapter, and becoming disgusted with them, I turned my attention toward natural swarming, as a means by which to rear queens in the future. Looking toward the end of getting as many queens from this source as possible, I began stimulating my best queen-rearing colonies early in the spring, by some of the many methods given to accomplish this work, so as to get them to swarm early, and then by hiviving the new swarms from these colonies, on frames of brood, kept them swarming till late in the season, so that, as a rue, I could get, in this way, all of the queens that I wisht to use in my own apiary.
If, at any time, I was likely to fail of this, I would take a piece of comb containing larvae from my best queen, and after shaving the cells down to one-eighth of an inch of the septum of the cell, with a thin, sharp knife, so that I could see the larvae plainly, I would go to a hive having an inferior queen, that was preparing to swarm, and after removing the larvae from the queen-cells that they had under way, I would, by means of a goose-quill toothpick, having its point broad and curved [Fig. 1, see page 25], lift the larvae from the piece of comb I brought, and put them down in the royal jelly which the larvae from the inferior queen was enjoying only a few moments before. Some take a frame (brood, bees and all)from the hive having their best queen, and, when ready, lift the larvae from the bottom of full-depth cells, but it bothers me to see to do this. Where it can be done, it saves cutting and otherwise injuring the combs, while the bees protect the larvae from being chilled, should the day be cool. The cells thus operated upon were markt, by pushing 1j%-inch wire-nails through the comb near thom, so that if the bees constructed other cells, I would not be deceived. In this work I often found partly-built queen-cells with nothing in them, or perhaps some would contain eggs, which, when I found them, I would take out, substituting the larvae in their places. As a rule, I would be successful with these, as well as with those that were put into the cells that con-
tained royal jelly, but now and then a case would occur when only those placed in royal jelly would be used. Right here I wish to say, that only the best of tested queens should be used as queen-mothers--queens known to possess all the desirable requisites that make a good queen; and, as we must often cut the combs, to get the larvae for transferring, it is better to have the poorest combs in the hives with these queens, so as not to spoil the good combs in the aplary; or, if preferred, we can keep these best queens in a very small colony, so that the bees will fill the holes made in the combs when taking out brood, by building in worker-comb, as such colonies always will do, if fed sufficient for this purpose. By thus working I obtained good queens, alto it required much work, and probably I should never have workt out other plans, had it not been that at about this time I began to have calls for queens, from abroad. This placed me in a position where I must have some other process of queen-rearing, or refuse to take orders for queens. As I wisht to please all who desired some of my queens, I began experimenting, and soon brought out the following method, which I will give at length, as I still have to rear some queens by it early in the spring and late in the fall, when there are not enough bees in the hive, or when they are too inactive to use the new plan to be given in the next chapter. However, I use wax-cups (having royal jelly placed in them), as described later on, instead of embryo queen-cells, as will be spoken of here. In changing larvae from worker-cells to queen-cells, as
Figure 1: Toothptek for Tranferring Larvae.
given above, the thought occurred to me, that if the bees would take the larva when put into a perfectly dry queen-cell, on the combs of a colony preparing to swarm, they ought to do the same when placed in a like condition in a queenless colony.
Previous to this, I had often changed larvae in queen-cells started in a queenless colony, taking out those that the bees were nursing, and substituting others from my best queen, where the bees had plenty of royal jelly in the cells, and secured good queens by this plan, which is now used by very many of our best queen-breeders. Good queens are reared in this way, but the point about it that I do not like is, that the number of cells which will be started is very uncertain, while they are scattered about in different parts of the hive; and worse than all, the combs have to be badly mutilated in cutting out the cells, or else much time spent at the queen-nurs-ery, watching for the queens to hatch; for, if this is not done, many of them will be destroyed.
But, how should I get the embryo queen-cells, in which to put the larva? was the first thought which confronted me. I remember that away back in some of the bee-papers, some one had proposed making queen cells to order, on a stick, for a penny aplece, and why could I not so make them? It would do no harm to try, I thought; therefore I made a stick, so that it would just fit inside of a queen-cell, from which a queen had hatch, and by warming a piece of wax in my hand I could mould it around the stick, so as to make a very presentable queen-cup. While doing this, some one happened along, who wisht to see some of my queens, so I went out in the apiary to show them.
In doing this, I noticed some queen-cups [see Fig. 2] which had just been started by the bees, and it was not long before I saw where the embryo queen-cells could be procured in plenty, if I saved all I came across in my manipulations with the bees. When I returned to the shop, I had about a dozen of these cups, that I had clipt off the combs, while showing my friend the queens, which, with the five or six artificial cells that I had made, ga 'e me plenty for a trial.
Figure 2: Embryo Queen-Cup or Queen-Cell.
To fasten these to the combs, I molted somo wax in a little!s dish, over a lamp, when, by dipping the base of the queen-cups in the wax, and immediately placing the cupon the comb, it was a fixture. So as not to spoil a good comb, I took an old one, such an one as had been damaged by mice, or one that had many drone-cells in it; and to have the cells built in the center of the comb, as I wisht them, a piece was cut out as large as a man's hand, at the desired place. I now turned the comb bottom side up, and fastened as many queen-cups as I wisht queen cells built, alou; the no? under side of the hole
that I had cut, and, after having transferred a larva i into each cup, the comb was returned t. its former position. [See Fig. 3.]
After taking the queen and all of the broad array from a populous colony, I substituted this prepared frame for the queen and brood. Upon looking the next day, to see what the result was, I found that the bees had destroyed all the larvae but one, and that was in one of the cups that I had taken out of a colony.
Before I forget it, I will here say, that i all of my efforts at this time, to get the bees to use any of the cells that were made from bososwax, I made an entire failure; for, out of hundreds tried, not a larva could I get accepted, even when I gave a colony none other save cups thus made. However, later on I learned how to make the i ees use the ii, as will soon be given. Not being willing to keep a colony "neonless for one queen-coll, I gave back their brood and "ne-n; then I sat down to study out the reason why I had made a failure.
The result of this study convinced me that no colony would immediately go to rearing queens after the old queen had been taken away from them. At the expiration of three days from the time the queen is taken away from a colony, the bees usually have numerous queen-cells under way, but rarely before; while in the above case, I had expected the bees to start them at once.
I now went to another populous colony and took its "ucen away, together with one comb, when a division-board feeder
Figure 3: Comb with Queen-Cups.
was placed where the comb was taken out. At night I fed the colony a little warm syrup (as they were not getting much honey at the time), and continued this nightly feeding for eightdays.
Three days after taking the queen out, I went to the hive and took all of the brood away, but left the other combs having honey and food, arranging them close up to the feeder, leaving a place between the two central combs, for the prepared frame to be inserted. The hive was now closed, when the bees were shaken off the combs of brood, and the brood given to a colony which would care for it. On these combs were numerous queen-cells, which showed that the bees were secreting or producing an abundance of royal jelly. As I wish this jelly to accumulate in the stomachs of the nursebees, I took the brood away from them this time, before I put the larvae into the queen-cups. In this way a colony will be prepared to rear as good queens as can possibly be reared, when no queen is present in the hive while the cells are being built, and is ahead of any other way that I ever tried, where the queen is to be taken away.