BEES.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2597, 3 August 1882, Page 4

BEES.

It is well in railing bees as In other kind 0f stock to introduce new blood—not lot the zaoe run down. Purchase a good Italian quees, either imported or homebred ; it does not matter whether she has ever crossed the yimn or not if she is only good. Imported ones are often quickly superseded, and the long journey may injure their vitality, or the wily Italians may ship old ones. As a good queen will lay in the height of the breeding season from twe to three thousand eggs in one day, and all worker eggs capable of producing queens, There is no need of buying many queens. It would be well to heep two ohoioe queens as breeding stock one to raise the ” lazy fathers of the industrious hive/’ and ths other queens. Good drones are-as important in breeding Stock as queens, «nd an eye should be kept on poor stock, who seem to delight in raising: them, and have their heads sliced off. If yon are afraid <Jf the Humane Society, or tiro tender heartefi, you- can prevent there being any to slice by having all worker comb, which is easily done by filling all frames with worker foundation, and this would in a great measure prevent swarming ; no drones, no swarming.

Bees wßi raiss queens from eggs or larm not over three days old, if they are queenless, provided that they are not all grandmothers, forthoir days of nursing are pejt The beat cells are raised in strong, vigorous colonies, fimi such only should 'be used to rear them in, hut when they are sealed they ean be hatched by any scrub stock without deterioration. If fifty queans 'could be hatched out and kept iu one hive until fertile a land office business might be done rearing them, but as soon as the first royil- princess issues from the cell she goes in search of her rivals, and tears open their cells, and in a, short time their lifeless bodies are-in front of the hive, while she alone remains monarch of. all she surveys. If a nucleus is ’formed by removing two frames of brood and bees minus a queen to a hive and confined to a small, space, and a sealed cell given them, immediately they will destroy it-; but if the nucleus has bean formed long enough for them to have built cells of their own it will be respected. If a queen is removed from a large colony and a cell inserted at once it will be destroyed, but never after they have cells formed.

Qneen breeders have what ’they 'term nnrseries for the hatching of-queens, which is a tin hive so constructed that 1 it has water around it which is kept at a proper temperature by a kerosene lamp burning underneath. If several queens are running over tho combs together, and there are no other bees with them, they will not attempt to destroy each Other; as each one has to be put with bees 'before taking a bridal tour it is • almost -as assy to give the bees a cell. We’ve-some-■feps laid a hatching -cell on top of a nucleus and again ran a needle Hid thread through the comb not the queen and let ■it hang down among the bees, fastening it by pressing the thread down into the propolis on the top oi the frame, and they came oat all 'right. To avoid catting out cells, we have placed a comb containing ripe -cells in a nucleus, and watched their hatching, by looking at them several times a day and as fast as-one came ont, poshed her off among the bees and re-moved-the frame to another nucleus.