BEE-KEEPER'S COLUMN
Conducted by Francis Jager, Professor of Apiculture, University Farm, St. Paul.
INCREASING COLONIES (Continued from June No.)
Prof. Francis Jager's apiary at St. Bonifacius.
To increase you must first make your colonies strong. One or more of your best colonies must be selected to raise queens for your increase unless you wish to buy your queen. Stimulate your queen raising colonies by feeding and not giving them any supers. The crowded condition will bring on an early swarming impulse, under which they will raise from twelve to twenty large, well developed queen cells each. The queens of your queen raising colonies should be clipped. When in due time a queen raising colony swarms, catch the queen and remove her and let the swarm return. Immediately after this swarm you may proceed to divide your other colonies from which you wish to increase. Put down on a permanent location as many empty hives as you have available queen cells in your colony that swarmed. Into one of these you put your removed breeding queen with two frames of brood and bees. Into each of the rest of the empty hives put two frames of brood with all adhering bees from your colonies you wish to increase. Be sure to leave the queens in the old hive after brood for increase with adhering bees has been removed. Thus you have now a number of new colonies with bees and two frames of brood but no queen. The rest of the hive may be filled with drawn comb or sheets of foundation. To prevent the bees from returning to the old home, stuff the entrance of the hive solidly with grass. In two days the grass will wilt and dry and the bees will come out automatically and stay in the new location—at least most of them. In the meantime being queenless they will be busy with raising queen cells on the two frames of brood. This occupation will make them contented, then on the seventh day cut out every one of their queen cells and give them a cell from your breeder colony. Your queen breeding colony on the seventh day after swarming will have ripe queen cells ready to hatch, with one queen probably out. If by listening in the evening you hear her "sing" and "peep" go next morning and remove all queen cells and give one to each of your newly formed colonies. They will be readily accepted, will hatch immediately, sometimes whilst you are removing them, but certainly the same or next day and begin laying in due time. From such colonies you may not expect any surplus honey, but they will build up rapidly and will be strong colonies to put away next fall.
Administration Building (Main Building), University Farm, St. Anthony Park, Minn.
While it is not the intention to publish anything in this magazine that is misleading or unreliable, yet it must be remembered that the articles published herein recite the experience and opinions of their writers, and this fact must always be noted in estimating their practical value.