The Queen Nursery.
Under the above heading, Mr. Gallup, in the Journal for October, gives his experience with the queen nursery, which, with him, appears to be a perfect success. I wish to give my experience, and ask Mr. Gallup and others why it is so different from his.
I made fifty cages 1½ × 1¾ × 1¾ inches, four sides of very thin wood, and one side covered with wire gauze, and the other with a piece of glass slipped in grooves in the two wooden sides, so as to be moved up or down for a door. In each of these cages I placed a piece of honey in comb (unsealed), with the cells in natural position; and then placed the cages in frames, on slots inserted across them, so as to hold three tiers of six each, or eighteen to a frame. I then took out two centre frames from good, strong hives, and put one of these frames containing cages in their place. Some very strong colonies, some were medium. To some I gave upward ventilation, by leaving off the honey boxes and raising the cap. On others I left the honey boxes. I then awaited the result. Some queens hatched in fourteen days from starting the cell; some in sixteen days; two or three in twenty-four days; and some never hatched.
Many of the young queens died in the cages in from twelve to twenty-four hours after hatching; very few lived to be five days old—the time given by many writers for them to mate with the drones; only six or seven out of about one hundred lived two weeks. The queens, when first hatched, were put in fertilizing cages such as described by N. C. Mitchell, but never were fertilized.
Now Mr. Editor, will Mr. Gallup or some one else tell me why my experience differs so widely from that of Mr. G.?
Sister cells, cut from the same comb as some of those that were put in the cages, hatched in from fourteen to sixteen days, were duly fertilized, and are now alive and well. Hence it could not be any defect in the stocks they were raised from. In some of the cages, I put two or three workers, to feed the young queens; but still the latter would die, and leave the workers to eat the honey left in the cages.
If queens require any other food than honey, why did not the bees give it to them through the wire gauze on which they clustered in great numbers? Some of the cages were put in colonies that had fertile queens at liberty, but most of them were put in queenless hives.
The cells were mostly put in on the ninth day from starting the cell.
I shall be pleased to see replies to this in the next number of American Bee Journal.
H. Nesbit.
Cynthiana, Ky.
[For The American Bee Journal.]