The Italian Alp-bee; or, The gold mine of husbandry / short and practical instructions to breed genuine prolific Italian queens; to multiply them by hundreds in a few months and how to change German hives into Italian

by H. C. Hermann

Meanwhile they have made preparations to begin queen-cells, and mostly more than one, perhaps from ten to twenty. On the eleventh, the latest on the seventeenth day, they creep out, and, not to expose them to the danger of the surplus ones being killed by the bees, they must be looked after on the eighth or ninth day, and all queen-cells but one or two must be cut out. The cut out cells are put with a honey-comb and a few handfulls of bees into a little box about four or six inches square. These boxes must have wires on two, or better, on all four sides, so that the bees get used to the smell of each other, and thus become reconciled.

In such a box the Italian queen-cell is put in to a hive of black bees, which the day previous has been deprived of the queen, and if possible in the centre or the heart of the nest. The black bees cannot now enter into the box, but become acquainted, through the wire, with the smell of the Italian bees, and by the time the queen, who will be well taken care of by the two handfulls of bees put with her, is matured, the black bees will have taken a liking to her.

About three or five days after the adding of the queen-cell, you must look whether the black bees have not formed queen cells of their own specie, if so, they must be cut out. Then, the following day, the fly-hole in the little box which has been kept shut is slowly opened, and the black bees will gradually enter into the box and pay their homage to the new queen.

To prevent the mating of the queen with a black drone, a wire must be attached before the fly-hole of the hive, large enough for the queen and bees to fly out (for the queen only mates in the open air) but too small for drones, which are in the black hive; then the stand must be placed where the Italian mother-hive is, until the queen is impregnated.

In the same manner all queen-cells are treated (all but one or two, which are left in the hive for the purpose of forming a separate colony) until all black hives are Italianised. Should, however, a hive be impregnated where it is supposed any black drones exist, it must be put on the stand of the black bees, so as to have only pure Italian drones on the Italian breeding stand.

In three weeks, with only little practice, about fifty hives can be Italianised. When done, and all the bees are provided with queens of Italian origin, then the work is much easier, as meanwhile, the young mothers lay Italian drone-eggs, and the black drones die, or, the Italian drones obtain such preponderance, that a genuine impregnation is in most cases certain.

For breeding, always choose the finest mother, if possible, of yellow colour, having previously convinced yourself that she has been impregnated genuinely, that is, by an Italian drone, and that she breeds, as a proof, handsome yellow working bees.

§ 8.

BREEDING OF DRONES.

To increase the Italian drones as fast as possible, deprive the Italian mother of a hive of her drone-cells, and place instead, empty cells for further filling them with drone-brood, which she will do forthwith. The Italian drone-brood hang into the black hives for hatching, taking and destroying, as much as possible, their own black-broods.