When these bee conventions become yearly in our country, (and I hope they will,) we will be sure to attend, if within the range of our flight. We would be delighted to see the different specimens of honey and bees which should be in attendance, and ahead of anything to see except the phiz of Novice, Gallup, Grimm, and their ilk, side by side the different hives in working order. A great majority of the hives with movable frames are patented, many are not, and we would like to see them on exhibition, opened, and the points of excellence each contains, shown. We don’t mean the sub-venders of different patents, who are travelling over the country, and attend at the different fall fairs, who never kept or owned a hive of bees, know nothing of the nature and habit of the insects, and who move up to you and talk as learnedly on the bee as Langstroth or Dzierzon could; but men of experience and veracity, who have tried and used for several seasons the hive on exhibition, through poor as well as rich harvests; and hives of different forms and capacity, which you could criticise, and the good qualities, or the real or imaginary defects of which a man might point out, without danger of being called a mutton-head and ignoramus. There are several different patents in our country, and if they are not thrown over the fence the first season, they are sure to go the way of all trash the second. Some unfortunate purchasers try to get their money back by transforming the hives into troughs to feed the cow in; others convert them into boxes for hen-nests. In many of these cases, however, it is through the ignorance of the keepers that they do not succeed.
One year ago, Esq. Boring, a Justice of the Peace from one of our rural districts, thought to outstrip his neighbors in honey and bee-keeping, and ordered a hive with which you could control swarming, catch the drones, keep out moths, and the Lord only knows what its owner didn’t claim for it. Draw out the chamber, take out honey enough for supper, and replace the drawer, and all is right, nice, and snug! I believe they call it the Buck-eye, patented by Mitchell. Esq. Boring was eager to have bees in, and couldn’t wait for a natural swarm, but drove in a fine stock. He was so well pleased with it and its workings, that he Buck-eyed his whole apiary; and upon inquiry a few days since, he informed me that he would lose nearly all his bees. The first time he drew out the chamber everything worked fine. The second time it was rather tight and glued up. A month after that he thought it would take a small yoke of steers to pull out the chamber of frames, and during the summer nearly the whole fell a prey to the moth-miller. However, he should not condemn the hive after this slight trial. It has been an unusually poor season, and none but the strongest stocks stored any surplus.
W. P. Henderson.
Murfreesboro, Penna., Oct. 6, 1870.
[For the American Bee Journal.]
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.