We have had a few weeks’ drouth, the first this season, and it soon stopped the honey from autumnal wild flowers.
Since Mr. Tillinghast suggested our being called “Expert” (or some such foolishness), we think we could hardly be honest without confessing some of our work this fall. For instance, we removed queen from No. 23, August 9th, and ten days after cut out thirty-two (32) queen cells. We have mentioned before that we tried hatching some of them in cages, and the rest were put in hives from which we had removed hybrid queens. We were such an expert at the business that we hatched about one-half the thirty-two, and after they were hatched, we bungled the life out of every one—some by artificial fertilization experiments; and the rest wouldn’t lay and finally died their “own selves.”
Well, (we have considerable patience,) we tried again; removed queen from No. 16, August 28, and cut out twenty-one (21) cells ten days after. Of these we did raise five laying queens; and most of the other cells were destroyed by laying them on the top of the frames when the weather was too cool. In fact we have had more cells destroyed this fall than ever before, and only saved five by inserting them carefully in place of one cut out. Now, Mr. Editor, we should have felt somewhat better at this result, had we not discovered that the original queen removed from No. 16 had been killed, and only a miserable, small, black queen reared in her place. She was put in a hive in which we had a caged, unfertile queen, and we neglected to look whether they had raised any more. Inexcusable carelessness, we call it.
To shorten the matter, we sent Mr. Grimm fifty dollars on Monday morning, and received twenty-five nice queens (or a part of them at least) on Saturday afternoon. Is not that pretty prompt?
Now, Mr. Editor, we are going to take this queen raising business up next spring just where we left off; and if we can’t do better, and at least raise enough for our own apiary, we shall call ourself something worse than
Novice.
October 10, 1870.
[For the American Bee Journal.]