Natural and prolific hardy Queens.
We are all more or less disposed to regard our own ideas as indisputable.
Mr. Quinby for example, praises his new hive, and his queen yard. I have experimented with both, and both are now in my barn, waiting to be split up for kindling wood.
Mr. John M. Price, in the July number of the Bee Journal, condemns all artificially raised queens. But rassurez vous, friend queen-breeders, I come to prove to friend Price, that he has misconceived the reason of his bad luck in raising artificial queens.
When I commenced to introduce Italian bees in my apiary, six years ago, I received from one of our best queen-breeders a very nice looking queen. She was very yellow from the waist to the tip of the abdomen. Well, I raised a number of queens to get drones, and next season I raised some more, from the same queen, to replace the misallied queens. But lo, one-fourth of my young queens were either crippled, or drone laying, or laying non-hatching eggs. Yet these queens were as yellow as their mother, and it seemed as if the brighter they looked, the poorer they were.
Then my first imported queens came. They were not yellow, but dark. The first rings of the abdomen were leather-colored, the last were entirely black or nearly so. I wrote to Dr. Blumhof, reproaching him for having sent me so dark queens. He replied that all the healthier queens in Italy are dark, and that it was well ascertained there, that the light-colored queens were not so good as the dark. The light-colored queens, added the Doctor, seem to have the chlorosis. Prof. Mona told the same thing to Mr. A. Grimm, when he was in Italy. See American Bee Journal, vol. III. From this we can guess that the selecting of the brightest yellow queens for breeders, is one of the causes of the failure of the queens raised. But in-and-in breeding is another, and according to my experience, a main cause of weakness.
As soon as my first imported queens were on hand, I commenced raising queens from them, and from that time forward I raised artificial queens every year from newly imported queens. Those queens mate with drones from queens of the preceding year’s importation, and so on. I do not care for the color of these queens, but not one of them is crippled or proves to be a poor layer.
My five best stocks this year, all have artificial queens. Three of these queens are with swarms of last year. I hived them in one of friend Price’s hives. These swarms are better than the three original stocks they came from, though these latter have raised natural queens in the height of the swarming season, as friend Price prefers they should. The five stocks referred to gave me from seventy to one hundred pounds each, of box honey. I suppose I should be thought very exigeant if I were not content with such results, in so dry a season as this.
Why does friend Price imagine that artificially raised queens are not so good as natural ones? Probably, because the bees, in order to obtain queens sooner, chose grubs already several days old, instead of selecting newly laid eggs, from which to raise queens. I have watched that very closely, and could see no appreciable difference. A stock rendered queenless will raise queens maturing at different periods, some hatching in from nine to twelve or fourteen days, and sometimes not till sixteen days after. If the above theory were correct, the earlier hatching queens should be the poorer, for they come from grubs three or four days old. Yet such is not the case—those queens are as good as any.
If that theory proved to be true, it would still be an easy matter to prevent the evil results apprehended. We could destroy the two or three first-capped queen cells; or force the bees to raise queens from the egg, by a method far more easy than friend Price’s. Insert in your chosen stock a frame, containing empty worker comb, placing it between two frames containing brood. In three days, if the bees find honey in the fields, the cells of the worker comb will be supplied with eggs. Then remove the queen and all the brood combs, except the one containing the eggs. The bees will thus have eggs only from which to raise queens, and all your young queens will necessarily be started ab ovo. I guess this method is as good as, and more simple than, that of friend Price.